How can I help?

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and start coaching

Pretty early in 2023, it became clear to me that I was going to have to make some decisions about who I really am.

It started with the realization that several of my major client engagements were coming to an organic end this year. But it culminated with the death of my father.

My dad and I weren’t close, but a positive influence he had on my life was his dedication to the profession of medicine. One of the last things he asked me was whether I regretted not going to medical school. I simply told him “no,” but unlike in the past, the answer was gentle and not bitter. That’s because I understood what he wanted from the question — resolution — but also because I knew that I am in pursuit of my own version of the work of healing.

That work begins by accepting people where they are. It’s a lesson I’ve been taught again and again by all the professions I’ve had the privilege to hang around — journalists and teachers and designers and social workers and nurses. At their best, each of these types practice a different type of radical acceptance. In different phases of my life, I have worked to advance the ethos of each of these professions without ever fulling enrolling in any of them. It’s been awfully rewarding but awfully confusing — I get who you folks are, but who am I?

So here at the middle of my life, I found myself asking, what is the healing work of radical acceptance for me? And I found that it is all about decisions. I’ve been at my professional best when I’ve been in position to fully realize the decisions that leaders must face and help them choose among their options — or ideally, imagine better ones. To me, that is a kind of healing.

It is healing of individuals when they find that the problems of leadership in organizations confuse the ethical compasses that have guided them thus far. But it also heals the fabric of society through making organizations more functional and true. Perhaps the most serious cultural disease of our time is alienation from community —  through distrust in institutions, yes, but more importantly through institutions behaving in ways that make them undeserving of trust. Sometimes it feels as if we are bullshitting ourselves into oblivion.

How can I help with that? I decided I can do it through helping leaders. Not as an outside critic or a subject matter expert, but as a friend who can help them make better decisions where they are.

That — plus some great professional help — is how I ended up with my current story of who I am.

I am an executive coach for social impact. It’s a new label for me, but it’s also a kind of work I’ve been doing for a long time. You can learn more about how I’m telling that story on my new website: https://www.andrewbenedictnelson.com/.

But to you readers of this newsletter, many of whom are social change leaders who have followed my twists and turns in identify for many years, I’d like to approach this in a different way.

On this site, I’ve shared lots of cognitive tools to advance strategic thinking as well as perspectives on what it means. Now I would instead like to practice the kind of accepting attitude I’ve learned from so many of you.

So here’s the question: how can I help you? What are you most worried about right now? What’s keeping you up at night? What are the problems facing your organization that only you can see? Or maybe the feelings that suggest that there is a problem that you can’t even explain?

I’d be happy to hear from you over e-mail, but I’d also be gratified if you share in the comments here. One change I’m hoping to make in my life is being able to do this kind of work with a greater number of people. Over time, I’d like to make this site into a place where we can do that together. But it starts with you: what do you need? How can I help?