My commitment to the world, and to you
This essay started out as the “Coaching” page for my website. I hoped to offer potential clients an opportunity to understand who I am and what’s important to me - and to anticipate how I’d likely show up for them as a coach. I dug into the stories and lessons that shape my beliefs and commitments to social justice to help explain why it’s so important to me to work with people who are working to improve equity in their communities. And I shared my own experience as a learner and how they informed my approach to coaching.
In the end, the process was immensely helpful to me but probably more than what most clients would want or need to inform their choice. But for any who read it, I hope it might help them make a decision to engage me with greater confidence that my coaching feels like the right fit for them.
My Commitment to the world …
The Jewish concept of Tikun Olam was passed to me through role models in my family as a core value … as my North Star. But my experiences have also introduced me to different approaches to enact these values and I feel that I’ve learned about the limitations of certain approaches and shifted towards alternate paths where my actions might have greater impact.
The first company I owned, I bought from my family in 1991. One day, a stranger entered my office unannounced and asked if I was Mr. Shuster. After telling him that my grandfather with that name had owned the company, he asked if he could tell me a story. His father, he told me, recycled car batteries in the Great Depression until someone stole his truck, which was his only source of income. A friend told him to ask my grandfather for help and advised that he would find him at his favorite diner at 4am. The following morning, his father went to the diner and told my grandfather about his truck and asked if he could borrow $600. My grandfather took the money out of his pocket and handed it to the man who expressed his gratitude for the help and asked if he needed to sign a promissory note. My grandfather asked if the man intended to repay him. When he responded that he would bring the money as soon as he could, my grandfather asked why the document was needed. Like my grandfather, I feel it’s my responsibility and a source of meaning to respond to the needs I see in the world.
My grandparents and my own parents offered another valuable lesson that demonstrated their sense of Ubuntu, an idea that our destinies as human beings are bound up in each others’ experiences. When my family members realized a business success or windfall, they put aside a portion of their profit in a charitable foundation. Bari and I have followed this example and feel a deeper sense of meaning when we give a gift that was made possible through our good fortune and luck. Another tradition from my family is to give gifts in multiples of 18 (background) which further reminds us of the luck associated with our success and privilege.
While my commitment to philanthropy has deep roots in my family, my beliefs about equity and justice came into clear focus during my experience as the manager of a social enterprise at Amos House, a Rhode Island nonprofit that provides the resources and support to help people returning from prison, obtain access to quality housing, and improve their health and economic futures. I was attracted to their work because I saw that many of the people who worked there had previously been supported by Amos House and brought deep insights into the experience of the people they served and the most pressing needs. I also saw that their support leveled the playing field for members of their community facing significant obstacles to their progress and success. And they were able to demonstrate that their work made a huge difference to the people they served. For example, the people who were trained and gained experience working with our social enterprise were four-times less likely to return to prison.
Many of the people we served struggled with addiction.. The organization insisted that rebuilding lives could only be done sober and held random drug testing from time to time to enforce this rule. Invariably, there were some people who had relapsed and these people often stepped out of the line to be tested and into my office to chat (and delay having a positive test). One of these was a woman who had been recently released from prison after serving a seven year sentence for a non-violent drug crime during which she had not been able to see her children. She experienced overwhelming anxiety as she worried that her children would reject her, and relapsed her drug use which meant that she would (temporarily) lose support from Amos House and further delay her reunification.
While there were many differences in our background and experiences, I felt a deep and very human connection with her as a parent as I struggled to imagine the heartbreak I might feel if I was prevented from seeing my children. And I felt a visceral reaction to the impact our severe and unjust drug laws had on her and on her children. This experience (and many others since) shifted my orientation of my philanthropy and community engagement and my professional work toward high-impact approaches that directly confront inequity and justice.
As part of this shift, Bari and I have concentrated our philanthropy with high-impact organizations that are focused on equity. Over the past 30 years, Bari and I have supported many great organizations with financial support and board service. I currently serve as board chair of Eye to Eye, as a long-time board member and former chair at City Year, and board member and treasurer at the RI Association of Infant Mental Health. All of these organizations lead their work with an equity lens and is further guided by science and a strong sense of accountability for impact. And we’ve reflected what we’ve learned from these organizations by finding and offering financial support to organizations in Rhode Island and nationally focusing on equity, justice, and anti-racism.
Like many people in our country, I was deeply impacted by the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Abery and too many others. But the murder of Rayshard Brooks evoked a visceral, personal response. My son committed the same offense, being passed out after a night of heavy drinking, yet walked away without consequence. It was difficult to accept that race was the only difference between these events - and tragic outcome for Mr. Brooks. I wrote My Why and How Toward Black Lives Matter in June 2020 to reflect on my experiences and to understand where I might have the greatest impact. This essay helped me understand that my coaching represented the most appropriate opportunity for me to honor my values around equity and justice. Since writing this essay, I’ve actively sought coaching clients leading anti-racist organizations and/or who are navigating the impact of racism in their lives and career. To assure that I am able to serve the people who need my support most, I’ve adopted an Equity Pricing policy that invites my clients to participate in setting a price for my services that, for them, balances affordability and value. And I give 18% (Chai) of all fees to charities that are chosen collaboratively with my clients.
My Commitment to You
I will always be grateful that my work has coalesced around teaching and coaching. But this only happened after my experiences as a learner were transformed in college, a friend shared insights about my natural talents, and my experiences with entrepreneurs at Brown changed my life. I now feel comfortable with these labels and proud of the impact I’ve had with my students and coaching clients.
My approach to coaching has its roots in elementary school where my earliest memories are of walking, yet again, to the assistant principal’s office for a “talk” about acting out again. I don’t know why I acted out as a kid, but the way school was structuredt didn’t work for me. Halfway through college, that changed with my first computer programming class where I felt empowered to take my learning in directions that were fun and limitless. I remember spending all my free time in the computer lab waiting for my next opportunity to use a computer terminal to learn everything I could - well beyond the expectations of the class requirements.
A radical shift happened when my learning was self-motivated and was defined by my interests and curiosity rather than requirements defined by a teacher. For the first time, I felt that I was in charge of my own learning, in charge of my own life. Today I see that this experience informs everything about how I approach my teaching and coaching.
I never planned to be a teacher. That is, until my friend, Ralph, offered me a job teaching at his school. At first, the idea seemed absurd … I didn’t have any training as a teacher and didn’t feel I had specific knowledge to teach. But Ralph knew that I had other gifts to offer. He’d seen me embrace my children’s interests and respond with support that empowered them to pursue their own learning journeys. And he knew that I’d be able to do the same thing in the classroom. When I reflect on my experience in my programming class, I realized that the difference for me had been the way the course created the conditions for limitless learning. I didn’t take Ralph up on his offer and it took several years before I found an opportunity that felt like the right fit, but I will always be grateful that he opened my heart to a path that has been impactful, rewarding, and purposeful.
My journey as a teacher and coach began when Brown hired me to create curriculum and experiences for students at the intersections of social justice, innovation and entrepreneurship. I’d developed strong pattern-recognition about the entrepreneurial journey and the needs of early-stage ventures from my business experience, but this left an expertise gap around approaches to social change that might actually have the potential to make a real difference in communities. I found myself approaching every meeting with my students with curiosity about the problems they were trying to address and the approaches they were taking to create impact. Maybe because I lacked answers, I offered support in the form of questions and with a learning orientation that empowered my students as entrepreneurs to assure they were asking the right questions … always … and that their approach was targeting root causes rather than symptoms, developing hypotheses to explain why their approach might work, and a rigorous attention to the impact of their work to inform their way forward.
Perhaps the most important contributor to my impact is being fully present with my clients in ways that affirm their experience. At Brown, I collected gifts and artifacts from my students that represented their work at various stages. I used the physical space to reinforce the value of their work and their leadership. By listening deeply to my clients and being fully invested in their journey, I’m able to offer coaching that is always grounded in their goals and what is important to them.
This approach was effective on many levels. Most importantly, it expressed confidence that I believed in my students’ creativity to develop work that matters. By resisting the temptation to offer answers and stand back as a guide who supported their curiosity, innovation and leadership, my students felt empowered to search for their own solutions. Additionally, my approach modeled the learning orientation that would be critical to their own iterative journey through many prototypes to hone their program and impact model. And by observing the approaches taken by so many different organizations, I’ve developed my own pattern recognition about what work in various contexts that informs the questions I ask and the advice I’m able to offer.
People have suggested that coaching was the container for delivering the work I’d been doing to support leaders but I’d never heard a definition that resonated with me. That changed on a hike in Patagonia when my companion shared his own definition of coaching as a “partnership in being thoughtful and intentional about how we change”. I immediately recognized my work in this definition and decided to reframe my practice through this lens and began my search for a program to develop my skills. I enrolled in the Leadership and Performance Coaching Certification program at Brown because their definition of coaching felt perfectly aligned with my values: “that a coach holds the belief that their client is the expert in their own life, and that they are creative, resourceful and whole.”
The most gratifying aspect of this work has been the opportunity to walk alongside inspiring leaders in solidarity with their hopes and aspirations and in support of their learning and growth. This work has been deeply rewarding because of the relationships I’ve developed and for the impact I’ve seen in the lives and careers of my students and clients. I’ve helped my clients see their challenges more clearly, adapt their leadership around their values and purpose, develop greater awareness around their beliefs and blind spots, and choose paths with greater clarity and confidence. And I take a holistic approach which intentionally blurs the boundaries between personal and professional to recognize that these are always connected and to help my clients design their lives in a way that reflects their values and purpose.