Are you coachable?

You may think this is a frivolous question, but it is a fact that not everybody is coachable.

You need to possess some traits for you to be coachable.

If you do not have these qualities, then you are not ready to be coached. And if you engage a coach in this state, you will not get the desired benefits.

The required traits for you to be coachable are

1. Be Goal-Oriented
2. Keep yourself Open to Feedback
3. Stick to your Commitments
4. Ready to Invest in yourself
5. Free from any Mental Blocks or Illness
6. Able to make your own Decisions
7. Trust your Coach

Please read further to know the details.

Be Goal-Oriented

Be goal-oriented to get the benefits of engaging a coach. You must identify specific goals to achieve with the help of a coach. If you do not have this in place, then you will not get the desired results. This would result in frustration at both ends – yours as well as the coach. If you do not have any goals to achieve, then why are you engaging a coach?

Once you have identified the end goals, a coach can work with you and help you to:

• Ensure that you have identified the correct goals
• Make sure that goals align with your strengths
• Identify any bottlenecks and how to overcome them
• Prioritize the goals
• Break them down into subgoals if needed
• Come up with a plan to achieve them in the agreed period
• Track your progress and help you achieve them

If you need to check out how a coach can help – please click here.

Keep Yourself Open to Feedback

Be open to new ideas and thoughts that can potentially come up in your interaction with your coach. Some of these may be radically different from your views and beliefs. But you must be flexible to understand the divergent view coming out and the reasoning behind these.

Then you make efforts to discuss the pros and cons of these views with the coach. Once you are sure that the feedback obtained is beneficial, then you need to incorporate the necessary changes.

A coach will not be able to help you if you are rigid in your beliefs and not ready for change. If you keep justifying your beliefs while rejecting any feedback, then you cannot benefit from the coaching engagement.

Additionally, you should be able to take both positive and negative feedback with an open mind if it comes your way. You need to understand the coach’s divergent point of view. And if you feel that it will help you improve, then you should incorporate the required change. 

If you carry the view that you are always right, and nobody else can guide you, then the coaching engagement will not work for you.

Stick to your Commitments

Honour all the commitments you make in discussions with your coach. It requires efforts and sometimes sacrifices from your side to meet these commitments. If you are serious about getting the maximum benefit from the coaching engagement, this is of prime importance.

You have engaged your coach to ensure you can achieve your goals in the agreed timelines. These are your goals and have been set up by yourself. And the actions, the timelines, etc. are also decided by you. A coach can help you in planning these, but you must do these on your own.

In your discussions with your coach, you need to be honest and make commitments which you can do. In case there are bottlenecks you can discuss with your coach and discover the solutions yourself. However, you meet all your commitments. If you cannot stick to these commitments, then you cannot achieve the goals you had planned.

Ready to Invest in yourself

Engaging a coach is an investment you are making to ensure you achieve the success you have defined yourself.

It requires you to allocate dedicated time for the regular meetings with your coach. Also, you need to ensure a dedicated effort to meet all the commitments made. If you are not ready for this then a coach cannot help you.

If you feel sure that a coach can help you, then you will need to invest the money as well to hire a coach. A small investment can go a long way in your climb to success in life. If you are not ready to invest money in yourself, then you are not coachable yet.

Free from any Mental Blocks or Illness

Be free from any mental block or illness before you hire a coach. These conditions need therapy and healing from the past unfavourable events in your life. A coach is not a counsellor or a therapist and cannot help you in this situation. You need to engage a therapist or a counsellor to free you from this condition.

Coaching will be beneficial if you are forward-looking and not looking at the past events in your life. Being forward-looking will help you look at the present and plan to meet your goals. And will help to identify the things you need to do to ensure the success you aspire.

Able to make your own Decisions

It must be clear in your mind that you will make your decisions and are not looking at the coach for making decisions for you.

You must understand that coaching is different from a consultation. You hire a consultant to come up with a solution for a specific problem.

However, you hire a coach to help you achieve the success goals that you have set for yourself. A coach will help you identify the correct goals yourself and build your plan to achieve them. A coach will not advise you on what goals you need to have or the actions that you need to do. You need to work with your coach and identify these yourself.

You can seek feedback, but you are the decision-maker here. In a coaching relationship, it is imperative to understand the roles correctly. If you are not clear on this distinction, you will not benefit from coaching.

Able to Trust Coach

Your relationship with your coach is that of trust with each other. It is an equal partnership where both people have a common objective – to make you successful in achieving your goals. If there is a breach in this trust, then the coaching engagement will not yield the desired results.

You need to have complete faith in your coach. And need to be honest with each other. If you do not share your desires and concerns honestly, then a coach will not be able to help you. If you are making commitments, then you should put a sincere effort to meet them.

If you fail to meet these commitments consistently, then the coach will not have the confidence in you. And may lose interest in the engagement.

You view criticism coming from the coach with an open mind. After all, the coach has your best interests in mind. Even if you disagree, you should understand the reasons for this in discussion with your coach. If you trust your coach, then this becomes easy. Else this would lead to conflict and frustration.

If you have difficulty in building a relationship of trust with others, then coaching may not work for you.

Summary

In conclusion, you need to answer the question – Are you coachable? How to be and benefit from coaching?

You must possess certain traits in you so that you become coachable. If you do not have, then you are not ready to engage a coach. You need to make efforts to develop these qualities in yourself before you decide to engage a coach. Else you will not be able to benefit from the coaching engagement.

I would like to know your views, comments on this post. Please do share.

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