To fully understand the impact of technology on what we do, it ‘s essential to look outside of talent acquisition occasionally and see how other areas of the talent ecosystem are being disrupted.
My guest this week is Ozlem Sarioglu, an award-winning coach and co-founder of digital coaching platform SparkUs. As well as providing a fascinating overview of how technology is changing coaching. Ozlem also shares some insights and advice into the coaching mindset. Something that will help anyone who is leading and developing a team.
In the interview, we discuss:
- How Ozlem became a coach
- The benefits of and common misconceptions about coaching
- How technology is making coaching more accessible
- The balance between human and machine
- Measuring results
Ozlem also gives her thoughts on developing a coaching mindset and shares advice on how people can get the most out of coaching
Subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Zor. Zor is a global recruiting platform that drives smarter and more efficient hiring. Direct employers and staffing agencies use Zor’s AI powered software to automate recruiting’s most repetitive tasks like candidate pre screening, interview scheduling, ongoing engagement and cold outreach at scale. By freeing recruiters to focus on what matters, Zor increases productivity while delivering a personalized, attentive candidate experience that’s responsive 24. 7 and delivers a 99.3% candidate satisfaction rate. Hundreds of companies across the globe, including IKEA, Exxon Mobile, MOL Group, X5 Retail and Manpower Group, rely on Zor to hire better people faster. To find out more, go to www.ZOR.AI. that’s www.ZOR.AI AI and XOR is spelled X O R.
Matt Alder [00:01:22]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 228 of the Recruiting Future podcast. To fully understand the impact of technology on what we do, it’s important to look outside of talent acquisition and see how other areas of the talent ecosystem are being disrupted. My guest this week is Ozlem Sara Old, an award winning coach and co founder of digital coaching platform sparkas. As well as providing a fascinating overview of how technology is changing coaching, Ozlem also shares some insights and advice into the coaching mindset. Something that will help everyone who’s leading a team and indeed anyone who’s focusing on their professional development. Enjoy the interview.
Matt Alder [00:02:10]:
Hi Ozlem and welcome to the podcast.
Ozlem Sarioglu [00:02:12]:
Thank you. Thanks for having me Matt.
Matt Alder [00:02:15]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell.
Matt Alder [00:02:19]:
Us what you do?
Ozlem Sarioglu [00:02:20]:
Sure. I’m Ozlem, I’m a professional coach and I’m one of the co founders of the Sparkus digital coaching plat. I also write a book, a specific coaching technique called World Voices. I’m also selected by the International Coach Federation as one of the young leaders of coaching to carry the profession into the future. So I’m very proud of that. I just received the award a few weeks ago. That’s basically a little bit about me.
Matt Alder [00:02:51]:
Fantastic.
Matt Alder [00:02:52]:
Well, congratulations on the award. I mean, could you, I mean, could you give us a little bit of background? How did you get to where, where you are? I mean, how did you get to become a coach in the first place?
Ozlem Sarioglu [00:03:04]:
I have a background in consultancy and doing some, you know, structuring work, very much finance. But obviously when you become a manager in the Organization, they ask you to coach people. That’s how I got to know coaching. But when I started coaching, I was very young, at the age of 27. Although I had a many years of professional life, I started working very early. So I became a coach at a very young age. So when I first started, it was all, you know, executive coaching, top management only. So I tried to figure out, coming from a younger place in the organization, looking into the possibilities of, like, how can we bring coaching to younger people. I started coaching university students, and in order to help them, it basically started as a digital coaching platform. Sparkus was basically designed to help initial university students. Then we went to organizations asking for sponsorship to the youth. And they said, well, actually we have young people in the organization, can you coach them? And since 2013, I’m working with organizations to bring coaching to younger population into their, into their organization and also working with coaching culture, culture change programs, leadership development programs based on that.
Matt Alder [00:04:35]:
So I want to dig into that in a little bit, a little bit more detail a bit later on. But, but before we do, it might be good just to talk about coaching in general. I have a suspicion that there, there might be quite a lot of people.
Matt Alder [00:04:50]:
Listening who don’t necessarily understand what coaching is.
Matt Alder [00:04:53]:
I know that when I last had a proper job, which was some time ago now, I had a coach. And I remember going to the first meeting with my coach and expecting the coach to tell me what to do. And I was shocked and surprised that this was not the case. So could you just sort of talk a little bit about coaching, what it is, you know, why it’s important, the benefits, and perhaps sort of the common misconceptions like I had about it.
Ozlem Sarioglu [00:05:22]:
To start with, your misconception is a very common misconception. So to give a more formal explanation to it, International Coach Federation defines coaching as partnering with someone to maximize their potential. So it’s a development journey and it’s about believing in the potential of the person you’re coaching. So it starts from there, but it’s not a training process. It’s not about giving them some information. It’s basically about the person being coached, finding their own answers. And how does it happen? It happens by the coach asking questions, powerful questions, listening to them deeply reflecting back what they’ve said. And so that the coachee, we call them coachee, but the person being coached, let’s say, so that they define their own paths. And if there are some tools and techniques being used, it’s to custom fit those into your own situation, into Your own conditions and who you basically are. So I would say coaching actually involves two keywords. One is exploration. Exploration through, like, what do I want to do, where do I want to go, what are some things I’m really struggling at? And then taking action. So it’s not only about talk, talk, talk, but also taking action, being accountable. On what I can also add on top of this is like, so far the focus when we’re talking about coaching was very much on the personal development of the individual. But along the way we figured out that coaching is not only a tool for professional and personal development, it’s also a skill set and also a mindset. So when I’m being coached, I also go through some thought process. I can create something, I can commit to some things, I take responsibility. And if I fail, I don’t whine, I don’t go into the victim mode. I try to learn from my mistakes, start all over again. So it also involves some level that is very much needed in this fast changing world. It also helps a person be more empowered and also more resilient at the face of changes and everything. So it’s, it’s actually much more than just, you know, somebody coaching you. It’s also gaining some kind of a mindset and skill set.
Matt Alder [00:08:04]:
So you’ve, you’ve sort of talked about how coaching is changing.
Matt Alder [00:08:08]:
So you know, traditionally we used to.
Matt Alder [00:08:09]:
Think of executive coaching and you were talking about coaching young people and developing a coaching mindset. How, how is technology changing, changing coaching?
Ozlem Sarioglu [00:08:21]:
First of all, technology democratizes coaching. So so far before the technology, coaching was very much like one hour of the coach, one hour of the coachee. They’re all, you know, coming together, speaking. And all this conversation based on its nature has to be confidential between the coach and the person being coached. So what was happening was, it was like a black box. Nobody knew what was really happening inside of it. So technology helps us first to, without reaching that confidentiality, helps us to monitor if the sessions are happening, if people are taking action. So from a program organizer side, if it’s happening in an organization, it first of all brings some kind of monitoring, reporting, et cetera, so that we can prove the return on investment on it. So that’s the one basic side of it. What is more important, I think is it gives us the ability to bring coaching to more people. It can be true. Like technology is used as sometimes as a marketplace for coach and the coachee to get together. That’s also there. What we are doing in Sparkus, for instance, is another layer to it. We are giving people some coaching exercises, like something that a coach would repetitively do in a session are translated into some digital exercises so the coachee can get onto the platform. Do those exercises have some kind of like a self reflection area where they can sit down, think about themselves without the pressure of somebody, you know, watching you at that very moment. So you can be very honest and open with yourself. So you can, you know, without that social censoring. You can put things out there and then the coach goes through, I mean, they share as much as they like with the coach and then the coach goes through it. And without spending maybe a few sessions just to get to know each other and get to understand what coaching is, what it is. Not like you’re saying, like this doesn’t really give me answers, but it asks me questions. So gaining that kind of coaching literacy also helps to have the process much more faster. And that also means in the same amount of time a coach can coach actually much more people, which also brings coaching to more people. The technology really democratizes it, helps it to be monitored and also gives a level of quality assurance, making sure that you cover certain very basic areas during that process. Otherwise it can be like lost in translation, lost in the conversation.
Matt Alder [00:11:34]:
The next question, I suppose is a, is a very common one when it comes to any aspect of people, business meeting, meeting, sort of technology and automation. What’s the right balance between human and machine interaction in this sort of version of coaching? How does that work?
Matt Alder [00:11:55]:
Is this completely automated?
Ozlem Sarioglu [00:11:56]:
It’s not totally automated. I can share some experiences. I mean, when we first started doing the digital coaching platform, we first tried a freemium model where people were supposed to go through digital coaching exercises and if they wanted, they would, you know, go and work with a coach. So what we found out was like, people are going to a technological platform. Yes, they are very open and they from time to time really, you know, find their answers, take, you know, wonderful actions. But at one point when there is no one who sees you, who even acknowledges you for what you’ve done, they kind of cut off from that process. So even though they’re starting very with some good momentum, without a human element there, it’s not sustainable. So the human element has to be there. So that’s my initial point. And the other part is what happens when you’re with the coach on one. On one, there are certain things that the coach is not necessarily has to be there. Like for instance, I can give you some exercises like, you know, close your eyes and just imagine how this and that is happening. I don’t really need to be there when you’re doing that. Imagination. That can be a audio file. There can be some very basic questions that I’m asking that I would ask anyone that doesn’t need to be, you know, have my presence there so you can have it on your own as well. So those kind of parts can be done on the technology without the human element. And the human then comes in where they’re going to make the most impact, where they’re going to really add some value, where you, you’re feeling stuck going through those, those, you know, exercises on the platform. And then at one point you feel like, I cannot no longer just answer these questions, then I need a human to ask me better questions maybe, or just ask me a different set of questions so that I can really figure out what my challenge is. So it has to be a good balance, involve both of them together. Yeah. The right balance, I would say, of course, depends on the human’s preparation level also. But it has to be like, what is some common things can be done on a digital platform. And then when I’m really needing some hand holding, then the human should come in.
Matt Alder [00:14:50]:
How’s this been working in practice? What kind of successes have you had? Where has this approach, using technology really made a difference?
Ozlem Sarioglu [00:14:58]:
Okay, so the first thing I should start by saying, as a coach myself, when we first started this digital platform, I even had some question marks. This is a very human to human process. Can it be done digitally? So that was my very first question mark. What we figure out along the years was like how many questions to ask and what length of exercises should be there. What is like you’re saying the right balance. So once you design that based on that, we have very good rates of like 78% completion rate. We have, for instance, which is very much above than any, you know, e learning platform or something where people receive information while in our case people are sharing about themselves, they’re generating their own content. So the first thing is those rates, I would say. And the other thing is this is with one of our clients who were having an internal coaching project going on. What we figure out was like they used to have eight hours of coaching sessions. So that meant eight hours of the coach and eight hours of the person being coached, making 16 hours of investment for the organization. And by bringing that right balance between the human and the machine, we were able to bring the total amount of time required into 7.5 hours, which was like 2.5 of the coach and 5 hours of the coachee. So it also brings an enormous amount of time being saved, which also obviously has a monetary value to it. But it also means then you can bring it to more people in the same amount of time. These are some of the numbers we have and we generally do pilot projects I think because it’s very important to fit into the culture of the organization, what people are expecting, etc. And what we’re seeing is the completion rates go higher and higher when we finish each pilot and learn from it, go back, adapt it to the system. Now we have, As I said, 78% completion rate, but the engagement rates are also very high. 94% or something is like people have gone through the platform. So it’s really about getting to understand what people need. What’s the idea behind the coaching? You know, the strategic idea behind the coaching in that organization. So if you design it based on that, you have the success stories going on and of course there are the reminders being made and you know, just keeping the people on the process, those also add to the success story. But I say, you know, if it’s a good design, then the success comes.
Matt Alder [00:18:26]:
So looking ahead to the future, what.
Matt Alder [00:18:29]:
Do you think coaching will look like in 10 years time? How is it going to develop from here now that technology is playing a bigger part?
Ozlem Sarioglu [00:18:39]:
One thing, since we’re talking about technology a lot, I would say we will see even more technology involved with coaching. But maybe the weight of technology might even improve with the development of AI. And also the people who are benefiting from coaching are becoming more and more tech savvy. That also is going to increase, I think the weight of the technology in the process. The other thing is I think we will. This is also something that we see in the coaching federation. So they used to be called coach Federation, they’re turning it into coaching federation which I think is important because it’s not a profession only anymore. So it used to be professional coaches doing coaching. But I think we’re going to see that this is really a mindset which is not only for human development, but it’s more for like getting into the areas of maybe, I don’t know, environmental issues, maybe getting into conflict resolution around the world. So it will become more and more a way of communicating and experiencing yourself in the world. And we see this trend already happening. For instance for, for leaders. We are expecting them to be now not the typical manager who says people what to do that gives instructions, but we’re expecting now them to coach. And more and more description goes into the place of the manager is a facilitator. It’s more and more developing the coaching skills for the leaders as well. So I would say in 10 years time it will be everywhere, not just in personal development field.
Matt Alder [00:20:38]:
So final question, There’ll be lots of people listening who are managers who are.
Matt Alder [00:20:44]:
Thinking of giving their teams the benefit.
Matt Alder [00:20:47]:
Of coaching or getting coaching themselves. And also a lot of people listening who feel they might benefit from coaching. What’s your sort of key bits of advice to people in terms of approaching coaching and making sure it’s effective for them?
Ozlem Sarioglu [00:21:02]:
Great question. I would just say first you need to be willing to explore yourself. So that assumption that somebody is going to tell me what to do, somebody is going to know me better than I do is a false one. We only know ourselves fully and to some extent even. But you need to be willing to explore yourself and then take action based on those explorations. And sometimes people have the assumption like, yeah, I know myself, like been there, done that. But the world is changing so quickly. We really, really need to reinvent ourselves again and again in this world. So that’s, you know, I’ve been there, done that, is not there anymore. So we need to be looking at that. So that’s the one piece this is for. I think everybody, whether they’re, you know, working in an organization, having their startup or being a manager, doesn’t matter, whoever you are, just keep growing. And for managers to coach their people, I would just say first be aware of who needs coaching. Sometimes people initially really need training, they somehow initially need mentoring, but a big amount of them really need coaching. So making that distinction is the first key. And if you figure out who really needs coaching, just believe in that person’s potential. Just don’t give up on them. Just believe that they can find their own answers, find their own solutions, but just keep on asking questions. And I know that it takes practice. This is not what we are used to as managers. But just keep trying on coaching, it will get better by the time we’re also in the professional field. Having some kilometers is very important, important in our profession. Even so as managers also, you know, you just maybe learn the basic skills about coaching. Don’t give up on yourself, don’t give up on your people. Just keep trying, doing it. And also in order to give coaching, you need to receive coaching also obviously. So you need to know how it affects a person, how it supports a person. So, you know, just somehow receive coaching. It could be through a digital platform, like the way we’re providing or it could be just going to a coach and working with them, or doing some peer coaching, maybe among managers. Doesn’t matter really. But just receiving coaching and then keep on giving coaching. Keep on supporting people and believing in their potential.
Matt Alder [00:23:50]:
Ozlem, thank you very much for talking to me.
Ozlem Sarioglu [00:23:52]:
Yeah, thank you so much.
Matt Alder [00:23:54]:
My thanks to Ozlem. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for recruiting future. If you’re a Spotify or Pandora user, you can also listen to the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
