As managers, it’s our job to grow the people we work with. This is how we build a bench, and scale ourselves and the organization. Of course, this i

Coachability: the overlooked factor in people development

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2021-07-04 19:00:12

As managers, it’s our job to grow the people we work with. This is how we build a bench, and scale ourselves and the organization. Of course, this is easy to say and hard to do, and we’ve all encountered a spectrum of people: those with whom it’s easy to accelerate and have a real and lasting impact on, and those where the lasting impact is the relief we feel once we no longer work with them.

Often, the difference between the people who accelerate and those that don’t is their coachability. However, a person’s coachability is not immutable. As individuals, we can work on trying to be more coachable, and as managers, we can try and work to understand how to build a relationship of coachability and work with our teammates to not just support their growth, but support their ability to grow.

We all have situations where we fall short of that and it’s worth taking time to understand why that is. Are there certain things we struggle with? Situations we don’t want to improve for whatever – maybe even subconscious – reasons? Having that empathy for ourselves can help us when we encounter other people; when someone is seemingly inexplicably resistant, why is that? If you can believe that people want to be successful, you’ll be in a much better place to help.