Are You Coachable?

Some time ago, two colleagues of mine had a podcast conversation on a simple question: Is everyone coachable? The short answer is no. The long answer is more useful.

As my colleague put it — with a sigh, if I recall — not everyone believes they need to grow. Based on what I’ve seen across dozens of executive coaching engagements, I’d agree.

Thankfully, most leaders do recognize that their strategic priorities and increasingly complex environments require their continued growth and development. The world is not standing still and neither can they. Just as their organizations implement cycles of PDCA, their personal leadership benefits from the same.

But leaders:

• who aren’t keen to self-reflect,
• who have an explanation ready for everything that goes awry, or
• who don’t actively seek out feedback and feed-forward from the people closest to them — those folks who could actually open their blind spots — tend to be less coachable.

And a few are simply dead set in their ways, feeling like they have “arrived” because of their past successes.

Others simply don’t know what is possible with coaching, but are willing to find out. They come in neutral and leave changed.

What Coachability Actually Requires

Marshall Goldsmith’s line still holds: what got you here won’t get you there. Leaders who are highly successful in an executive coaching experience typically share three attributes — courage, humility, and discipline.

Courage to honestly look at what they’d benefit from starting, stopping, or changing — and openness to let those closest to them know so they can be supportive in the process.

Humility to ask others for help in their growth, and to be able to simply say thank you for feedback received.

Discipline to stick with a new behavior past the point of initial discomfort, and to follow-up routinely with their stakeholders to see if they are noticing a difference.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe even more strongly: coachability isn’t about how driven or accomplished someone is. It’s about whether the individual recognizes that the demands of leadership require their continual development. And, whether they are open to seeing their leadership through the eyes of their most important stakeholders (e.g., their colleagues, their peers, their direct reports, even their customers, suppliers, or partners). After all, are we more effective as a leader if our improvement is not visible to others?

The Shift That Changes Everything: Feed-forward, Not Feedback

The leaders who grow fastest start by asking a different question — not “where did I go wrong,” but “what’s one thing I could do differently going forward?” This feed-forward question opens the gates for suggestions for the future. It creates energy, options, and possibilities. It reduces defensiveness and explanation that often occurs with feedback. It removes the fight of flight instinct. The future (feed-forward) is filled with possibilities; whereas the past (feedback) is unchangeable because it has already happened.

I often ask coaching clients to put this into practice literally: sit down with a colleague, ask that one question, and then just listen. Without judgement. Take notes. Say thank you. No arguing. No explaining. No defending. It sounds small. It isn’t.

Do it routinely and people will feel more inclined to share.

Feed-forward changes the dynamic for both parties. Ease in sharing; ease in receiving.

NOTE: There are absolutely times where giving feedback is needed. But the circumstances for giving feed-forward should outweigh feedback.

Even Coachable Leaders Have Blind Spots

Being coachable doesn’t mean you already know what to work on next. It means staying open to finding out — especially the parts you can’t see yourself. Some of the most capable executives I work with carry blind spots they genuinely cannot identify on their own — not because they’re in denial, but because strongly held and deeply ingrained beliefs are driving their actions and behaviors. And these long-held beliefs have become invisible to them.

That’s exactly what structured 360 input is for — not for performance evaluation, but as a development tool. It can take a number of different forms: stakeholder conversations that the leader conducts themselves, 360 interviews a coach conducts on the leader’s behalf, a formal 360 instrument, or a combination of methods. All three surface things self-reflection alone can’t reach.

The model maps two almost opposing domains: Creative Competencies, the leadership behaviors most correlated with high performance and fulfillment, and Reactive Tendencies, the self-limiting habits of thought — often rooted in old assumptions about what it takes to be safe, worthy, or in control — that quietly cap a leader’s effectiveness even when their intentions are good. Because the LCP surfaces the leader’s internal operating system rather than just its outward expression, it gives leaders a genuinely high-leverage place to work from. Results go to the leader and coach — not their boss, not HR — and that confidentiality is what makes the rest possible: leaders can sit with what they learn honestly, without needing to defend it, and use it to choose the areas where growth will be most valuable.

Coachability applies to different kinds of leaders, and I see each regularly: high performers who are already effective and want to be more so, leaders in new roles or new contexts, and leaders with a persistent pattern they’ve been unable to shift through willpower alone. Each is open to reaching new heights. All are willing to get out of their comfort zone, to stretch themselves because of what their role and the increasingly complex environment needs from them.

The days are long gone where coaching is only for those with sub-par performance. These days, coaching is applied in growth and development for leaders of all sorts — top tier leaders and those with untapped potential. Leaders who are coachable know the difference. They don’t wait for something to break before they invest in themselves or their fellow leaders.

So — Are You Coachable?

If you’re the kind of person who reads a piece like this and pauses to ask “what is possible” — you’ve already cleared the highest bar. The leaders who aren’t coachable rarely wonder.

That’s the encouraging part. Growth isn’t a trait you either have or don’t. It’s a posture you keep choosing — one honest conversation, one feed-forward question, one (sometimes uncomfortable) piece of input at a time.

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Questions for Creating Your Excellence Advantage

✳️ Where are you sitting back from your growth edge?
✳️ Who would be willing to give you feed-forward if asked?
✳️ What is your internal operating system signaling? How might you open up your blind spots?

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Kathy Letendre, President and Founder of Letendre & Associates, advises organizations and leaders to create their excellence advantage.
Contact Kathy by phone or text at 802-779-4315 or via email.