You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Welcome to The Coaching Inn. And what a pleasure to have Sam Isaacson back for a return visit. Sam, new book, new job, new world. Welcome. Yes. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me back. I really enjoyed every conversation I've had with you. And so I'm looking forward to this one as well. I love it. Thank you. Sam Isaacson, superhuman coaching. It's just brilliant.
So For those people who didn't hear our last podcast, just give us a bit of a headline about you and what you do now and where the book came from. Sure, a bit about me. Well, I mean, my full-time job is I'm global director of consulting at Coach Hub, which is a big digital coaching provider, probably the biggest coaching pool in the world.
And alongside that, I do a lot of work across the different coaching professional bodies, particularly thinking about use of technology in coaching and what direction that might take. Alongside that, I write quite a lot about technology. And obviously, that's what this latest book is about. And I do quite a lot of that on LinkedIn as well. So I know there'll be a question about where can people find you LinkedIn is the answer. I'm kind of giving that one away now.
And then the other big role that I have in the coaching world is I'm chair of the coaching professional apprenticeship trailblazer group. as a government sponsored group of employers of coaches, training providers and the professional bodies which developed the apprenticeship which is now live. So yeah, nice to be part of all of that. And we were always going to have you back to talk about that. So we'll have to have you back a third time about that one. Meanwhile, superhuman coaching.
Yes. Say more. Well, what this came out of really was while I was writing the previous book, how to thrive as a coach in a digital world. I'd come across this concept really, which was that technology is something that makes us augmented as humans. I think I'll probably mention that kind of language in the previous book. And what that looks like in practice is the wheel.
effectively gives us super powered legs, you know, there's no difference between having super powered legs and having the wheel and the wheel, you know, increases other things that allows you to carry more, it allows you to travel for longer distances, you know, it does lots of things which effectively are taking us as humans and making us superhuman. But we often don't perceive it that way, because we're just using the technology.
And so we can see it isn't as from a third party perspective, observing is then it would feel like you're interacting with these these super humans, know, these, these people that have got these powers. And so I didn't write about it in that book, but then I was thinking a lot of the questions that were coming up from coaches, as I was going around talking about that previous book was, was wanting to be quite practical. Well, you know, what technology can I use?
And I thought, well, what, what's really behind that is making us think as coaches, you know, we always want to be better at our craft. And maybe there's a way that we can kind of plug in a piece of technology. And it isn't just fun or a gimmick, something shiny, it's something that actually makes us better than we would be otherwise. And so, so that's where that idea came from. And I thought, you know, 10 is a nice round number.
So I'll just come up with 10 different technologies that we could think about and start to apply in our coaching and maybe change the way that we're doing it in a way that makes it better. Yeah. And what I love about it is that you share the ideas and then it makes me go, yeah, you could also do that. Yes. Yeah. And, and isn't that the best kind of coaching there is that people take it and they make it their own? Yes. I know. I I think I probably say it quite clearly in the book.
I'm not, I haven't presented the book as these are the 10 technologies that every coach should use. It's kind of 10 different sorts of technologies and all of them you can think about slightly differently. And all of them, I would hope, you know, you read the chapter and you come to the end of it and think, I'm not going to use that. but maybe I could do this other different thing, which is going to fit me as a coach and my coachees better. In which case, that's great.
That's exactly what I want to happen from it. So, absolutely. So how's it selling? it's very difficult question to answer, isn't it? People are buying it, which is nice. I don't really know what is a high or low number, but yeah, people are buying it and people are reading it and they seem to be enjoying it. yeah, it's good. Fabulous. Fabulous. So you can get it on Amazon. And it's called superhuman coach. Yes. So what did you learn as you were reading, writing it Sam?
Well, just the breadth of technologies that could be used by coaches. So I think when I've gone around conferences, speaking about technology and coaching as I do, one of the questions that I often ask at the beginning, particularly on virtual conferences with the chat is just, you know, check in the chat, what sorts of technologies you're using as a coach. And of course, effectively, every coach is using video conferencing. And then some of them are using digital whiteboards.
Some of them have got some kind of constellations tool, and it might be an actual designed constellations tool, or it might just be some template of things to put onto a slide. And that's basically it. I some people are kind of sharing slides and that sort of thing. there isn't a huge amount of... variety in terms of what their typical coach is using.
And in fact, you know, a lot of people, if you're using a digital whiteboard, that puts you right at the cutting edge of coaching, you know, in terms of use of technology. And so I kind of start there. And in the book, I talk about the importance of screen sharing that gives you lots of options that you wouldn't have otherwise and whiteboards. But actually, there's a lot of technology out there that I feel like as a coach gets me quite excited as to what you know, creativity, can spark.
So what I mean, I don't know how what kind of questions you're about to ask me, you know, one that I really enjoy using is artwork generated by AI that's created in the moment in the coaching conversation, where as a coach, I have got no idea what's going to happen. And that excites me. And then as I was writing it, then I, you know, was looking around what sort of options there are. And actually, there's loads of different ways that you can apply that sort of thinking.
across different sorts of creativity and using different kinds of technology, some of which will lend itself to different sorts of coaching even then. So yeah, it's been great to just, I guess, stretch my own understanding of what could be possible. And I think the more you think about it, the more ideas you can run with. Yeah, and some of it's tech and some of it's humanity, isn't it? I had a huge learning the other day.
was doing a coaching demo and the group that I was with, they were all on site and I wasn't. Right. So I'm the queen on the throne of their massive TV screen and they're all sitting around and they wanted a coaching demo. So I asked the person who was willing to be coached to come a bit closer so that I felt I was with him. And he pulled his chair right up to the camera and I went, not that close. What I realized was we don't use space virtually as well as we could.
So I invited him to go kind of halfway between them and the screen. And I went back a fairly equivalent distance. And it felt so different because it felt like we had all the space in the world. And the work that we did was in this massive, bigger space. And I think often it's, you know, even simple. you know, simple physical things like backing off from the camera a bit or moving right out of the camera shot, which I've always done, or right to the edge of the camera shot.
There's all sorts of fun things that we can do. Yeah. I mean, I think probably the most extreme version of that, and I do write about it in the book, is using virtual reality. Yes. Because And I I can't remember who I was saying this to the other day. I was having a conversation with somebody who they, in fact, I remember who it was. Yeah. And they've done quite a lot of research into coaching technology actually a few years ago.
And what we were noticing was we were talking through video as you and I are now, and both of us happened to be sitting down and I tend to stand for video calls. And both of us were kind of hunched over our laptops, kind of talk, we're both kind of talking down to each other, quite hunched over.
And I was thinking, actually, you when, when you put on a virtual reality headset, your natural thing, you don't look down to talk to somebody, you, kind of sit back and you look up and that's what you do in a, an in person coaching conversation. And just that simple, physiological difference where you're seeing things that it's a slightly larger scale, you know, you feel a bit more spacious, tend to use your hands more.
That's, you know, that's got to be a positive to just play with the physiology like that. So yeah. I recorded it. I was a guest on someone else's podcast today and I broke my office chair. Earlier in the week, I broke my office chair because I demonstrate, physically demonstrate in training online, the kind of future focused way of coaching and what happens if we start going backwards. And because I'd spun this chair so many times, the top fell off. Nobody was injured in the doing or so.
So I ordered a new chair, which I'm in now. It's beautiful. Thank you, LinkedIn, for recommending this very wonderful chair. But so this morning, I've been sitting on a dining chair all week, and it's been just really crippling. And I and I've got a lovely armchair in the office. So I thought what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring the armchair over.
I'm going to see if I can get my external mic close enough that instead of sitting like at the desk for the webinar, I sit in the armchair for this cozy chat. And it was amazing.
The big learning is I need to find, need to tidy it up and find a way of not being face to face opposite, because it would have felt even more normal if I'd been slightly to the side and we had been looking at each other slightly diagonally, because he was kind of right in front of me on the screen and I'm right here, even though I'm like, I don't know, six, eight feet back. But again, Sometimes we only discover things, don't we, accidentally breaking our chair, or whatever it is.
Well, I assume, I mean, that happens with a lot of technology as we discover things by accident. know, the things that are designed to do one thing and then they end up also doing something else or in fact, doing something completely different. That's something else. I mean, I tend to think of it in terms of virtual reality, but it is, it doesn't have to be. When we're doing video calls and we tend to like to feel polite. And therefore we look at the person.
And we feel like we have to look at them all the time. And it's quite draining. It's quite intense for both people to be watched and to be looking at the same time. And actually, when you're meeting in person, you don't do that, you look all over the place. And that's an important part of, you know, the way that we think we just give our eyes a rest. And so and in particular, in a coaching conversation, which is already quite an intense kind of setting, isn't it?
I think it's nice to be conscious of that and know what to do to use the technology well. Yeah. Although I would say the coach needs to keep eye contact and the thinker can do what they like. Do you know, one of the things I like about your book is that your first book felt like it had a kind of impetus that's slightly beyond where we are. And what I like about this one is it's very now. Yes. Yes. It's intended as pick it up. it'll have something in it that you can do today.
You you're coaching someone this afternoon, read the read a chapter of the book in the morning and you'll have something to do. And that's that's beautiful. So it's so not for techies. No, no, it's not designed. It's not written for techies at all. It's written for coaches. Humans. Indeed. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what's the what's I know you like VR. Apart from that, which requires a little bit of confidence in tech. It's your favourite.
What's your favourite techie thing that's accessible to everybody? Yeah, so I think I mentioned it earlier. well, I'll go for two. Why not? I'll bend the rules. I really like using AI generated artwork. And I think the possibilities that it offers are something that just have never been possible before.
You the closest thing that we've really had up until 2019, before we all got forced to go into video only, you'd have a physical deck of pictures, know, cards, and you would take them into the coaching room, and it would be the same pictures you'd present every time. You might have a few different choices of picture card decks, but you're not going to have loads. you're going to have this set of pictures. And I always really enjoyed doing that. in person.
And there are digital versions of that, or about those in the book. But AI generated artwork just gives you something so new and different every time. And sometimes what you create looks so abstract and difficult to understand that you're not really sure what's going to happen. And it always tends out to be quite good. And then every so often, it creates something that you just think, what has happened inside this little machine that has generated this?
is such a special thing that so feels very directional. And, and, you know, clearly has level of interpretation or whatever based on its data set that has pushed something in a certain direction, and it is so easy to use. If you can type in the name of a website, then you're able to use that. So I really do like that. And I've every single time I've used it in coaching, it has generated something unpredictable and really positive.
And then the second one that I'll mention, and I mentioned it because it's quite different. And I, I've used that one less. But when I do really like it is the generation of soundscapes. So I enjoy playing with that. I mean, I tend to listen to them while I'm working by myself. It's quite nice to have an environment that I've kind of curated, I want to listen to some birdsong or whatever, and so I'll put it on. But yeah, using that in a coaching conversation.
I think that's something again that is just completely impossible without the technology. And so to be able to manipulate that and play around with it, I think that's a really fun thing that we can do. And who knows what could unlock. So there you go. I love that because you talked about that when we on the last podcast. And I went away and got my noise.net cafe.
And having written my first book entirely in coffee shops, this one, the next one, I'm writing in the office with the noise of a coffee shop. So it's much cheaper. But I've still got that. I don't know. There's something about it. And I, I only listen, I only listen to it when I'm writing. I don't listen to it at any other time. So it's like, I've gone somewhere special. Very good. I the, I put the coffee shop on and off I go.
Well, you know, with that one in particular, research has shown that when you've got the sound of conversation in the background, but you can't understand it, it creates more creativity in you. It's silly. It's amazing. So I'm very grateful to you for that. Great. You are not the only person I recommended it to. I love it. Yeah, but it's about creating a different environment, isn't it?
So there's something about, so I had a conversation with somebody yesterday or the day before, because my, in fact, I haven't got it on today because I forgot, but normally when I do a podcast, I've got the pub visual behind me so that when I, if I, if I'm not hiding self view, then I can see that I'm in the pub. And that means that I have a different conversation than when I, when it looks like I'm in the coaching room. Yeah. Because we can change our environment.
Can't we, without even getting to VR. Yes, yeah. And if I was talking to somebody the other day about how they, they were saying, I essentially what you just said, which is, you know, I haven't got a headset, it feels like a big investment, but I would like to get some of the advantages of coaching outside, while still being able to meet people remotely through video.
And the simple act of changing your background consciously to something that is going to shape things in the way you want them to. So you can have trees behind you if you want that. Or in the pub or in an office. So to give you that sense of being corporate or in a safe space or whatever.
So yeah, it's good to think those things through, you know, because otherwise they get thought through by somebody who isn't a coach or don't get thought through at all in which case you don't know what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. So we can really push the boundaries, can't we? Yeah. Well, it changes. It makes us into something different from what we were without it.
I think coaching you know, coaching is a relatively basic human experience, you know, is basically being curious, that's basically what it comes down to, you know, listen to somebody and ask some good questions and just kind of see what happens. And of course, there is skill to it, you know, I'm not taking any of that away.
But I think when we find something that is an external tool that somehow enhances this natural part of being human, I think that we should be should be getting excited about that and not feel kind of threatened that it's taking things away because it isn't human by itself, you know. Somebody said to me the other day, you must be very lonely working from home. I said, but I'm talking to people all day. I'm very tired. Yeah, it's exhausting.
But not very lonely because, you know, people come into You know, when the, when the television first came in, people would talk about the world coming into your living room, and, and actually, you know, people are coming into our offices, our home offices, or wherever we are, through, you know, through technology, what a joy that is, for those of us for whom we feel comfortable. Yeah. And it's, well, it opens up opportunities.
I mean, when you think about the way that we use video conferencing today, I mean, and it's only been a couple of years really, since it's been every single day that we're doing this. It's, it's absolutely extraordinary, the sorts of things that I will talk to people in different countries around the world most days of the week now. And historically, you would just choose to not do that or you'd sort of meeting, you know, you'd physically go and travel to Paris or Seattle or whatever.
And the ability, you know, I've spoken in conferences over the last couple of years in the US and Australia and India and China, know, and places that you would just, you'd never have thought that this is a possibility to travel all of the way to Sydney to talk for 45 minutes. But actually, now all you need to do is wake up early. you're able to do it. Yeah, yeah. And no carbon footprint. Not no carbon footprint. But yes, significantly reduced.
Yeah. We've just put a bid in for a big public sector tender. And one of the things that they've insisted is that everything moves to being online. And we already run all of our training online. But it's interesting that that's now something that they're really saying it's going to be like this. than it's up to you to choose. Sure. Well, there's obvious benefits to it. I mean, you know, you'll know as well as I do, you know, it's very pleasant to be with people in person.
there are certain other psychological benefits, you know, if people don't feel safe in their own house, or, you know, they just need to get out for mental health reasons, it's good to have things in person at times. But when you start to break down, what are the benefits that we're getting from meeting through video rather than in person? it clearly it costs less, it takes less time because we're not having to travel, you you can create an easy recording of it.
And so you can go back and revisit the conversation. You immediately have access to the entire internet in the meeting that if you were to physically go to the pub, you'd think, okay, I'll try and remember that. then when I get back to the office, then I'll send an email with you know, you're able to do all of that in that moment. Yes, it's, it's great, isn't it? And you think you've got to embrace technology. because it's not going to go away at any point.
So that move that we had in 2020 where everything was accelerated into having to meet everything online, there's perhaps been more embracing of in-person since things have opened up a little bit more, but it's not going to go back to the point of, you you're working in the office, you know, most days of the week. And so to kind of try to rebel against it just because don't like technology. It just feels like a rod for your own back, you know, it's not actually helping.
Yeah, we'd been working online, interestingly, for several years before the pandemic. And, and struggling sometimes to encourage people that it will be okay. Yeah. And of course, sometimes it's not okay, is it? And sometimes people would rather have an audio phone call than they would a video face to face and that you can, you know, there are some people I work with where I say, well, let's both go for a walk. Yeah. And off we go. I'm here and there. Somewhere else.
I get taken to the beach by somebody in another part of the world. She sends me a message and she goes, I'm in our meeting space. You go, if only. If only. And she gets the view of the sea and I... get the insights from her about her view of the sea, which goes back to your AI generating picture thing, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. Well, you could stick a soundscape on and listen to the waves in the background. That would make me feel more in the zone, wouldn't it? Maybe I'll do that next time.
So what are your dreams? I know that the virtual reality thing is your lovely, I know you love that, but in terms of something that's more attainable for people who are a bit less of early adopters, what's your dream for what might be coming up or what might be coming next? I mean, I do think the real, you'll have picked this up from the book, I really like creativity in coaching. And so I think there are certain tools I tend to think in terms of senses.
so, you know, activating visual or auditory or some kind of sensory something using technology to just spark something like that. I would really love for coaches to read the book and to take away. I have what else could I do that's going to, you know, to do something new like that. So one of the websites that I mentioned in their fantasy name generators.com I think that's I think that's what it is.
It's got so many tools of just creating something random, like it creates a coat of arms or something. Why not in a coaching session, bring up a coat of arms and say to the coachee, let's generate a coat of arms for your future self. You know, you've got all, it's designed to do that. So just drop some pieces onto that shield and describe to me what you're doing while you're doing it.
That sounds like the sort of thing that some coach somewhere would spend forever developing and then it'll be their thing. Well, the internet has got so much of this stuff and that website is a great example of a niche where it loves the community that uses that website of which I may be a part is extremely nerdy. Loves to have kind of content that it can create within a fictional world and actually coming up with a map.
for a city or a coat of arms or a bulletin board on some fantasy pub somewhere, know, Wild West Tavern or something like that. Actually, you know, there are tools out there that people have spent a lot of time creating that are very nice, are fun to use in a coaching conversation. And like I say, when you do that, you just don't know what's going to happen next because a coachee is going to interpret it all in their own way and take things in the direction that you could never predict.
That's the that's the joy of it. So yeah, I love anything that's creative. I think that as over the next few years as technology improves, there are the the sorts of technologies I've got my particular eye on are wearables. You know, so a few years ago, we moved from a place in which nobody had a smartwatch because, you know, we're not geeks. to a point where everyone's got one because Apple has released one. What's happened basically.
And so there's a lot of people and just for the record, I don't wear a smartwatch. I wear a really boring one. I haven't even got the date on it. But over the next couple of years, I think that what's going to happen is people are going to realize storing all of this data of my heart rate, you know, once every 10 minutes over the last three years, that data has got to be useful for something.
So turn that into something that can give us some kind of experience rather than just staring at the bar chart. And when that happens, I would love for coaches to be thinking, how could I use that in a coaching session to kind of shift? So there is a tool, I don't think I wrote about this in the book, actually, maybe I did, where you can, you attach the band onto your head, which is tracking your, is that right?
What am I thinking about heart rate is a heart rate monitor, yes, it will be on a band. And as you're slowing your breathing down, it will change a visual on a mobile app. And so what you're then doing is you're you're getting some very live feedback as to what's happening and how to change your heart rate, which is extremely difficult to notice, you know, through just putting your hand on your chest or feeling your pulse, because you're going to kind of doing two things at the same time.
And so something like that where you kind of bring it to life and you change people's perspective on some things suddenly gives you the ability to lower your heart rate if you want to. And we all have that ability. You don't really realize that that's what you can do. And suddenly once you've visualized it live in the moment, then you notice, it's on the out breath, isn't it? Like you just don't, you don't get that until you then see it you notice that's what you're doing to influence things.
yeah, I we're almost. That's about people making their own meaning, isn't it? Because at the moment, without that, an expert on heart rate reduction might say, actually, what you need to do is you need to do this on the out breath. Yes, people will go, yeah. But what you're describing is when you see it, well, they say seeing is believing, don't they? When you see it in that visual sense, you might go, yeah, it's just a beautiful stretch on enabling people to make their own means.
Yeah. And that's what coaching is. The power in coaching is that the coachee comes to the conclusion themselves. And so it doesn't matter how many times up to that point they've been told, if you don't have your email permanently open. you'll be less stressed. When they discover it for themselves, suddenly they're empowered to minimize it. And that's, it's something that's so obvious, but you really kind of need to draw that conclusion for yourself in order to do something about it.
And so, I think technology can really bring that to life for us when it's done. Wow, how exciting. So is there another book coming, Sam? probably. The idea that I'm just throwing around in the air for myself. at the moment is doing something that's just focused on artificial intelligence as a conversation tool.
Because I think there's a lot of anytime it's mentioned in conversation, there's a lot of people that talk about it speculatively, but quite confidently, when the reality is actually it's quite straightforward. And so what I'd like to do is The idea that I've got in my mind is I'll spend a little bit of book kind of explaining the underlying technology of it so that we can actually get a grip on it. okay. So, know, behind that little screen, this is what is happening.
So when AI generated artwork, what it's actually doing is looking at this data set and comparing it and kind of generating this, you know, that's how it's working. And then looking at well, what is the reality and what are the use cases for it that we could use practically today? That feels like I feel like a resource that would be helpful for coaching. Amazing. So you're always ahead of the game and it's always a delight to speak to you, Sam. Well, that's so great to reconnect.
know, it's a lovely to talk about this stuff. And we'll have you back one day to talk about apprenticeships. Yes. Yeah. Before the next change comes out from government and it's something different. Yeah. So thank you so much. People can contact you on LinkedIn. and I'll put the connection in the show notes. And Sam's book is called Superhuman Coaching. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. Bye bye, everyone.
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