Bill Nelson

In a recent post on his Blog marketing guru Seth Godin talks about the concept of 'coachability'.

Seth's article leads to the point that for someone to get the best out of a coaching experience they have to want to be coached and therefore, emotionally involved in the coaching process.

The subject of coachability is very close to me. In fact, it is an element of what I do everyday in one form or another.

In recent times I have had two instances where I have had to pursue the question of coachability.

One directly where I was being asked to coach a particular group of Managers. Due to a number of reasons I decided that they were not, at least from my perspective, coachable.

When I informed the potential clients of my decision, they were shocked to say the least and within a very short period of time, raised the point of how much money I would make from the opportunity.

I thanked them for the kind offer and went on to reiterate that although I am in business and truly appreciated the level of remuneration involved, what I believed would be required to be done just to get them involved in the coaching process, would not make it a worthwhile experience.

I then attempted to outline that there is a level of participation and commitment that I deem necessary (e.g. the level of coachability) for the coaching process to have any chance of succeeding.

I went on to further explain that from what I had seen so far, the money, no matter how much, probably would not make me feel any better about what would be required just to get them to where they needed to be, just so we could then begin the real purpose for us getting together.

This may sound arrogant, rude and/or dumb. But after coaching for nearly thirty years, I find it a waste of my time explaining to someone over and over again why they have to work hard or why they need to be totally involved, or why success comes at a price and you have to pay the price in advance.

To be totally honest, I would rather spend my time working out how it is I can make someone better. Or how can I help them achieve that goal they desire so much. What are the strategies required to see the outcomes we are pursuing achieved?

This is where I want to be spending my time and theirs.

The second situation involved my role as a coach to another very successful coach. As we were reviewing his past season I asked him to consider six questions.

One of those questions was 'Did he believe his team was coachable'?

Now please don't get me wrong. This was not a question about talent, skill or desire and it was not a put down of his team or anyone within it.

But it was a question based on the fact that for any individual/team to get better, the coach needs to be able to coach and the individual/team need to want to be coached.