About Pian Shu, PhD
1. My background as a business-school teacher
For ten years, I was a faculty member at business schools, first at Harvard Business School, and then at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Scheller College of Business. I taught operations management, strategy, and design thinking to MBA and undergraduate students. I immensely enjoyed interacting with students and facilitating class discussions.
During this decade, I developed a distinct teaching style that proved highly effective in discussion-based classrooms. I focused on making complex concepts intuitive and accessible, while using discussion and debate to push students to think critically, articulate their ideas, question assumptions, and engage seriously with different perspectives. One of my students at Harvard described my teaching approach as:
“You really engaged the classroom and challenged us. You encouraged us to become our own professors more than any other professor did. You were very supportive of our learning efforts and pushed us to perform our best.”
I consistently received near-perfect ratings on my teaching. But more importantly, I have been surprised and inspired, time and again, by the depth and breadth of insights that my students generated when they “became their own professors.” When students were given the freedom to explore the material rather than simply being taught it, they often came up with original insights that shed new light even for me on subjects I had been teaching for many years. Empowering students to develop their own views as they grapple with unfamiliar material fostered both intellectual independence and confidence.
Teaching has convinced me that everyone possesses a deep reservoir of natural insight and wisdom, and that to “teach” (or similarly, to “coach”) someone is not so much to impart knowledge as to create the conditions that allow that inner wisdom to blossom. This philosophy was core to my teaching approach and is now foundational to my coaching.
Over the years, many students have shared with me, initially to my surprise, that some of their favorite learning moments happened outside of the classroom, in my office. During office hours, a student and I would have a focused conversation on a topic or challenge of immediate concern to them. Interestingly, these conversations often began with a specific question but evolved into much broader discussions about who they were, what motivated them, and how they saw themselves and the world. A decision about a job offer would turn into a deeper conversation about what the student actually wanted from their career. A concern about classroom participation could lead to a broader discussion about confidence and self-expression.
These conversations almost always left me with a deep sense of gratification. Their individualized nature meant that we could work toward a resolution specific to the student and their situation, often ending with greater clarity and concrete next steps. Looking back, these experiences with one-on-one advising, and the feedback from students, planted some of the earliest seeds for my transition into full-time coaching.