Hello, and welcome to the Business of Executive Coaching Podcast. I'm Ellie Scarf, your host, and I am here with a real treat for everyone listening in today, because I'm here today with Dr. Saba Hassani. Now, as you'll know, some of you who've been here for a while, Saba is a three-time guest now on this podcast, and an old friend and colleague.
So it is always a delight, because we do a couple of things. We get to nerd out on coaching, I get to pick her brains about all things business and how our coaching practice impacts our coaching business, and also get her advice, because she is obviously a very successful business owner in her own right.
Now, Saba, and I will let her speak in a moment, has many formal qualifications. She has a PhD that has led to her academic and published work and programs. She is an ICF MCC certified coach. She is a supervisor and so much more. But rather than me doing a list of all of her incredible certifications, in the spirit of what we're talking about today, I want to say welcome,
Saba, and would you mind kicking us off by starting just with a little of your story and why you do the work you do today?
Thanks, Ellie. It is awesome to be back with you as always. So a little bit about my story. My story begins where everyone begins, which is, uh, the day I was born and the context in which I was born. So very shortly, a second generation immigrant to Canada, mixed cultured kid, uh, worked in a, and lived in a very kind of suburban and also very one ethnic profile environment.
And then I went into French immersion, uh, which was not the language that anyone in my family spoke. So the headline for most of my childhood was confused and trying to- Uh-huh ... figure out who I was.
So no surprise that much of my work and my development as an adult was focused on achievement, accomplishment, defining self-worth by what I'm able to do.So I had a career, multiple careers in marketing, sales, HR. I spent a very long time in management consulting.
And then, you know, you could say my process of rehabilitation through the therapeutic arm and also just my desire to want to work on change brought me to executive coaching 16 years ago, and haven't looked back since.
Oh, amazing. And so if anyone has not listened to the first two episodes that Saba and I have recorded, I really encourage you to go back. The first one is really sort of really a take on Saba's view on business and the world and then her story, and the second one is about her first book, which is called Unfolding: How Biographical Inquiry Informs Meaning Making in Coaching Psychology, and I didn't remember that.
I've got it right in front of me. I thought you were, you were looking at me like, "Wow, you remember the subheading really well." I don't even remember it, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, so that episode is really about some of the ideas that Saba has, you know, really her IP, her way of thinking about how we coach, but also how we develop as coaches that informs a lot of her work.
So really definitely listen to that one. But today, today I want to talk about your new book, Saba, a new book coming out, The Blueprint to Leadership: How Your Origins Shape Leadership in a Complex World. And I guess I'm curious to know why this book and why now, and to some degree, what is different? I know in coaching I'm not supposed to ask you a triple barreled question like that, so let me just re-orient.
Why this book now? Yeah. Why this book now? So many reasons. So as you've mentioned, kind of my stitch in coaching is that a lot of what we do around behavior change is not simply oriented in the present and the future, which is, I think, where coaching tends to want to keep the conversation. Mm-hmm.
So I'm a very, very strong advocate and believer that we have to go into the past and look at the root of why these behaviors formed in the first place before we even have any business to change them.
Yeah. And so I think that [00:04:00] with that as a starting premise and a notion, and obviously given the brief intro I just gave you- and if you've listened to the other podcasts, you know why. So that is the backdrop that I sit on, and I take a very practitioner-led but also academically led view on it.
So really, really long developmental arcs around how do you ethically work with this, how do you responsibly engage in behavioral change, and then how do you do that in the boundaries of coaching?
But here's the reality. We live in a world that now is valuing immediacy- Mm-hmm ... in a way. I think we've always lived in a world. I think social media has kind of created that instant gratification portal over the last 20 years, but I think it's on steroids now with AI. Mm-hmm. And so then what is happening is two things for our industry.
Number one, how are we competing with these machines? Yeah. Because foundationally, they are brilliant meaning makers and they're getting better every day. Mm-hmm. [00:05:00] And they are really good at asking meaningful questions.
So even in my own experience, if I look at how I was playing with AI two years ago, and, you know, its coaching approach and how it was working on it to today, it is solidly well above PCC level now if you look at ICF as a benchmark for that.
Wow. The research also, Ally, is unequivocally true, right? You've had, yeah, multiple certifying bodies, so not just ICF. You have privatized coaching companies all looking at the capacity that is built in AI. And every single one of them is aligning on this issue that we are pretty much already past PCC.
Wow. I did not know that. I was not across that research. That's wild. Yeah. So, yeah. A- and I spend a lot of time, 'cause my focus is, like, how do we train coaches to do meaningful work? Yeah. And so I'm constantly thinking about this.
So you've got this as a reality: AI is becoming better and better and better at asking really powerful questions and having- sure, meaningful collaborative conversation. So if we are competing with that, that is growing and learning faster than we can on a much larger scale than we can, then that turns to depth, right?
So then that says, well, then we need to hold depth. Mm-hmm. And we need to have a capacity around our tools that allows people to say, "Ye- yes, you can have meaningful collaborative conversations and h- be asked powerful questions, but there's gotta be something else that exists."
So now you've got coaches who are looking, "How do I get depth, but also how do I have speed?" And so that's where this book came from, because this book is foundationally... So everything before this has been both the academic and the practitioner side, and trying to bring it all together, which is, I think, useful.
But there's an immediacy that coaches are looking for now. They're like, "Tell me meaningful stories. Tell me meaningful tools. Give me practical interventions that I can use with coaches and coaches that allow me to differentiate what I do and, and make it feel very, very different," but quenches that immediacy desire.
So the new book, Blueprint, is first of all, all stories. Mm. There is, I think, one chapter on, you know, the theory and the academia, and you know, for me that was- hard to keep it to one chapter. Yeah. But the rest of it is stories about impact, stories about change, stories about how you can go into the past and have it create meaningful outcomes in the present, and also change the arc of how we look at the future.
And so it's all about change, it's all about impact, it's all about bringing to life those stories in a very concrete and meaningful way. So that's part one. And then the other part of it is about simplifying that big, um, title that you talked about, unfolding how to make meaning, making it, like.
people are like, "Biographical dimensions of what?" Six fields now. That's it, six fields, which are six words. Yeah. You can use it as simply as putting the six words up and see how people react and where they wanna go and how deep they wanna go, to have much more depth around it. And so that's what the book is fundamentally about, which is about what I wanted to give...
In all of the earlier editions of this work, I'm like, "I want you to know everything that I know." Yeah. What I realised is that most people are like, "I don't wanna know what you know." Like, that's wonderful, but it took you 20 years to figure that out. I'm not interested in going on that journey. I wanna know what you know, but I wanna use it immediately.
Mm-hmm. Right? In a practical tool. And so for me, that's what this book attempts to do. Amazing. So is this book for just coaches, or is this also for leaders themselves? Like, what's your intention around that?
It is for leaders themselves, and actually, that was a big driver for the book because, again, I think coaches are constantly putting themselves in the seat of the buyer.
Mm-hmm. And so for me, I did the same thing. I'm like, if I am talking directly to commercial leaders, what are they thinking about? How are they thinking about it, right? Again, commercial leaders are like, "I want immediate change." Yeah. And so then if I'm like, "Okay. Well, let's start with your childhood," that feels very counterintuitive.
So again, the stories are fundamentally about why the two come together. Mm-hmm. This is why the two create impact. This is why behavior change stems so deeply to what happened to us much earlier on, much earlier than many of us wanna give it credit. Mm-hmm. And so then I think that's what makes it meaningful for coaches because this is exactly how I'm talking to leaders.
This is exactly how I'm selling into organisational life as well. And so hopefully, the implication then for coaches is that you see the narrative that I'm pitching all the time- Mm-hmm and how we've been able to create some meaningful impact around that. This is amazing. And so, so when I was thinking about, well, what do I actually wanna know from Saba?
I'm thinking, I wanna know how this book will help coaches, obviously. I feel like that sort of underpins it. Personally, I wanna know how it helps coaches in their practice with their clients hands-on, and I wanna know what is the impact of knowing this on running a thriving business?
Because I think that we don't often get insights into how successful practitioners such as yourself in the business that you run, do it. Like, what are the things we're saying in sales conversations, right? And I think it sounds like a lot of this book is sort of some insight into what the value is that we can bring as coaches in this increasingly murky field where we are differentiating ourselves as coaches? So I really love that. I wanna ask a technical question first before I start to explore those.
Tell us about the origins map. So that sort of is a big piece of it, and I think you said there's seven... There's six, six parts of this, and even if you know nothing else, there's work you can do with that. Tell us a little bit about what the map is and how you use it with your clients. Yeah. So the map is, as you said, six fields, and it's broken into two primary orientations.
So you've got the anchoring fields- Mm-hmm ... and then you've got the orientating fields. So the anchoring field is like what is the DNA of our inner architecture, right? Mm-hmm. How is that set up? And that is foundationally based on three things, which rules Trust and self. So those are the three elements of it.
Now immediately when I say those three words, I'm sure they're evoking a lot of things within you. Oh, I love it. I'm like, "Oh, yes. What are these rules that sit under the surface that I may or may not be conscious of that dictate how I approach my life?" And for coaches, maybe how you go about coaching, but also what are the rules you have about whether you can put yourself out in certain ways, or what, what is right and wrong?
Is... Am I on the right track? 100%. Oh, amazing. But, and, but even more important than that, Ally, it doesn't even matter how I define it. Yeah. The fact that you have such a visceral response- Yes, I do things that say rules, trust, self. The whole point of it is that that sparks something very emotional- Yeah and very deep and very long. Yeah. Right?
There, there, there's a long thread- Yeah ... that goes around it. So for me, that's it. If I wanna know about the inner architecture, it's like what are the explicit and implicit rules that you run your life by? Mm-hmm. Right? What do you trust? Mm. And also your expression of vulnerability.
So who do I lean on? How comfortable am I in kind of expressing my vulnerability? Mm-hmm. And self, which is self-worthiness. Where does that come from? What does that look like? Who defined it? What makes that possible for all of us? So yeah, so that is what we call the inner architecture, and that is the anchoring fields.
Those are the three. And then we have what we call the orientating fields, which is fundamentally our way of testing how that all works as we go through the life. Mm. Uh, um, go through experiencing life. And so then the orientating fields, which I will also test, but just giving you the headline- Mm-hmm ... the word, and then I'm curious what happens for you.
So the words are belonging, emotions, and world. It feels juicy. Mm. Right? I'm like, oh. Oh, yes. Yes. There's so, so much in that, and I can see how... And I don't know if this is actually accurate, how they relate very closely to those others. So rules, trust, and self. It's almost like, yeah, the external play of those things.
Is that... Am I on the right track? 100%. It's like the external- Yeah manifestation of it. Yeah. And what we allow people to see. Mm-hmm. So the orienting element is how we choose to belong or not? Like, what do we look at around belonging and what matters to us? Emotions. What do people see in our expression of how we show up in the world?
Right? We talk about communication styles. It's like, well, communication style and the emotional language that we allow other people to see, they're, they're totally inextricably linked in my opinion. So how do we manage emotional energy and look at emotional energy, and world? Fundamentally, is the world a threatening place or filled with possibility?
Mm. Right? Is the world filled with risk or opportunity? What is the orientation like? Likeness, sameness feels safe. Different feels- other, right? Like, what is our approach to kinda navigating what feels risky and what doesn't, right? That's the bottom line. And so for me, again, having been in this space, both working in organizations and telling them childhood matters, working with coaches and teaching them how to go ethically and psychologically informed ways about childhood, made me realise that there is so much power in accessing that conversation.
But there is also immense power in simplifying the navigational boundaries that the client wants to go into by saying six words. And what we do is we have maps. So we have small maps, they're tabletop maps, or we have large maps that take the entire learning and training development room, where you can have, like, 15 people stand on it.
And all we have are those six words. And so then imagine when you are talking with an individual and be like, how do these six.Pick a word that you think is, like, attached to a goal that you wanna work on. What is one of the words that could be attributed to it? Or imagine you're working in a team.
Yeah. Right? So if we wanna improve our team development, where do you think on this field, on this map, we need to start? So imagine, right? Like, oh, I think we need to talk about rules. I think we need to talk about what it means to belong to this team. I need... I think we need to talk about tru- right?
It just almost immediately allows the client to own the boundary, because we're not defining it for them, we're saying, "Where are you being drawn?" It's a very somatic experience, which I think is really powerful, to get out of here and into the body. And then they define it. Mm. They define how far back they wanna go.
They define how deep they wanna go. [00:16:00] And the work, then there's no convincing, right? Like, there's no, "I think we should... Like, let's talk about your childhood." They will drop immediately into it, 'cause how do you not when you see- yeah. one of these words? Oh. And think about, like, that. Yeah. I love it. And I hadn't really thought about the application for both individual and team, but it just makes so much sense.
And I love nothing more than a room-sized map to get people into a space. So this is obviously... I know the background of your development in this space. How does this link to concepts around vertical development? Very, very tightly linked to vertical development, which I know you and I are both big fans of, as are so many of the people that we know and love.
So vertical development, again, in a very simplistic way, is fundamentally the notion of the stages of evolution of life, right? So as we go through this very complex thing of being alive and living in the world, the stories we make up about who we are and how we're living and how effective or n- ineffective that is, it's just naturally going through predefined stages.
And you know, you and I talk about this a lot because we've learned from people who have kind of helped us see this, which is this idea that we're so good at having this developmental stage chart for kids. Mm-hmm. And then it's like you become an adult and it goes away. It does. And that's developmental…
Yeah. You're done. You're 18. You're- yeah. You're, you're, you're fully formed. Yeah. Wouldn't that be nice? Still waiting for that moment to land for me. Yeah. And then for me, adult development is like, how does that arc continue in adult life?
And so, so much of that arc, you know, how far we move in those stages and the depths that we get to in that arc- they often are correlated to the stories that happened to us much earlier. Yeah. So if we are looking at progressing, or we are looking at more embodying a stage, or if we are looking at wanting to shift something, the shift is very seldom in the conscious awareness of today.
It's in the, what is the programming that got you today? How do you rewrite that programming so that something else becomes possible for tomorrow? And so for me, this is kind of the thing that sits it beside it.
It most certainly does not replace it or change it, but it sits alongside. And it's really fascinating that I, you know, I've been working with some academics in Europe recently who are huge believers in, um, adult development.
And so a lot of them are starting to bring this work in, 'cause they're like, this is very pragmatic. Mm-hmm. It's very practical. It's a very easy way to kind of weave a conversation around the past- Yeah ... without turning it into what I view should be the past, or what you view should be the past, or what the coach- Yeah or the organization views is appropriate for the past. They get to define it because we're not defining the terms for them. We're letting them define it for themselves.
So for me, this is like if you are looking at stage development and you're like, "I know where I am, and I wanna shift, and I wanna move, or I wanna go back and integrate something," this is a complement and sits alongside of it and says, there might be wisdom in where that's coming from in your past.
Yeah, I love that. And so I look at them as very complementary. I love that. And I think one of the challenges that I hear from coaches when it comes to using, you know, sort of stage-based development concepts, vertical development concepts in their coaching, is that it can feel a little ephemeral and a little hard to apply in a conversation with a real person who is struggling with a real issue.
Like, you know, oh, how do I delegate more, right? Something like that. And so having a tool that opens that conversation up and joins the dots between here is this experience I'm having and here is this story of my life and my growth, and a tool like this, I can imagine, just does exactly that. Yeah. And what we haven't even begun speaking about is the profiling tool that we've now created.
Right. So let's stay with that beautiful example. Mm-hmm. So I wanna delegate more. And we hear that a lot. And also- Or, or even better, you must delegate more. Yeah, exactly. Right? Often. Exactly. You must. So what happens, which is really fascinating, is so we've talked about one version, which is the map, right?
Which is just six words on a physical map in the room, and then you move to what you want. The profiling tool then takes those six dimensions, and then each of those fields have five sub-facets, and each of those sub-facets basically measures your current pattern under stress- and your formative imprint pattern.
Mm-hmm. So what that means is that the first half of the tool asks you all about your childhood. And again, it's asking you stories that you make up about your childhood in very specific areas of those fields, so the, the six fields and the five sub-facets within each of them. And then it looks at what happens to you when you're under strain.
So not you, the resource and best self- Yeah ... but when you know what hits the fan, what happens to you? Where do you go? And then it co-forms so it maps both of them. So it maps the story that you tell me about, for example, trust and delegation are very highly correlated. Do I trust somebody else to do this when the stakes are high?
Yeah. Right? There's a direct relationship between delegation and that. So then what you get in this profiling tool is that under the trust field you'll have these five sub-facets, and each of them are attributed to leadership behavior, so delegation. Mm-hmm. Feedback. All of these are correlated, and it looks like here's a story you made up about what happened in childhood.
So for example, when criticism from people of authority, for most of us that were parental figures or primary caregivers, when criticism was given to me, this is what happened to me, right? I learned from it, I became better, or I felt like it was a judgment of who I am. Mm-hmm. That correlates to when you know what happens or we get really difficult feedback.
Now all of a sudden these two, these dots that, what happened to me in childhood and what happened to me what happens to me today under pressure, now we're like, "Ah, I see that there's a journey." Same with delegation, right? When I was young, I was the trusted one to be like, "I'm the responsible one. I am the primary in the family, and so I am dutiful-" Mm-hmm
and I will get it done.
And now you're telling me I have to give that up and tell someone else to do my job? Yeah. So when I'm resourced, I might have- Someone who might not be as good as me. Yeah. Definitely. But also just trusting someone- yeah... else who's gonna work e- even if it's not as good as me, as hard as me.
Yeah. Right? I may not- or hold it as tightly ... So this is my story. Yeah. I will never pretend I'm the smartest person in the room, but I'm a real hard worker. Yeah. I know I'm gonna- I can attest to that. Yeah. So I know I'm gonna try real hard to do that. So then in adulthood, when it's enormously busy or the stakes are high, and you're like, "So I have to delegate-" Okay.
Right? So again, it's just about recognizing patterns.
It's not diagnosing, it's not pathologizing, it's not saying because of this you are this. Mm-hmm. But it's about recognizing that what happens to us at our best self is not the work that we need to do. It's the stuff that happens to us when we're under it- Yeah that usually is correlated to those formative years. So I can see very clearly then how this is something that is very relevant for coaches in their practice, right?
This is a tool that we bring in, and as you mentioned, it's not just a tool for individuals, it's a tool for teams. It's a tool that,helps you remain relevant and differentiated in a world where there are different tools that organizations could use potentially to get a very, you know, high quality outcome.
But it's also a process that coaches can take themselves through when they're looking at their own patterns, whether it's how they're showing up as a coach, how they're showing up as a business owner, how they're showing up as a leader in different capacities. How do you see that with coaches? Like, those-- how do coaches hold those two developmental lenses?
Yeah. Well, it is fascinating. You know, everyone's got probably a different view or approach around what draws people to coaching. Mm-hmm.
And I think there's a million and one different roads to it. But I do have a really-- my working hypothesis is that people who are- who tend to be drawn to helping professions tend to both have awareness in self that, hey, there's some sticky stuff in me that has followed me for most of my life.
So there's a very deep empathetic lens, which is like I know what it feels like to be on the other side- Yeah ... and struggle with change, and so a lot of them want to contribute in that way. Mm-hmm. And they're really interested and curious about how we help more effectively, and how we create impact more effectively.
and what does that look like? So then when we go into training, good training will always put the lens on us first- Yeah ... before we're allowed to put the lens on others, and that's exactly what happens in the certification program, which is our newest program. Mm-hmm. So you go through the profiling tool, and the first module is meet yourself.
Again, right? Meet yourself, both the formative imprint self- Mm-hmm ... and the current pattern under pressure, and look at what the profile is saying to you within the guise of what is important for you from a developmental point of view. So it's not just look at the profile for the sake of looking at the profile and choosing to agree or disagree with it, but it's look at the profile under what's matter to you.
So if it's building your business, if it's working on more high-profile engagements, if it's [00:26:00] getting more C-suite clients versus mid-level clients, right? It's like from the lens of what's important to you, look at what this profiling tool is saying about your relationship to rules, the story you tell yourself about whether you're good enough, your desire or, or view of how hard or not hard that's gonna be.
Like, all of these things are kind of contributing- Mm ... to your capacity to achieve the things that are important to you. So I think we start with that, and then we start examining other profiles. And so we intentionally... 'Cause, you know, this profiling tool has been something that I have wanted to create since I started my academic journey on this- Yeah
you know, 14 years ago. But it just was not possible in this, in the capacity that we have done now because we had to build so many other components before- Yeah ... we could get to the profiling tool. But now we're getting close to having thousands of data points into this profiling tool, which now gets us to see correlation data.
Which now gets us to see... So we have upfront data, which is like, "Tell us about your upbringing," which is, "Did you move countries or did you move homes a lot? What was the stability around your primary caregivers?" You know, trying to get demographic data to also correlate against behavioral data. And so with coaches, undoubtedly there is deep, deep, deep insight in what's happening around self- Yeah
what is happening around rule. I mean, all of them are relevant, but I think for coaches, those end up being really fascinating data points, and especially the coach's capacity to link formative years to current patterns. Yeah. Because again, intuitively, I think almost everyone will agree, yeah, of course the past plays a role.
It's just how do you ethically bring that into the room? Mm. And so that, I think, for coaches is the part of the conversation that I think is just so, so fascinating.So one of the challenges I see with coaches is that there are so many things that they feel like they should do when it comes to their development, right?
So, you know, they should do more coach training, more assessment certifications. In my mind, something like this, and by the way, this is starting to sound like an advertisement. I just want it on the record that there are no kickbacks happening here. This is just pure curiosity, and I think this work is really important.
Like, how would you see this fitting into, like, a coach's developmental trajectory, right? From learning those foundational coaching skills throughout their coaching, I guess, growth. Yeah. Yeah, it's a really good question. And, you know, Ali, I, I mean, I know that you have a really well-established point of view on that because that is what you.
I mean, you're working with these coaches and building-these practices every single day, so I'd love to hear your view. Yeah. I think that there is something to be said about starting [00:29:00] and getting some data to figure out, like, what is working, what is not working for you. Because I think that if you're like, "I am opening…
I'm putting my coach flag up tomorrow"- Yeah ... "and I'm gonna go and get my coach training, and I'm gonna go and start selling as soon as that's done, or even while I'm establishing it," I think that the risk that you have is that you are just being... it's like an onslaught of, like, so much stuff so quickly.
And, like, do I think childhood should come into that? I'm like, it can, but I think that complexifies the world enormously. So there's a part of me that's like, you should have some... It's useful to have some data about what's working for you and what's not. Because I think the most important thing is what's not.
Yeah. And like, or, "The goal I'm trying to achieve, I'm not hitting it yet." Because then that creates curiosity on why. And for some coaches, it's like, "Oh, well, I just don't have the processes in place," or, "I, I don't have the mechanisms," right? And Ali, you educate me on this every day, still today- Yeah
about how I need to become better, [00:30:00] about the funnel and those things. Uh. But then there's also this story about what we tell ourselves about why we can or cannot do that funnel, right? Can I advertise on LinkedIn? Can I put up these videos? Can I- Mm-hmm ... have the audaciousness to say, "Yes, hundreds of millions of people are gonna want to listen to me"?
So then I think that once you have data, then that's where this work is enormously useful, right? It... And it... And I... So what I don't do is like you have to be PCC, because actually, if you're a PCC or MCC, you get really stuck into kind of the way that you wanna do things, and so maybe that's not a very useful time- Yeah
to kind of blow that up. But I do think it's not right at the start. It is still early. It can still really work in early in your career, but it's more useful if you've got some data to figure out what is, you know, catching you up. Like, what is the tricky, sticky bits? What are the things that are not quite landing?
Because then when you get this level of insight, now you can start creating correlation, and you can start figuring out, [00:31:00] "Oh, okay, well, my inability to do some of those pieces really isn't a knowledge piece," which is what we like to trick ourselves into sometimes. It's probably knowledge plus, "Do I think I'm worthy enough to do this?
Do I think anyone's gonna listen? Do I feel like I can handle the cringe factor?" In fact, you just posted about this the other day, and it just landed in, in my soul, which is when you were talking about how your daughter has found a way to be like, "I'm just not gonna care.
" Like, I think you said it so much more eloquently, but your daughter was talking about an experience about someone- saying less than positive things, and her making a choice as a young person to be like, "Do I... am I gonna give that weight?" Mm. And recognizing, could you imagine how liberating it would've been if we were young people with that kind of brilliance and saying, "I'm not gonna let your stories of whatever you believe impact who I am."
Yeah. That's the stuff. Yeah. That is those moments. Yeah. And I genuinely have been thinking about this, and, and my take is, is probably very similar to yours, is that I think we first need to have, like, the foundational coaching skills in place, right? That's our bread and butter. But a lot of coaches have done that, right, in their professional careers.
They've worked through that. They may already have a lot of coaching hours under their belt in different capacities. And so I do see this as work that could be helpful fairly early on because of the dual ben- well, the three way, triad of benefits that I can see, which is your self-development, and that is gonna play out in your practice and your business and in so many other parts of your life.
In having another tool in your toolkit for how you work with your clients, and in being an actual asset that you can use in your marketing. And, and if not, like, that's kind of like here's an actual thing I can market, but also my capacity for marketing grows when I do this work. [00:33:00] And so, like, putting my BD hat on, I can see that being very relevant very early on, but also, you know, in practice.
Yeah. Those are... like, I think one of the things you, you have said that really resonates with me is that even if we don't talk about the past, because often our training teaches us, "Don't talk about the past, whatever you do," the past is still there, right? There's no one who gets to their position as an executive, as a leader, without their past having a significant role in who they are and how they show up.
And our choice as a coach is whether we choose to learn how to work with that safely or not. And so, you know, having that information and that skill set early, and then of course you will continue to develop your sophistication in working with that. So anyway, that's sort of my, my take on it- Mm-hmm ... as I'm hearing you talk about it.
And, and I love the way that you articulated that, right? Like, the development of self, right? Yeah. When we do our work, it allows us to be more powerful, um, in the work that we do with others. But I think the other thing that is so tricky, Kelly, is that right now our industry is going through such a pivotal transition.
Because when you and I came up, there was more work than there were people. Yes. Right? Like, the reality is, is that we lived- Absolutely in an era where there was enough to go around. Mm-hmm. And now what we have is you have an enormous onslaught of people coming into this industry, which is great because people are seeing that there's value, and it's an important industry- Yeah and it's material.
But simultaneous to that, people are up-leveling their self-development on their own. Yeah. So whether they are going through the self-help fields themselves, whether they're reading the self-help books themselves, and/or whether their organization is supporting them in that growth. But people are recognizing their ability to, to transform, and quickly, is what organizations are expecting.
So people are not waiting to be told to develop. They're recognizing very, very early and very, very quickly. And I've got people, like, at an age where I was not thinking about self-development. Mm-hmm. I was just trying to survive my context. These individuals are totally in the front of it, and they are doing psychometric development, and psychodynamic development, and psychology.
And you're, you're just thinking, "Gosh, I wish I was, like, doing that stuff when I was in my 20s." So you've got a world of people who are enormously more informed- Mm-hmm ... about development than they've ever been. You've got more people doing developmental work than they've ever done. And here's the hardest part.
Organizations are telling us it's not working. Mm. Because they are spending millions and millions of dollars on individual programs to help elicit behavior change, and the outcomes are small upticks. Mm-hmm. Small upticks. Small upticks. And the organizations are saying, "It's not working." Right? Like, how we do this is not working at the speed in which we need this to work.
So for me, it's like organizations, okay, if you recognize that this is not working at the speed and trajectory you need it to work, you gotta be willing to accept that maybe there's a different way to have this conversation. And that is my starting point. You know, we have a lot of different kind of orientating statements in our organization, but the largest one that is the conversation I'm having today is leaders don't rise to the level of their training.
They default to something much older. Mm-hmm. If you are not creating space to help people articulate what is that older- Yeah ... then you can give them all the training in the world, but we know awareness isn't enough. Knowing what to do, and even how to do it, often doesn't change the behavior because it's something much deeper underneath.
And so that's what this work is attempting to do, and also how we are having those really practical conversations in organizations now. Yeah. And I think there's something very powerful for a coach who can go into an organization as part of a, you know, as a sales conversation, business development conversation, and meet their potential clients where they're at in terms of, we are grappling with this.
This investment needs to have a payoff. This is the urgent and expensive pain that we are experiencing. Rather than coming in and saying, "Hey, co- coaching's great. People will enjoy it," right? The, you know, any leader going through coaching is gonna really get a lot out of it. It's not enough to talk like that, right?
We have to be very connected to the pain of the organization, and I think we have to be there as thought partners in this journey. And I think that means for coaches you've gotta have enough tools in your toolkit to be able to do that, right? And that's partly sales skills and it's partly actually your coaching toolkit.
Absolutely. And again, I think the accelerant that we have right now, I mean, all I do all day every day is talk to organizations, and we've been really blessed to talk to some organizations that are at the forefront of it. And the speed of acceleration, everyone will tell you, has, has never been this high.
Yeah. And the technology-human handshake has never looked like this quite. I mean, we've been through stages of this evolutionary cycle, right, from the turn of the century, but- Yeah. Remember when we got email? Oh my God, yes. Oh. You and I are- We do are of the age. When we got the internet. Yeah. When we got an email.
Computers in the house, yeah. Exactly. But, you know- For sure ... there's a lot of people who are maybe not from that, you know, um, the stage. Vintage. Yeah, exactly, that vintage. But I think what is true is that the speed in which people are being asked to shift and pivot and move, it is like every pivot. It's never been what it was before.
It's an accelerant. Yeah. And that acceleration is very true now. Yeah. And the accelerator with AI, I feel,is a really interesting accelerator because I think it is dramatically shifting what good coaching looks like. Yeah. Because the reality is, if you could get away with, I don't want to say mediocre, but decent coaching and still create immensely moving experiences.
The amount of people and u- uses data, so again, if you are interested in understanding this, go and look. There's publicly available research from all of these AI companies that are telling you what is the nature of inquiries people are making. And so many of them are psychologically based, and so many of them are performance oriented.
Wow. So people are going to AI- Yeah ... for support because it's immediate, it's in real time, and honestly, their AIs kind of know them better than anyone else 'cause they're curating their emails. Yeah. They're curating their calendar invites. They're looking at every Zoom call that they have or every meeting they're in.
So these are kind of like our second, the, I mean, it is a term, it's your second brain. Yeah. Yeah, I literally have a marketing brain that sits on, on my AI, yeah. So naturally then if people are saying this thing, this instrument knows me- Yeah ... right? Then we go to it for queries around what could I do better, what are you noticing as patterns, what is it?
So now what is the pressure that puts on a coach? So now you're going to pay me exponentially more than what you pay to have a subscription of that AI tool. Mm-hmm. How do I show my value? Yeah. 'Cause there is enormous value. Like, please, I'm never gonna be of the opinion that I think it all goes to AI.
But our ethical responsibility as practitioners in this field is what we learn from what AI is learning to help us design the differentiation that we bring. Yeah. And that to me has got to go well beyond the story of, "Well, this is who I am, and here's my experience," because I think we've relied on that narrative for a long time, and I think there's still validity to that narrative, but it's not enough.
Yeah. Because the AIs are curating millions and millions and millions of people's stories around who they are and what they've brought. So how do we as individuals compete with that? And then also, again, what you said, is the investment in self as instrument, right? When I am doing the work, I am able to facilitate that transformation.
AI isn't doing the self-development work. It's curating data to look for patterns. Yeah. We are the human beings in the ickiness and the vulnerability- Mm ... of that work, and that will always remain a truly human experience. I love that. So how do you work with coaches? So we've got four primary pathways.
Yeah. So if you want the big, deep dive, I wanna build my psychological toolkit, I've never had psychological training, or I've never had psychological training for coaching. Mm-hmm. And you really wanna understand the methodology and the framework and the theory, we have a to- a program called the Level One BDMM Certification, and this is the kind of like coaching Psychology 101.
And also helps you understand all of the theoretical components that define the primary framework that we use to do this work in coaching. So that's the BDMM. Then we have what we are calling the practitioner pathways, which are kind of like, this is great and a long, deep dive into what you wanna learn about, and then there's like, I want some tools.
So we have something called Walk the Map, which is that physical map- Mm-hmm ... that we talked about, which is the six fields, and we kind of go through the somatic and embodied experience of what it means to both still ethically hold those conversations around psychological awareness, how do we contract those, and how do you physically help clients experience the somatic energy that comes from walking on a map, and how do you hold the boundaries around that conversation?
So it's a sharper, shorter, and much more kind of detailed dive around how you walk- And it doesn't require them to have done Level One BDMM to do that? Does not. Okay, great. Does not require them to do the Level One.
Okay. So that's the Walk the Map program. Then we've got the practitioner program around certification, which is now we have the certification tool.
Again, you don't have to- Yeah ... have done Level One, and you don't have to have done Walk the Map in order to do the practitioner pathway for the certification tool. But this is, how do I use this profile with my clients? Because I think the biggest... This is us learning from having done these other programs, as coaches again, sort of like, "I don't even know how to start."
Like, like, where do you start with like, do I start with telling me about your mother? I'm like, no, probably not a good place to start. I mean, I mean, sometimes. Okay, let's be truthful. Yes, it's very helpful. But it is, it helps kind of get out of the way of life, I don't even know how I start introducing some of these concepts.
So what we've got is we've got a website now, and we're introducing the concept of origins. Why would you wanna go into the past? There's short videos, there's articles, there's like all of the stuff that we have been building over the last several years are now kind of like on the website in a contained place where people can access it.
So they can even send their clients there and be like, "This is why I'm gonna send you this instrument." And then they take this profiling tool, 180 questions, which, you know, in the grand scheme of tools, it's not short, but it's not long. It's about 35 minutes to complete. Half of it talks to you about your formative imprint, which is your childhood story.
Half of it asks you about your current pattern under pressure. And then the coach gets a report, and then they kind of see where they are on a spectrum of reactive to adaptive. And so it's not, again, diagnosing saying, "Oh, you had a good childhood, bad childhood. Here's what your mother has done to you, and here's what your father's done to you, and here's what your siblings have done to you."
Yeah. But it's like based on the stories that you made up about what happened to you in childhood, here is how reactive adaptive your patterns are showing up. Mm-hmm. And most importantly, how that correlates to here's how your parents- your patterns are showing up- Yeah ... in, in the current world. So that's the third one, and then the fourth one is using it for teams.
Yeah. So with teams it is a different profile. So it's not just, you know, if there's 11 members of the team, 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 11, and here's our team. But it is like how does the team establish its formative imprint, right? What are the rules that we're based on? How does trust look? What does that…
So it's a different type of assessment and a different type of experience when you're doing it with teams. Yeah. But it's the same six fields. It's the same map. And so yeah, so that is now how do you do a certification two-day in person with teams. Mm-hmm. Lovely. And also we will have the tool available to people, but we haven't released that yet, so to come.
But those are the primary path, four primary paths I can really see the benefit of that as a, a team program. I have a lot of people who want to work with teams. So we have team, obviously the team coaching training, but that's a very, a very technical, purist approach [00:46:00] to coaching, I would say. And I think the vast amount of work that sits with teams sits more in this team development space, right?
Which is let me work with you, team, based on what your priorities are, and I think this is going to be an incredible roadmap of how to, how to structure yourself in that space where it's unclear. So no, I think they all sound extraordinary. So we are going to include all of those links to the book and to, uh, the programs, uh, just so that if anyone's interested they can reach out, or feel free to shoot me a message on LinkedIn if you would like me to introduce you to Saba and her team.
If you could give people just one piece of advice, Saba, people who are coaches, you know, in those earlier years of, what, what would your advice be? Knowing thyself, I think is probably fortunate and probably not too dissimilar to what you are saying to clients all the, all the time. Yeah. Know thyself, I think.
And if I can tweak it and add a [00:47:00] second one. Please. Always. 'Cause you know I'm verbose. And then I think the second one is, your differentiation really matters. And the differentiation can't just be how I am different. It is how what I offer is differentiated in the marketplace, right? Yeah. Like, it's not that my experience therefore makes me qualified.
Yes, of course it does. But how does what you're offering make you unique and different to anybody else offering that thing, or, you know, that tool? And remember that you have non-human competition now. Yeah. And so really, how do you explain your unique difference? And the more you work on yourself, the easier it will be to uncover that.
Yeah. And I think almost using it as an opportunity to, like, be... That differentiation I think is not, it's, don't see it as, oh, this is a real shit show. My business can never grow. In fact, I think what it is, is if you can do this well, you are even more valuable with your clients than you could possibly imagine.
So put that on. Well, thank you so much, Saba. I really deeply appreciate your time. I know everyone listening will as well. So thank you for being here with us. Thank you for having me, Ally. I appreciate it.
