What is Coachabilty?
Posted on April 18, 2022 by Puneet Mathur, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
There's no doubt that working with a Coach can tranform the way you live life. But are you 'Coachable'?
Working with a Coach can transform the way you live life – any aspect of it, be it your career, relationships, health and so on.
If you want take immediate action that can help you bring about long lasting change in your life, you MUST hire a Coach. A Coach will be your partner who will help you bring about that change. You coach will work with you to identify where you are in terms of any particular aspect of your life (current status), where you want to go (goals), and how to you accomplish those goals (the specific action steps you need to identify and follow)
Will coaching work for YOU?
The answer is if it has worked for millions of people across the globe, changes are you WILL benefit from coaching. However, one critical aspect needs to be examined first, which is critical to the success of coaching. And this is ’COACHABILITY"
Coachability – simply put is whether you are ‘coachable’ or not or simpler still – can you be coached or not.
Isn’t everyone Coachable? Well, the extent to which each individual is coachable, varies. But the more coachable you are, the more you are likely to benefit from coaching.
So how do we define coachability? Each individual’s measure of coachability is largely defined by the following parameters, all of which are attitude related:
Self Awareness – you are aware of the current state you are in, and that there is need to change.
Willingness – the willingness to make a shift in your life in order to achieve the desired state.
Achievement Orientation – you are willing to set goals for self improvement.
Openness to work with someone – you are open to have a partner who can work with you towards achievement of your goals. Working with someone would entail defining your desired state (where you want to be), and setting a clear action plan to achieve that desired state. Also, working with a partner to continuously and periodically review the progress vis-a-vis the goals.
Openness to feedback – as a person, you can accept feedback about yourself easily, and can work on the feedback received.
Willingness to invest time and money – are you willing to invest money for coaching? Are yo comfortable working with a coach through regular coaching sessions, over a prolonged period of time?
A good coach will not be in a hurry to begin coaching sessions with you, just because you have agreed to have him or her as a coach. The first thing a good coach would do, is to assess your coachability, or ask you to assess your coachability yourself.
The assessment would usually be in the form of a questionnaire which you rate how high you score on each of the parameters listed above. Depending upon what the total score is, you would be categorized as
Highly Score: you are ready to be coached beginning NOW
Mid range score: you can be coached, but perhaps you need to gain a little better understanding about how coaching works, and probably need to make use of a complimentary coaching session that most Coaches offer, to get a first hand feel of how coaching would work)
Low Score: You need to spend a lot more time in understanding how coaching works, having a detailed conversation with a few Coaches and revisiting some of the parameters above to see where you are placed.
Coachability is critical. You have to be ready to be coached, in order that you benefit fully, from coaching. On the other hand, all the time effort and money you spend would be wasted if you’re not favorably inclined – attitude wise, towards working to improve yourself
