Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee

In this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee, Coaching.com CEO Alex Pascal deep dives into AI and other imminent coaching technology with Fluxify’s Jonathan Reitz. The discussion around AI and coaching continues to heat up, and as a member of the International Coaching Federation’s AI standards work group, Jonathan has unique insights to offer on this topic. Here, he talks through the differences between AI as a coaching enhancement and a coaching replacement. He also explains the 3 main ways he sees coaches benefiting from AI innovations in the near future, and why he worries about coaches splitting into “old school” and “new school” coaching camps.Jonathan is one of a shortlist of people in the world who holds the International Coaching Federation's Master Certified Coach credential and the ACTC, the Advanced Certification in Team Coaching. His focus is on the future of coaching, and during this conversation, he shares some of the challenges and opportunities that coaches can expect to face in coming years.According to him, introducing greater technology into a human endeavor like coaching creates various ethical dilemmas, but in this episode, Jonathan talks about how he still believes core coaching competencies can safely come to life using technological tools that have been vetted and data that is handled responsibly.The future may be uncertain, but Jonathan has reason to be hopeful. He observes the recent shift that has taken place in talent management departments with optimism. What could we achieve if we keep moving away from compliance and toward compassion? Jonathan and Alex have some ideas!Jonathan is the author of Coaching Hacks: Simple Strategies to Make Every Conversation More Effective. To learn about his approach, which he describes as “one part coach and one part coach trainer,” and to hear more about the evolution of technology in our industry, listen to this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. Resources:Jonathan’s Website:   https://jonathanreitz.com/ Jonathan’s Linkedin:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanreitz Jonathan’s Twitter:     https://twitter.com/jonathanreitz Jonathan’s Instagram:            https://www.instagram.com/jonathanreitz Jonathan’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathanreitz

In this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee, Coaching.com CEO Alex Pascal hosts guest Marcia Reynolds: bestselling author, president of Covisioning LLC, and the creator of Breakthrough Coaching.Marcia’s work focuses on helping coaches to find a balance between structure and flow in their coaching sessions. During this conversation, she explains the role of emotions in coaching and the risk of overusing formulas and frameworks to the detriment of forging authentic connection.One of Marcia’s core beliefs is that there is great importance in who you are as a coach, not just what you do. This was the perfect opportunity for her to describe the Breakthrough Coaching method and how it empowers coaches to embody their unique coaching identity, thereby ensuring they (and their clients) feel safe.Breakthrough Coaching has recently become an online course on Coaching.com, and this year it will become a book too. At this exciting moment for her method, Marcia speaks about how coaches can create that “aha” moment of new insight and awareness. She shares why she describes coaches as “external disruptors” of their clients’ thought patterns as well as why that outside force will always be necessary for true transformation.If you’re interested in learning strategies for effective reflective inquiry, understanding how to be present during difficult coaching sessions, and developing what it takes to produce greater results more quickly, then you’ll enjoy this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. Resources: Marcia Reynolds: https://covisioning.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marciareynolds/Twitter: https://twitter.com/marciareynolds?lang=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarciaSReynoldsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr_marcia_reynolds/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MarciaReynoldsBooksCoach the Person, Not the Problem: A Guide to Using Reflective InquiryThe Discomfort Zone: How Leaders Turn Difficult Conversations Into BreakthroughsWander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and DirectionOutsmart Your Brain: How to Master Your Mind When Emotions Take the WheelUnexpected Angels: A Six Month Journey Into LightOutsmart Your Brain: How to Make Success Feel Easy

In this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee, Coaching.com CEO Alex Pascal discusses the Hero’s Journey, handling complexity, and navigating client intersectionalities with Vernice Jones, director and Faculty of Adult Development at Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership. During their conversation, Vernice recounts her experiences as an African American woman coaching mainly men in South East Asia and especially China. She has coached people with varying levels of English proficiency, and she describes how she was able to attune her listening skills to overcome contrasting cultural cues and language barriers. Having worked with diverse client bases, Vernice is perfectly equipped to provide advice on beginning an engagement with someone from a different cultural background. She tells Alex how she distinguishes between information she receives at the narrative level and the meaning-making level to uncover both the context and the human before her. Alex and Vernice also analyze the factors that make a situation complex rather than complicated, agreeing that we often wrongly apply complicated solutions to complex contexts. Recognizing that work with human beings is complex by nature, Vernice explains why she believes in the importance of “safe to fail” experiments in order to better understand how different environments organize themselves around people and challenges before taking action.Vernice is a coach, facilitator, and consultant at Cultivating Leadership. To learn more about the assessments and frameworks that Vernice uses while coaching clients at different intersectionalities, listen to this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee.Resources: Vernice’s Website:           https://www.cultivatingleadership.com/team-member/vernice-jones                                                    https://theleadershipcompass.org/about/ Vernice’s Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachvernicejonesmcc Vernice's Twitter:            https://mobile.twitter.com/tlcompass Vernice’s Youtube:      https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVKsIUgx-OWGX1L0VZutElg  Vernice’s Pinterest:    https://www.pinterest.ph/vernicejones/_saved/ 

How can you unite your work life and your “real life” and show up as your authentic self at all times? How can we use tools like mindfulness to transform work from the inside out? These are questions that Coaching.com CEO Alex Pascal discusses with Scott Shute in this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee.Scott is the author of The Full Body Yes: Change Your Work and Your World from the Inside Out, and he shares his experience of writing a book in this episode. He also presents his belief that cultivating compassion is key to transforming the workplace, which he applied in practice while working as Head of Mindfulness and Compassion Programs at LinkedIn. These days, the science of mindfulness is fairly well known: the business world is aware that regular mindfulness practice rewires the brain, increasing its capacity for concentration and improving decision-making abilities. However, actually integrating this practice into an organization’s operations is another challenge, one that Scott reflects on in this episode.Scott and Alex also take some time to analyze the relationship between mindfulness, spirituality, and religion, discussing how the same tools that a minority uses to achieve enlightenment can be used by the majority to obtain more everyday objectives, whatever their belief system. During these volatile times, we often find ourselves wondering what we personally can do to make the world a better place. Scott has an answer to that question - to focus on “being,” rather than “doing”. Listen in to find out more!

In the latest episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee, Coaching.com CEO Alex Pascal discusses one of his favorite topics - the intersection of coaching and technology - with an established expert on the subject, Sam Isaacson. Sam is the author of How to Thrive as a Coach in a Digital World: Coaching with Technology, and his focus is the risks posed and opportunities offered by technological innovation to modern coaching.During their conversation, Alex and Sam explore how coaching could be improved with the support of artificial intelligence. From technology that analyzes facial expressions to tools that track your talk time during a session, they weigh up the pros and cons of innovations that currently exist on the fringe of coaching practice.Given that coaching is such a people-oriented profession, Sam understands why coaches may be reluctant to embrace technology in their practice. However, beyond the ethical dilemmas involved in artificial intelligence and augmented reality, Sam also argues that coaches have an ethical responsibility to embrace change where it could improve and increase access to coaching services.They also reflect on technology more generally, asking whether progress will always mean saying yes to new tools or whether we’ll eventually reach a saturation point that calls us to impose limits on its influence. If you’re curious about what coaching could look like in the future and what technology is already being used in the industry, listen to this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee.Links: Sam Isaacson - https://isaacsonauthor.com/ Coachtech with Sam Isaacson (LinkedIn Newsletter) - https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/coachtech-with-sam-isaacson-6891308663605125120/Superhuman Coaching: Ten technologies that expand coaching beyond what’s humanly possible - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B82CC8LN/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0How to Thrive as a Coach in a Digital World: Coaching with Technologyhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09B9SZCQD/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i3Digital Daring: Develop a digital culture that will make your business betterhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1973270307/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i6Step Up (Guest's Manual): A journey into leadershiphttps://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1522053700/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i7 Step Up (Leader's Manual): A journey into leadershiphttps://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1521865566/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i8

In this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee, Coaching.com CEO talks about science and spirituality with internationally recognized, award-winning psychiatrist, author, and executive coach Anna Yusim. You can expect some of life’s most profound questions to be analyzed in this philosophical episode. Anna brings her unique perspective as a self-confessed “math nerd” from the hyper-rational world of science to supposedly “woo-woo” topics like telepathy, manifestation, and what it means to have a soul.As psychedelics continue on their journey towards legalization, Anna and Alex discuss their transformative potential and how they measure up against more socially-accepted drugs such as antidepressants. They reflect on how the movement away from religion has created a hunger for spirituality and whether tools such as breathwork and meditation could be the key to transcendence in the modern world.This episode also tackles more practical matters such as Anna’s personal coaching practice, including how she implements 360 reviews with executive clients to go beyond the interpersonal toward the truly transformational.Because Anna is a qualified psychiatrist and an experienced coach, she’s perfectly placed to explain the differences between these two approaches. To hear more about where the boundaries lie in each respective field (and what they have in common when it comes to helping people live their best possible lives), listen to this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. Anna Yusim: https://www.annayusim.com/Fulfilled: How the Science of Spirituality Can Help You Live a Happier, More Meaningful Lifehttps://www.amazon.ca/Fulfilled-Science-Spirituality-Happier-Meaningful/dp/1455596795 

In this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee, Coaching.com Founder & Executive Chair Alex Pascal gets to the heart of Red Team Thinking alongside his long-term friend Bryce Hoffman, who has recently been named one of the top 100 leadership speakers by Inc magazine. Bryce is a former journalist and an accomplished author turned business consultant, who you may have seen appear on national television explaining his unique model for decision making.During their in-depth conversation, Bryce explains his fascinating career history and how he went from investigating industry success (and failure) stories to being invited into the action as a business consultant - although he still prefers to call himself an “unconsultant.” Listen in to find out why!Bryce’s unconventional career path led him to Red Team Thinking, a method of applied critical thinking that was inspired by US military intelligence approaches after 9/11. This episode gives him the opportunity to share how his work came full circle when he was eventually asked to train the military and even NATO.Alex asks Bryce how Red Team Thinking could be applied to coaching, and Bryce shows how his philosophy of challenging assumptions, identifying and actively addressing cognitive bias, and activating dormant skills (rather than outsourcing thinking to others) can be used to benefit coaching clients.Red Team Thinking has its roots in the Socratic method, and accordingly, Bryce and Alex spend some time geeking out over their favorite philosophers in this episode. They discuss how Hegelian thought could be embodied in coaching sessions without clients (or coaches!) having to parse his dense prose.In a world that Alex and Bryce characterize by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, and hyperconnectivity, leaders need strategies that will help them make good decisions quickly.Believing that decisions can be made either by instinct or by analysis and that what we call analysis is often lazy and ineffective, Bryce shares his system for more rigorous critical thinking.To learn more about the origins of “devil’s advocates,” how Bryce’s job is to train contrarians, and if critical thinking could help you survive a zombie apocalypse, listen to this episode.

This episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee sees Coaching.com CEO Alex Pascal dive deep into the topic of happiness with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, a bestselling author and happiness educator who lectures internationally on topics such as leadership, education, and ethics.In this episode, Tal explains how life as a child athlete, a young man in the military, and a dissatisfied computer science student eventually led him to the “happiness business.” He provides information about his accredited MA program in Happiness Studies (the first of its kind) and goes into depth about his influential SPIRE model for living a happier life.As an analytical academic, Tal is interested in how change can be affected systematically from the neurological and individual all the way to the organizational level. He provides his definition of happiness as a sustainable state incorporating struggle, and he takes time during this episode to explain to Alex how businesses can successfully turn stress into growth.Alex asks Tal to reflect on what the pandemic has meant for people’s well-being, and Tal gives his perspective on why this is the perfect time to start implementing meaningful societal change. He explains why he believes returning to pre-pandemic “normality” won’t be straightforward and why it’s now necessary for organizations to integrate flexibility and wellbeing into their practice.Another topic that Tal addresses in this episode is the relationship between morality and happiness. Bearing in mind the heightened levels of polarization in modern society, Tal clarifies what he means by morality and proposes ways to live in alignment with our values in a world where what’s “right” is so hotly contested.When it comes to the longevity of the coaching industry, Tal raises some important points about the need for lifelong learning and strong links to evidence-based practice. In this episode, he also shares his unique vision of what an effective coach should be using Emerson’s “beautiful enemy” concept.To learn more about Tal’s perspective on happiness, business, and the coaching industry, listen to this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee.  Tal Ben-Shahar: https://talbenshahar.com/Happiness Studies Academy: https://www.happinessstudies.academy/cihs/ Potentialife: https://potentialife.com/Happiness Studies: An Introduction: https://www.amazon.com/-/he/Tal-Ben-Shahar/dp/3030648680Happier No Matter What: https://www.amazon.com/Happier-Matter-What-Cultivating-Resilience/dp/1615197915Choose the Life You Want: https://www.amazon.com/Choose-Life-You-Want-Happiness/dp/1615190651/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1349517753&sr=8-4&keywords=tal+ben-shahar

In this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee, Coaching.com CEO Alex Pascal chats with Rebecca Heiss, evolutionary biologist, best-selling author, entrepreneur, and world-class thought leader. During this conversation, Rebecca explains how evolutionary hardwiring means our brains aren’t designed for our modern times of relative abundance. That’s why we have to actively train them to thrive in our current context. One way to achieve this is through breathing exercises, and Rebecca talks us through an example in this episode.Using her scientific background, Rebecca also reflects on the impact of technology on our mental wellbeing. She talks with Alex about the risks and opportunities represented by the Metaverse and how our subconscious is being both reflected and shaped by our search results.Gender and racial bias in artificial intelligence is another cutting-edge and controversial topic that Rebecca and Alex take on. Rebecca asks why assistants such as Siri and Alexa are gendered as women, and what that means when they frustrate us.If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re being simply targeted by online marketing strategies or if they’re successfully manipulating your behavior, then you won’t want to miss out on this discussion. It includes a lot of original insights—and a lot of laughs!Rebecca Heiss is the bestselling author of Instinct, a revolutionary approach to unlocking your innate ability to achieve success in business and in life. She also has a tech company called Icueity with its own app designed to facilitate 360 assessments, 365 days a year. Rebecca recently launched a new project called Year of Happy. It combines groundbreaking happiness science with a supportive community of peers and a monthly Spark Happy box full of gifts to inspire your happiness journey. To learn more about her many fascinating projects including the science and philosophy behind them, listen to this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. https://www.amazon.ca/Instinct-Science-Backed-Solutions-Increase-Productivity/dp/0806541032 http://www.icueity.com/https://rebeccaheiss.com/

Do you coach or work in a team environment? Do you ever have to deal with conflict in the workplace? Listen as New York Time's Best Selling Author, Liane Davey joins Alex to discuss all the complexities of teams in both the physical and virtual world. Liane opens up about how she came up with her ideas for her top management books:The Good Life: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Organization Back on TrackYou First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along, and Get Stuff Done