The Importance of Coachability
In last week’s muse, I asked the probing question—“are you coachable?” Today, I’m going to address the why. Why is being coachable important? If you haven’t engaged with that last week’s Muse, I encourage you to go back and complete the self-reflection exercise I provided to help determine your answer to this question.
Okay, now that you’re back, let’s dig into this critical balancing act. To begin, it’s important to state what I hope is the obvious—that the number one job of all leaders and managers is to be a coach to their teams and team members. Unfortunately, in many organizations, coaching is viewed as a ‘nice to have’ and is not encouraged as the priority it should be. There are all manner of excuses for this lack of focus on coaching. "We have too much to do,” and “I’ll get to it once all these fires are extinguished,” are common refrains. These rationalizations are usually a smoke screen for an accidental manager’s skill deficiency or lack of understanding about what it means to be a leader.
This gaping deficiency regarding the skill of coaching is not the focus of today’s Muse. For the time being, we’re going to assume that your leadership is skilled at being coaches of people and will instead talk about why you need to be coachable—irrespective of where you sit in the company’s hierarchy.
So why should you focus on being coachable?
The Speed of Change. There are three constants in life—death, taxes, and change. The speed of change—especially technology—is increasing at an increasing rate. Other change drivers such as shifts in societal and business norms, geopolitical alliances/structures, and natural phenomenon like climate change all contribute to the need for rapid change in business strategy and operating models. Your leaders need to have confidence that their teams and team members can exhibit the resilience, creativity, and agility that’s necessary to keep up, remain calm, persevere, and come out on top. If you’ve got a fixed mindset and are constantly yearning to go back to a simpler time, your leadership will give the plum assignments to the agile, creative, and resilient. You’ll be left behind—which is the perfect segue to reason #2.
The Lifelong Learner Imperative. The tidal wave of change that crests incessantly is forcing all of us to adopt a lifelong learning mindset. Gone are the days when we could acquire a portfolio of competencies that would carry us through our working lives. If you think back to the days of your formal education (high school, college, grad school), there were teachers all around you—teaching, mentoring, coaching—inspiring you to do your best. You were likely much more open minded and agile. You were a sponge—soaking it all in. The best students were curious and asked ‘why’ a lot. The best students were also teachers and coaches to those around them who needed a helping hand. Their curiosity and creativity were infectious. The lifelong learner is no different. The lifelong learner is coachable but also coaches. The lifelong learner is a student but also teaches. The lifelong learner inspires and seeks inspiration. Hopefully the incongruence between a fixed, “I’ve already got everything figured out” mindset and that of a lifelong learner is obvious. Choose to be the latter and not the former.
The Importance of Teamwork. The future of business is human. Technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics will increase the need for all employees to improve their human (aka, soft) skill toolkit. Why? Because AI and robots will be doing what they do best—repetitive, technical tasks. Your value as a technician will decline (but you’ll still need to know the technical aspects of your job), and your value as a collaborative, impactful team member will increase. Research has shown that diverse teams outperform those that are more uniform in their composition. Building on points #1 and #2 above, to be an effective team member, you must coach and be coachable. There will be times when you’re the smartest person in the room and others when you need a helping hand. Your colleagues will quickly become exhausted by a know-it-all attitude and will begin to tune you out. Your value to the team and its leader will fall, and tough decisions will follow.
So we’ll leave it here for this weekend. Next week, we’ll continue the conversation and discuss your role as a teacher. Yes, you heard that right, everyone in the organization needs to be a teacher and a coach. We’ll talk about the characteristics of being a good teacher and coach to your colleagues. Until next time…
