There are a few things that contribute to how successful business coaching and leadership development coaching sessions are. While most people like to think that it all boils down to how talented your coach is, that’s not what it’s all about. Now, don’t get me wrong, choosing the right coach is important, but if you’re not coachable it won’t matter. If you’re not coachable, you could hire the best coach on the planet and still end up failing to make progress. So, how do you become more coachable to make sure you get the most out of your sessions and training?
Here are 7 tips that can help you. As you read through them, really think about how they apply to your situation.
1. Change how you think about feedback
If you think negatively of feedback and constructive criticism, then it’s going to be difficult for you to truly listen to your coach. It’s the responsibility of a coach to provide you accurate feedback that will enable you to grow and make necessary changes for yourself and your business.
And not only will you need to accept feedback from your coach, it’s helpful if you’ll receive feedback throughout all areas of your business. Feedback can be through customer complaints (or compliments), employee opinion, and media response among other things. When you’re constantly looking for and aware of the feedback that’s happening around you, you’ll become more coachable and learn how to adapt when needed.
2. Ask questions
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that asking questions makes you look like you don’t know what you’re doing. But asking questions shows that you are trying to learn. Being willing and excited to learn and understand things is a good quality to have.
My dad is a great example of this. As a teenager, I was embarrassed by the way my dad would ask all kinds of questions to people. He’s the kind of guy that will be driving down the road and see someone working on something that interests him so he’ll pull over and ask about it. Now as an adult, I appreciate this example that he set. Asking questions opens the door for you to learn things that you wouldn’t otherwise.
If your coach is trying to teach you something and you pretend like you know what they mean even though you don’t, it’s going to be difficult for you to learn and make changes.
3. Check your ego
You are human. There are some areas where you may know more than those around you. But there are also areas that you don’t. If you’re unwilling to check your ego at the door then you will limit the amount of benefit you receive from working with a coach.
Acknowledging that you would benefit from working with a coach is a great start. You’re recognizing that you’ve done great at getting yourself to where you are but could use some guidance and assistance in learning how to continue growing. But if you get into coaching sessions and refuse to listen to the coach because you think you already know better, you’re only hurting yourself.
4. Focus on growing your confidence
Low self-esteem will get in the way of growth. If you allow yourself to stay in the place of feeling “not good enough”, “not smart enough” or “not talented enough” then it’s going to be difficult for you to make real progress with a coach. Hopefully your coach has a plan for helping you grow your confidence (at SPEARity we do!) but it’s something that you can step up and do on your own as well.
A simple but super effective strategy that SPEARity uses to grow confidence is to track successes. This sounds simple, but it drastically helped me grow my confidence and has helped many others as well. It’s so effective we’ve even built it into the SPEARity app.
5. Be honest
For coaching to work, you need to be honest with your coach. However, you’re not going to be honest with your coach unless you also learn how to be honest with yourself. This can be tough if you’re not in the habit of it. You have to be real with yourself about what your shortcomings are. If you’re always trying to blame other people for the mistakes that happen around you, it may be time for you to take a good long look in the mirror to see what responsibility you have in it all.
6. Do the work
Coaching only works if you put the concepts that you’re learning into action. It’s not just about head-knowledge. Your business coach can provide you with all the right exercises and tasks to do but if you’re not wiling to put the time in then it’s not going to help you at all.
Remember, if leadership development and business growth was easy, everyone would be highly successful at life and business. It takes work and sometimes it’s going to be more work than what you want to do, but you need to do it anyway if you want to see the results you’re after.
7. Show up prepared
Come to your coaching sessions prepared for the meeting. If you don’t, you’re wasting your time and you’re wasting your coach’s time.
Be ready with a list of your questions. What questions do you have? What areas are you struggling? But also take time to think about where you succeeded since you last met with your coach. Be ready to share the specific wins that you experienced.
Ready to work with a coach?
If you’re coachable and ready to get started seeing growth in your professional and personal life, our SPEARity coaches would be happy to talk to you about our coaching process. Contact us today to get started.
