Coachability, investors and you!
How coachable are you?
Using the rather helpful research tool, Answer The Public, I discovered that this is one of the most common questions being asked about the topic of coachability. Along with keywords like ‘entrepreneur coachability’ and ‘coachability, the leadership superpower’.
As an Executive Coach, someone’s inherent ability to be coached and to get value from the coaching process, is always of interest to me, but how many of us ponder this about ourselves? And why care about it anyway?
Executive coach, Michele Longobardi writes in a research paper that coachability is “the readiness to develop oneself and to consider change opportunities that may arise within a coaching programme. Coachability also implies the openness to accept feedback and stimuli, to dive into different perspectives and points of view.”
But being coachable is not just the potential to use coaching as a development tool. There’s also a growing trend for investors to evaluate the coachability of a management team in a company they wish to invest in (as highlighted in the ResearchGate article on ‘the Coachable Entrepreneur’).
Business leaders who show good indicators of coachability are more likely, in investors’ eyes, to be successful because they are open and willing to look at new ways of working, comfortable taking on feedback and embracing change. After all, most investors are committing social capital as well as financial capital, and coachable entrepreneurs are most likely to benefit from both.
This leads us back to the question “How coachable are you?”
In an article in the Harvard Business Review Brenda Steinberg outlines seven fundamental traits that distinguish leaders who will make progress through coaching from those who do not.
1. Tolerance for discomfort;
2. Openness to experimentation;
3. Ability to look beyond the rational;
4. Willingness to take responsibility;
5. Capacity for forgiveness;
6. Self-discipline; and
7. Ability to ask for support.
So how do you measure up?
With an appropriate thinking partner, I believe it’s possible to change on all fronts and get comfortable with the uncomfortable, but self-awareness is key.
I work with plenty of leaders who had never previously considered coaching and am pleased to report that the vast majority come back for more! If you’re curious and would like to explore your level of coachability in a 1:1 or group context, then let’s talk.