Not in conflict. Just not fully alive. There's an engagement for that.

The Brave Space

Your team didn't
lose its talent.
It lost its spark.

In mission-driven work, the real barrier isn't conflict or talent — it's the invisible distance between people that drains energy, stalls decisions, and quietly undermines the mission you built this team to serve. The Brave Space is a 90-day engagement that closes that gap: restoring authentic connection, shared leadership, and the aliveness your work deserves.

Ready to explore what's possible for your team?

Book a 30-Min Discovery Conversation →
Phillip Marcus Jr.
Who Does This Work

Phillip Marcus Jr.

ORSC-trained relationship systems coach · Founder, UR.human · Former Senior Advisor, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

I work with the relationship system — not the loudest person in the room, not the stated concern. The system. I've spent 15 years inside institutions watching what happens when teams lose the capacity to tell the truth to each other. I know what managed distance looks like because I've sat in it.

I don't enter rooms to save teams. I enter rooms to help teams save themselves — by naming what's been operating invisibly and building the conditions where the real conversation can finally happen.

Read the full story →

"Phillip helped me see that the clarity I was searching for wasn't outside me — it was already there. What he does is create the conditions for leaders and teams to finally access what they've been carrying but haven't been able to name."

Raisa S. · Educational Leader

Not ready to book yet?

Start with the free 5-day email course — practical language for what you can feel but can't yet name in your team.

Get the Free Course →
People in genuine conversation around a table

"The most important conversations haven't happened yet — not because people don't want to have them, but because no one has created the space."

Does This Sound Familiar

The team works. But in nonprofit leadership,
working was never supposed to be enough.

What Becomes Possible

When the space between your team comes alive, your capacity to serve people multiplies.

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People speak truth in the meeting room, not just the parking lot — leading to faster, braver decisions for the community you serve.

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Reduced burnout and stronger retention — staff feel truly seen and valued, not just in their role but in their full humanity.

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You stop carrying the weight alone. Shared accountability takes root — and with it, the sustainability your mission actually needs.

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A living culture where daily actions align with the mission on the wall — not because people were told to, but because they chose it together.

How It Works

Simple. Sustained. Transformative.

A focused 90-day engagement — not a one-day workshop or a generic leadership training. Three phases designed to create lasting change in how your team works together.

01

Discovery Conversation

A genuine 30-minute exchange — no pitch, no proposal until we both know it's right. You share what you're sensing in your team. I share what I'm hearing. We decide together whether this is the right moment for this work.

02

90-Day Team Coaching Engagement

We work directly with your intact leadership team as a living relationship system. Entry conversations with each member. A facilitated Brave Space session that surfaces what's been unsayable. Relational agreements the team builds and owns. Integration sessions that make the shift stick. And 1:1 leadership coaching so you're not doing this alone.

03

Lasting Integration

You leave with the language, the practices, and the shared agreements to keep nurturing the team long after our time together. The goal isn't dependency — it's a team that knows how to do this for itself.

A team mid-process, leaning in together

The Work

What changes in the room, changes in the organization.

What Leaders Say About This Work

In Practice · Midwest Coalition Leadership Team

A coalition leadership team was stuck — not in open conflict, but in something quieter. Accountability conversations stalled on the surface. Trust had eroded without anyone naming exactly when or why. Multiple team members were carrying feelings of disrespect. Nobody had said it aloud.

After a facilitated session using the ORSC metaskills framework, team members named things that had been living in hallways for months. The conversation moved from grievance to root cause. One team member described it this way:

"The meta-skills lens was extremely valuable to digging below the surface of incidents and really getting at the why and how of communication becoming poor. The facilitator was extremely well-prepared for a difficult conversation — and gave space while still pushing back on everyone's statements."

Team Member · Midwest Coalition · Anonymous

"Phillip has a remarkable capacity to see the potential within a leader — often things they can't articulate or recognize themselves — and bring it to light in a way that is both empowering and actionable. Working with him transformed not just my thinking, but my entire approach to organizational leadership."

Tinuke C. · Independent Consultant

"His coaching is grounded in helping leaders develop their capacity, identify their strengths, and take decisive action. He has supported me at every stage of my leadership — and each time, he has asked the right question at exactly the right moment."

Laura L. · CUNY

"His empathetic, systems-informed approach fosters a genuine belief in the power of personal and organizational transformation. He is deeply committed — not to giving you the answer, but to helping you find the clarity you didn't know you had."

Franchel M. · NYU · Leadership Coaching

ORSC (Organization & Relationship Systems Coaching) is a globally recognized methodology developed by CRR Global, trusted by leadership teams and organizational practitioners across more than 50 countries. The work is research-based, systems-informed, and built for the complexity of real teams doing high-stakes work.

Honest Answers

Questions worth asking before you reach out.

"We don't have a problem. Why would we do this?"

Because the gap between a functional team and a truly alive one is where most organizational potential lives. The teams that do this work aren't broken — they're ambitious. They sense there's more available and they want it. That's not a problem. That's a starting point.

"How is this different from a team retreat?"

A retreat creates a temporary container. The work goes away when you go home. This engagement builds something that stays — relational agreements the team owns, a shared understanding of what went quiet and why, and the experience of having had the real conversation and come through it. That's different in kind, not just in duration.

"Will this get political or personal?"

It will get real. That's different from political or personal. The work isn't about processing individual feelings or relitigating past decisions. It's about the relationship between the people in that room — what it's capable of, what's been getting in the way, and what becomes possible when you stop managing around it.

"What if some people aren't ready for this?"

That's information worth having before the group work begins — which is why the engagement starts with individual conversations. In my experience, the people who seem most resistant are often the ones who have been waiting longest for someone to ask them what's actually true. Readiness is built, not assumed.

The Investment

What this costs. And what it returns.

This is not a workshop or a retreat. It's a sustained engagement — three months of real work that leaders consistently describe as one of the most significant investments they've made in their organization's human foundation. When team energy shifts, everything downstream shifts with it: retention, morale, mission alignment, and the leader's own peace of mind.

Professional Fee $14,500
The engagement fee covers all three phases above — discovery, the full 90-day team coaching engagement, and lasting integration — including entry conversations, facilitated sessions, relational agreements, integration coaching, and 1:1 leadership sessions.
Available in-person or virtually. For distributed and remote teams, virtual delivery is equally effective — and often surfaces dynamics that in-person settings obscure.
A discovery conversation happens before any engagement begins. If this isn't the right fit, I'll tell you — and point you toward what is.
Two people in a genuine one-on-one moment of connection

What's on the Other Side

A team that knows how to tell the truth to each other — and does it because they chose to, not because they had to.

Ready to start

This work is for leaders
who believe the mission deserves a fully alive team.

UR.human is for leaders who have stopped pretending the distance is fine. Who have a between problem they don't have language for yet. A 30-minute conversation — no pitch, no deck, just honesty. I'll tell you what I see and whether this is the right fit.

Book the Conversation 30 minutes · No pitch deck · No proposal until we both know it makes sense