As leaders, part of our job is to offer constructive feedback to our teams, to help facilitate and guide progress, and to nurture growth. The coaching aspect of our role focuses on the individual – their development, skill growth, and goals. In turn, their growth can contribute to organizational success.
We know this. We may not always implement it well, but we know it. Setting vision and goals can fall flat if we don’t have the team skilled up to implement it. What we can lose sight of, however, is that as leaders our ability to be coachable is paramount to organizational success as well.
You’ll find plenty of articles about how leaders can be good coaches. There’s an abundance of inspirational quotes. There’s long (and short) missives on how to cultivate a work culture that embraces feedback and a growth mindset. They offer valuable ideas, and yet, they aren’t enough.
They focus on a top-down approach to coaching. How can you, as a leader, coach your organization or team? How can you cultivate an environment that encourages and embraces coachability? Valuable, but not the full story, and here’s why: To be truly effective, leaders must be coachable, too.
Scott Osman, Jacquelyn Lane, and Marshall Goldsmith wrote the book Becoming Coachable. Among other things, they remind us that successful leaders are agile learners who have the willingness to accept feedback, as well as the ability to adapt, grow, and thrive within the pressure cooker of change. In other words, they are coachable. Coachability doesn’t expire when you reach a specific rung on the corporate ladder. It’s a lifelong skill that we ought to nurture and lean on if we wish to succeed.
Let’s be honest: a resistance to coaching can be rooted in insecurity, as much as it can stem from ignorance or ego. The uncoachable may stubbornly insist they have nothing left to learn. They didn’t get to this position without expertise, after all. They may also, however, worry that letting out the big secret — they don’t have all the answers, despite their impressive resume and job title — will erode their position as a leader. It may invoke that awful sensation of imposter syndrome and the fear of being “found out” that comes with it.
Take note: great leaders know they don’t know everything. What sets them apart from the rest of the pack is their willingness to listen to new ideas, and then to apply what they’ve learned. Great leaders are growing leaders who model what it looks like to listen, learn, and to adapt when appropriate.
Being coachable begins with active listening. Hearing someone out while you’re mentally formulating your dissent so you can jump in with your response the moment they finish speaking isn’t it. Listen attentively to the feedback you’re getting. Consider it. Weigh its merits. Not all feedback is actionable, but some of it is. Listen with an open mind.
Is there merit to the criticism your organization (or you!) is receiving? This new technology, this new shift in corporate culture, this new competitor… are these things you should be paying attention to? Can you learn and adapt to remain in the game?
Growth, whether it’s personal or organizational, moves us out of our comfort zone. It’s cozy in the space we’ve always known, doing the things we’ve always done. It’s stressful to move beyond that bubble into the unknown where we might falter. Yet, remaining comfortable means being stagnant. We chug along where we are. Eventually, as an organization we may see flatlined revenue growth. We may see a lack of movement into new markets.
As safe as it feels in that space today, the reality is that without growth this comfortable living is temporary. Eventually another company, another person, is going to step into our space and stretch their boundaries beyond it. As they do so, you will lose a foothold. You’ll lose ground. Comfort zones are a false sense of security that can catch us off guard when it starts to slip away. On the other hand, being willing to leave that bubble and stretch, to learn new things, to adapt to change, to accept feedback and tweak what needs tweaking, to take calculated risks — these are the things that lead to growth.
Being coachable requires you to see your whole self: your strengths and weaknesses, your shining spots and your stains. It requires you to be realistic about the things you know, the things you excel at, and the areas you need to work on. It also requires you to accept responsibility for the things that don’t go well (as well as for the things that do!).
In other words, being coachable starts by recognizing a need for continued growth – that those that reach the pinnacle of their career, even those that are lauded as experts, can learn something new. And so can you.
Listen, it can be difficult to hear your weak spots highlighted. It can feel personal hearing about the areas you need to improve. Coachable people resist the urge to defend previous actions. Remember, being coachable starts with active listening and thoughtful consideration of the input you’ve received. You may ultimately decide that particular nugget isn’t actionable for you at this time in the way it was offered, but there is something to glean from the input. Maybe it’s not about restructuring deadlines and prioritization of projects, but it is about improving the way you communicate timelines and planning. Take the feedback. Consider the feedback. Use what is helpful.
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