We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dr. Shaq Anthony a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Dr. Shaq , thanks for joining us today. Is there a lesson you learned in school that’s stuck with you and has meaningfully impacted your journey?
One of the most impactful lessons I learned in college was understanding that purpose is not a destination but rather a journey. Purpose can be seen as one dimensional when in fact it is multifaceted, meaning purpose unfolds in many different ways. This lesson was pivotal in my understanding of my gifts, my talents, my hardships, my struggles, my wins, and my lessons (because we never lose, we Just learn).
As a very young child, I had a natural affinity for music, specifically drums. It is through the growing if this gift that I’ve been able to record on albums, tour, and even host drum clinics. This gift literally made room for in spaces with people I admired, places I only saw in magazines, and experiences that were at one point a pigment of my imagination. Could this be the summation of my purpose? Could this be the end all be all? Most would settle there and conclude that as a small city boy from Muskegon Heights, I had done well for myself and superseded the normal. But to my surprise, it definitely wasn’t and it was really an aspect of my purpose that was meant to give definition to other aspects of my life.
Fast forward to college, where I entered as a music major and was ready to take campus and the world by storm. It was great and I was excited but I quickly learned that the music program wasn’t as diverse and robust as I would’ve liked it to be. At this point, I was scrambling trying to figure out what was next and besides being gifted musically, I knew I wanted to help people. So that went and changed my major to social work. This felt right and it made sense. Upon an ending lecture hall, the professor talked about how the career path didn’t yield much money and I quickly knew this wasn’t it. I love people but I also needed to be able to make enough money to sustain a comfortable life. Back to the drawing board I go. I then changed my major to business management which felt like the smart thing to do. But I quickly found that it wasn’t people centric enough. Frustrated, confused, but determined and consistent, I went to go see my advise who was shocked to see me in her office about a fourth major change.
She got straight to the point and asked me, “what is that you really want to do?” And before I could catch myself I blurred out, “I want to help people get unstuck!” Those words penetrated my heart and resonated with me in a way that I had never experienced. That was it! My advisor looked at me more confused than the day she met me and told me to go to the career center to take some assessments that may help me make sense of what I was feeling and thinking. I entered the career center and took several assessments. When I got the results back, they all pointed to human resource management as a major. I went back to my advisor and I took my first HR class which was Organizational Development. From day 1 in the class, I was sold. This was it!
Fast forward to today, I am still a musician but I am also an accomplished professional doing amazing work and applying what I’ve learned through all of my experiences. What made me realize that purpose is not a destination was when I reflected on the connection between my passion for music, my passion for helping people, and the work that I do everyday. Being an accomplished musician gave me access to very important people where I was able to listen and listen and learn lessons that I would’ve never had the opportunity to learn. It was the exposure needed so that I would be able to handle people, places, and experiences well. Going to college and changing my major four times, gave me a unique perspective regarding change, navigating the unknown and jumping into the process of discovery head first. Since college I’ve held several roles in very different industries such as nonprofit, healthcare, food, government, and education. What I am proud to say is that regardless of job or industry, there has been a resounding commonality: the work that I do has everything to do with creating opportunity, access, and equity for individuals to flourish and have a better quality of life.
This lesson has stuck with me and literally has affected every aspect of my life. No matter where I am in my journey, I understand that my purpose in continuous. Have there been many changes, bumps, and turns? Yes, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am in purpose! Every experience from a young kid infatuated my music has been interconnected and has unfolded this beautiful story of process, progress, and prosperity. This lesson protected me from comparison, from giving up, from stalling out, and from believing that purpose was out of my reach.
So now, my goal and mission is to hell as many people as I possible understand this so that they can go inspire and help the next person. Can you imagine what a world full of people operating and living in purpose would look like?
Dr. Shaq , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
For those who may not know me, I am Dr. Shaq! I’m a country boy from the south side of Muskegon Heights, MI; a product byproduct of Muskegon Heights Public Schools and a proud alumni of Western Michigan University. I’m a father, a fiancé, creative, leader, and author. I obtained my bachelors in Human Resource Management, my masters in Organizational Leadership, and my doctorate in Organizational Leadership & Development. I have a passion for people, more specifically helping people discover purpose and change the world living in it. I currently serve as the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Calvin University. My body of work can be broken down into a few buckets. I help curate a culture of collaboration, breaking down silos and elevating the effectiveness cross matrix teams. I also help develop and implement a model for partnership by defining what partnership means for the institution, writing MOUs, etc. Lastly, I help lead a major place based education strategy known as The 49507 Initiative which focuses on creating access to equitable educational opportunities for residents in the 49507 zip code of Grand Rapids, MI.
I am a leadership and culture enthusiast, helping to curate and enhance institutional and organizational strategies and outcomes. I solve issues regarding people. How do we mobilize people? How do we empower people? How do we inspire people? How do we develop people? I have a knack for bringing people together and yielding consensus and buy in. What sets me apart is the ability to walk in a room and create an environment where everyone feels heard, feels safe, feels important, feels enlightened and feels empowered. The passion that I have is contagious and it has literally been a driving factor in all of my success.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Ahhhh man. Where do I start? There’s been so much but I think one story that illustrates my resilience is the loss of my biological father. I loss my biological father on my fifth birthday due to suicide. I have very few memories of him but one that I have that vividly comes to mind is when I was four years old right before he committed suicide. We had a custom. If I did good in school all week, on Friday, he would take me to get pizza on the way home. So on this particular day, everything was great. We were doing everything that we would normally do. Once we got home, I went to the table and started to devour my pizza when he approached the table and sat across from me with such a serious demeanor. I didn’t quite understand because I did everything I was supposed to. He looked me square in my eyes and said, “Son I want you to always know that you’re my son and there’s nothing you can’t do. You have my blood running through your veins! Don’t ever let anyone tell you what you can and cannot do. Your mind son! You can do whatever you want to do!” As you can imagine, at the time I was shook and also enlightened. Shortly thereafter, I never saw my dad again. But it was interesting because that lesson came out several different ways especially in my adolescence. When I did something I didn’t have any business doing, I would also revert back to what he told me and shout, “my daddy said I can do whatever I want.” But as I reflect and look back over my life, with his death and then my stepfathers death while I was in college, this lesson is the very reason I am a doctor today! It is the very reason I am who I am. I had several excuses to not be successful, to not be responsible, to not be accountable but this one lesson has carried be for over 25 years now.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
A lesson that I had to unlearn was the belief that my faults, trials, and circumstances disqualify you from the things you desire. There are many things that have happened in my life that I felt disqualified me or hindered me from the things that I desired. What’s funny is, to date, there really is nothing that I desire that I don’t have. What I had to understand was that everything that I had been through was part of the overall story and that just because a chapter may have gotten rough, doesn’t mean that I won’t end up exactly where I need to be. I understand now that there was a lesson in ever bad situation and that those things actually qualify me for where I am and where I am going. The wave of the future is authenticity and I know now more than ever that it is authenticity that will carry you to the next levels in your life. I’m not ashamed or embarrassed about any part of my journey. It was all necessary!
Contact Info:
- Website: ShaqAnthony.com
- Instagram: Iamshaqanthony
- Facebook: Shaq Anthony
- Linkedin: Shaquille Anthony