Coachability, defined by willingness and self-awareness, is a critical differentiator for individual performance and development, impacting how effectively individuals receive and act on feedback.
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You hire Olivia and you hire Mark.
Similar resumes, similar interviews,
similar work experience. On paper, they
look virtually the same. And even
throughout the interview process, they
look pretty much the same. But 6 months
later, Olivia is closing enterprise
deals and Mark is struggling to hit
quota. So, what's the difference between
those two? Coachability. We see people
who are advanced in their careers that
have done a lot and and their
coachability is really low. It's also
situational. It can be dynamic where the
coachability es and flows.
>> One of the mistakes that managers make
is they'll pour effort and time into the
wrong people because they haven't
appropriately assessed the coachability
of the people on the other side that
they're in charge of developing.
Willingness, we define as sustained
readiness to receive feedback and
immediately convert it into deliberate
action. Sometimes we're more willing,
sometimes we're less willing to have
that be a sustainable pattern. Sustained
readiness. That means that willingness
is a part of who you are that
contributes to accelerated development.
>> Self-awareness, what is it? An accurate
evidence-based view of one's impact and performance.
performance.
>> You need sources outside of yourself to
help you understand where you are.
>> You're listening to the Leader Factor, a
podcast where we take leadership
principles and distill them into
actionable behaviors, sharable
frameworks, and scalable initiatives.
>> Hey everybody, it's Junior. Hoped you
enjoyed today's episode. Everything we
covered today is going to be put
together in a nice downloadable
available for you in the show notes and
at leaderfactor.com. Make sure to go and
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like. Please subscribe and share with a
friend. Catch you next time.
You hire Olivia and you hire Mark.
Similar resumes, similar interviews,
similar work experience. On paper, they
look virtually the same. And even
throughout the interview process, they
look pretty much the same. But 6 months
later, Olivia is closing enterprise
deals and Mark is struggling to hit
quota and he's blaming the CRM. 6 months
after that, Olivia has been promoted and
Mark is gone.
>> Out of here. So what's the difference
between those two? Coachability and for
many leaders it's difficult to spot. So
that's our topic today. Coachability,
how to spot it, how to develop it in
your people and what to do if it's not
exactly where you want it to be. Tim,
how you doing today?
>> Doing great. I I want to chime in on
this. This is such an interesting topic,
Junior, because it may at first blush
seem pretty straightforward that
coachability is just positively
correlated with performance.
And I think that it probably is to some extent
extent
when people are maybe early in their careers,
careers,
but it's not that straightforward after
that. We see people who are advanced in
their careers that have done a lot and
they become and and their coachability
is really low. It's also situational. It
can be dynamic where the coachability es
and flows. Don't you think?
>> I do. And one of the mistakes that
managers make is they'll pour effort and
time energy into the wrong people
>> because they haven't appropriately
assessed the coachability of the people
on the other side that they're in charge
of developing. And so maybe they're
spending too much time on someone that
they shouldn't be. And the inverse might
also be true. So in the Olivia and Mark
example, surely there can be uh problems
aside from coachability that can affect
an outcome like that. But this is a big
one. It's a really big one.
>> It is a big one. And what I I gotta I
gotta say one of the things that strikes
me is that some of the least and I don't
know why this happens, but some of the
least coachable people that I've worked
with are
they have been some of the most
successful at some points in their
career, but then their coachability
kind of comes to a halt. So that's an
interesting thing to think about as we
move into this conversation. Yeah, I
like to think about NBA Allstars who
have been in the league for 10, 15 years
and they still have coaches
>> and they're in the locker room at
halftime and maybe the coach has two
years in the league. That's always a
super interesting dynamic and you you
have those allstars sitting there and
saying, "Okay, coach, right? Let's drop
the play and they'll chime in." But
pretty interesting to see that that can
stay stable across time even with the
highest performers. So, let's get into
what coachability actually is.
Coachability is a function of two
variables. Willingness and
self-awareness. So we've got willingness
on the y-axis, self-awareness on the
x-axis. And you'll see that we've
created yet another 2x2 matrix.
>> Yes. So that's what we're going to be
using today uh to frame the
conversation. We're going to go through
each of these boxes, which is a
combination of those two variables.
We'll talk about the symptoms, how to
identify when someone is in one of those
boxes, and then what to do about it.
because ideally we want them to have
high willingness and high
self-awareness, but they may not at
first. We want to help them get there.
So, let's define each of those.
Self-awareness, what is it? An accurate
evidence-based view of one's impact and
performance. Tell me a little bit about
self-awareness as a variable in people
>> Well, it's crucial. uh without
self-awareness, if you don't know where
you are, junior, if you don't comprehend
your current position, you really can't
make progress. You're you're kind of at sea
sea
and you don't know where to go. And so,
you need and and I love the definition.
It's evidence-based. You you need
sources outside of yourself to help you
understand where you are.
And that remains true, I think,
throughout life. And so we'll talk about
how to get there a little bit more, but
an accurate evidence-based view of one's
impact and performance. So first of all,
there's a metaccognition
requirement. You need to think about how
you think. You need to pay attention to
how others react to you, the streams of
data that are coming back to you as you
interact with others. So, you're being
it's there's such a huge component of
I guess you might call it
intentionality. You're very deliberate
about paying attention to the way that
people react and respond to you. You're
you're thinking about that. You're
processing that. And that takes
practice. But even with all of that,
you're still going to need outside
sources to help you, to give you
unvarnished, unedited feedback about yourself.
yourself.
>> I think it's worth pointing out that the
self-awareness isn't just social. It's
not that they're only paying attention
to the social impact of the things
they're doing. There's a technical angle
as well. If we look just at outcomes,
they're going to have a really accurate
sense of what the root cause was. And
it's going to match the observable
facts. And it's a great way to be able
to deduce someone's self-awareness is if
they can explain root cause
>> and it matches the observable facts both
in a social and in a technical sense,
you can say, "Wow, this person has high
self-awareness." If the opposite is true
and when they try to explain root cause,
it's not matching what actually happened
in the situation socially or
practically, then we have a problem. And
that's one of the ways to unpack early
on if someone has high self-awareness or not.
not.
>> Another thing, Junior, is you got to
learn how to pay attention to your own
longitudinal data, your own time series
data about your life. So, for example,
what do you know about your own resilience
resilience
and how do you know about that? That's
not short-term data. So, you're
gathering, you're looking at evidence
over time to see what your pattern is as
you travel through adversity. That's
just another example where it's not
short-term, it's not situational, it's
long-term. That's also part of self-awareness
self-awareness
>> and it leads into great interview
questions if you can ask people about
their patterns.
>> That's right.
>> Let's go to the next one. How would we
define willingness? Willingness, we
define a sustained readiness to receive
feedback and immediately convert it into
deliberate action. Willingness is an
important thing in management. It's an
important thing in those you manage.
Sustained readiness.
>> I love that by the way.
>> Sustained readiness. That combination,
that word combination really struck me.
>> Why? Say more.
>> Uh because I think we go in and out of
willingness, a lot of us. Sometimes
we're more willing, sometimes we're less
willing. And to be to have that be a
sustainable pattern, sustained readiness,
readiness,
that means that willingness is a part of
who you are. It's a part of your makeup.
it's a part of your character.
That's really what we're looking for.
And that contributes to, as we will see,
accelerated development.
And so, that's a question that's a
question that we can all ask ourselves.
What is the nature of your willingness?
Not only is it high or low, but does it
eb and flow? Are you sometimes highly
willing, sometimes not very willing,
sometimes very resistant, stubborn? entrenched
entrenched
uh intractable in the way that you
respond to things, in the way that you
try to get better, improve, grow,
develop. So, I I just love that
sustained readiness to receive feedback.
Oo, I I I tell you that stopped me dead
in my tracks because I have to confess
that sometimes I don't exhibit sustained
readiness to to receive feedback.
That's a that's a probing
uh question that we can ask ourselves.
>> Yeah. Willingness. So, how do you spot
willingness in a person? I think
willingness has a lot to do with
offense. I think willing people are more
apt to move. These are hand raisers.
These are doers. Uh these are
notetakers. These are askers.
>> These are volunteers.
>> These are volunteers. These are people
who are moving. They're doing things.
>> And one of the patterns that I've
noticed in my own response to the people
that I get to interact with
professionally. I really like high
willingness people. >> Oh,
>> Oh,
>> I really like them.
>> They're a joy to work with.
>> They really are. And we'll get into the
combination of willingness and
self-awareness. But man, if you key in
on one, you see the pattern in somebody
of high willingness, you know that
there's potential
>> out the gate.
>> You know you're going to have an
adventure together.
>> Yeah. So again, if you can dive into
that, create some behavioral
interviewing questions about willingness,
willingness,
do it. We're not going to go there
today, but it's an important thing.
Okay. Now, let's get into the
combinations. The first combination
we're going to talk about is low
willingness, low awareness. So, we're
going to say they're about here on the
willingness scale, maybe here on the
awareness scale. And that's going to put
them into this box. And we call this the
failing box. Might seem harsh. Why do we
call it the failing box?
>> Well, what else is it going to be? You
You're not self-aware
and you're very low in willingness.
Where are you going?
you're you're just not going anywhere.
Most likely, you're regressing. You're
not willing to put forth the effort
and you're not willing to to take a an
honest, penetrating, unsparing view of
yourself and really dig in. And so,
where can you possibly go except backwards?
backwards? >> Yeah,
>> Yeah,
>> really. We're going to be using a car
analogy as we go through these four
boxes. And this one we're going to call
flat tire, no GPS. >> Okay.
>> Okay.
>> So, we're not going anywhere because the
tire is flat. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> And even if we were, we wouldn't know
where we were going because we have no GPS.
GPS.
>> So, imagine you have no map. You're out
in the middle of nowhere and you have a
flat tire. You are dead stuck. And in
that case, the willingness, you don't
even care to get unstuck. You you're
just going to stay there,
>> which is problematic. So, what does this
look like in reality? This is going to
look like excuses. It's going to look
like deflection.
>> A person in this box is going to do very
minimal to no preparation for anything.
They're definitely not going to be
taking notes. They're not going to be
raising hands and volunteering. These
people are going to be stagnant. And so
if you see this in a person, what do we
do? That leads us to the next slide.
Confront and decide. This is what you
do. So as a leader, you're going to be
surveying the landscape. You're going to
be looking at the person in front of
you. You're going to gauge the
self-awareness. You're going to gauge
the willingness. And if someone falls in
this box, this is going to be our
prescription to you. You're going to
have to confront and decide. So the
first thing we do in in this situation
is we present the gap with data. So we
have to help the person understand that
there's a gap going on. The first thing
we want to do is see if they can key in
on that themselves. Oh, I was just going
to say if the if the willingness is
really low
and these self-awareness is really low,
they're not typically going to be
excited to confront the gap. And if you
coach through questions, typically
you're not going to get very far because
they're not going to go there on their
own. They don't want to they don't want
to see the gap. They don't want to
address the gap. They don't even want to
acknowledge the gap. And so you're I
it's not going to be
a a pleasant journey to to get them to
to view the gap.
>> Well, here's an example. Let's say that
you have a a mark on your team in a
sales context and Mark is 60% to goal on
the month and the team is already at 105%.
105%.
You have that data in front of you. You
can say, "Hey Mark, it looks like you're
60% to quota, the team's at 105. help me
understand what's going on.
If you see the patterns of deflection
that we talked about in a recent
episode, you see blame, denial, or
excuse, and that becomes habitual.
That's a pattern.
>> There's not a lot we can do because the
willingness isn't there.
>> Even if we impose the awareness by
saying, "Hey, here's all of the data.
Here's exactly what's going on. Here's
what we see in the situation. Here's
what your team members think about it.
Here's what we've heard from customers."
If there's blame, denial, and excuse and
a complete aversion to reality, we have
no other choice but to decide. And
that's the second part. So, if in that
confrontation, you clarify the
non-negotiables and you're still not
seeing the willingness and you're still
not seeing the self-awareness, we move
into a 30-day performance improvement
plan with microtargets. If that 30-day plan
plan
doesn't bear fruit, we manage you out.
It's as simple as that. Yeah. What else
are you going to do?
Now, in sales, Junior, in the in the
example that you're given, performance
is usually quite visible and measurable,
and you've got the metrics that show you
where you are. But in other positions,
in organizations, it's often not like
that at all. It's not it's not as
transparent. there's more ambiguity
around performance and you can kind of
hide behind things especially if you're
not responsible clearly responsible for
certain outcomes but you're more
involved in processes and you have kind
of you have intermediate handoffs in a
long chain of of of tasks. So you you
know people hide they often hide in the bowels
bowels
especially of large organizations
and sometimes they they just kind of
work out this cozy accommodation with
professional life and they go along and
they get very entrenched
and they kind of calcify into their
roles and they do get sterile and they
do get stagnant and they get very
resistant to change. I've seen this
again and again.
>> I've seen it, too. And I want to dig
into a point that you made about the
difficulty sometimes outside of an
environment that's really quantitative
to hone in on whether or not we're being
successful. Pro tip for anyone who has
direct reports, you have to establish
what success looks like with your
people. You have to do it.
>> If it's not
>> from the beginning,
>> from the very very beginning. So ask
yourself that about your direct reports.
Are you confident that every single one
of your direct reports knows what
success looks like for them? If you
can't answer yes to that question, you
need to immediately one, figure that out
for yourself if you don't know. And then
two, figure out a way to help them
understand. You need to have a
conversation immediately.
One of the things that I really like to
do is anytime we have a new hire, we set
those goals from the beginning and we
have a 30 often a 45 60-day type
check-in depending on the nature of the
role. We'll outline what success looks
like. We'll see if we're making progress
to whatever that vision is and then
we'll be able to have an intervention.
If you don't do that and there are not
clear expectations, good luck trying to
hold people accountable. You're going to
have a really hard time.
>> You created ambiguity from the beginning.
beginning.
>> And I've done this more than once. And
it's not fun because then you're put
into a situation where you know that
there's non-performance, but you have
really nothing to lean on in terms of
holding them accountable to some sort of standard,
standard, >> right?
>> right?
>> So, especially in those roles that are a
little bit more subjective, you got to
go impose that. Okay, let's move into
the next one. Progressing. Progressing
is the next combination. We've got high
willingness, we've got low self-awareness.
self-awareness.
So that box right here is the
progressing box. Tim, tell us a little
bit about the progressing box.
>> Right. So your your willingness is high.
That means you are willing to put forth
the effort. Even though your
self-awareness is low, if you're willing
to put forth the effort, you will make
some progress. It may come slowly. It
may be a very gradual ascent, but you're
still going to make progress. And that's
the key.
So, uh, you're just not going as fast as
you could because your your your
awareness is lagging.
But you know what I find is that if
someone fits this profile, Junior, and
they are progressing
over time, even if it's slow, the self-awareness
self-awareness
will increase because they continue to
strive. They continue to put forth the
effort. They can they're they're trying.
And so, it comes. It may come slowly,
but it comes.
>> In the car analogy, we call this good
gas pedal, foggy windshield. So, you're
good at laying on the gas. You can move
the car, but you've got a foggy
windshield. You're not entirely sure
where you're going because the awareness
isn't there. So, what does this look
like practically speaking? This is going
to be someone with good energy. It's
often what I find. They've got good
energy. They're hand raisers. They're
doers. Uh they often overpromise. That's
a pattern in this group. They often
misdiagnose root cause. So they're
raring to go. They're brighteyed and
bushy tailed. But
>> so they play they play offense, but they
make mistakes.
>> Yeah. Well, if you ask
>> go back and clean things up a lot.
>> Mhm. You'll ask something about root
cause and they'll either misattribute
something that might seem fairly obvious
to you or they'll excuse something that
they're not quite up to speed with, they
don't understand. And so this category
is one that's pretty interesting. You
have to make sure to get this right. If
you misdiagnose the willingness piece or
the awareness piece, your coaching
response is going to be incorrect. So if
we go down to the coaching response for
progressing, what do we do? We're going
to say that your play is mirror and
model. You want to model the right
behavior so that they have something to
go off of. And that's one of the things
that helps build awareness in people is
a comparison. And it's often why, again,
pro tip, I like to hire in twos. If you
have someone who is high willingness,
low self-awareness, and they don't have
a model, that's a peer that's doing
well, it's really difficult. It's also
difficult for you to know if they're
doing well or not if you don't hire in
twos. But that's one thing that you can do
do
>> because they don't have references.
>> They don't have references. I think
people that you would classify as
overzealous, Junior, would often fit
into this category. The energy is there,
the willingness is there, the
enthusiasm's there, but they go um
they're they're they're
just they're not directing the they're
not correcting themselves along the way.
They're not diagnosing along the way.
They're not adjusting along the way. And
as you said, they don't have often it's
for a lack of models or reference points
or or guidance along the way too.
>> A lot of people don't understand the
idea that they that the eventual goal is
to have them coach themselves. A lot of
people have not understood that
principle. They've never been exposed to
a coaching scenario where they were the
ones who were expected to come with some
answers which builds dependency which
build builds learned helplessness. So
they might be in a situation where
they're just waiting for feedback and
they haven't taken that step to say,
"Well, maybe I might be able to look at
my own performance and self diagnose and
self-correct." And so that's why we have
the mirror piece of this prescription,
which is use replays, use data
dashboards, encourage nightly or weekly
reflection logs. So let's say that you
have someone in client success, it's a
client-f facing role, you've got
recorded calls, or let's say that you're
just in a team meeting. that's probably
more broadly applicable. You're going to
want to immediately after
>> look at film, right? Either literally or figuratively,
figuratively,
>> and ask, "How did that go?"
>> Because what do we want to do? We want
to help build some introspection, some
metacognition to have them look back at
performance and say, "Well, uh, it
actually didn't go as well as I had
hoped." Okay, why do you think that?
Well, because so and so responded this
way. Why do you think they responded
that way? because I said this thing or I
said it this way or I didn't do
anything. If you can start to build that
muscle and the person is high
willingness now you can see how it's
possible to start building the awareness piece.
piece.
>> That's right. That's right. I love that. >> Okay.
