Are You Coachable?
Tuesday, October 4 2005Dear friend,
I hope this finds you well. Coaching is a phenomenally popular industry and according to Google, over 30,000 people now search for a Life Coach every month. So I thought it would be useful to ask the question, are you coachable?
Not everyone is. The successful outcome of sessions with a coach depend, to a very large extent, on your willingness and readiness to be coached. Coaching is not a secret formula quick-fix: it's not something that's done to you.
It requires your active involvement and willingness to take responsibility for creating your happiness and the results you want.
A good coach will probe and ask uncomfortable questions: they won't collude in rigmarole, drama, blame, resignation or poor-me stories. If this sounds harsh, it's because coaching is for strong, emotionally robust individuals who want to challenge themselves and be challenged to better themselves, move out of a comfort zone to fulfil their greatest potential and grandest vision of themselves.
Who is uncoachable?
There are times when coaching may be entirely inappropriate for people, such as after a bereavement or when something gentler like counselling to talk through an issue, without necessarily taking action or changing anything specific in your life, is more useful. These individuals may well come to coaching at a later time.
But the people I've turned away as truly uncoachable are:
1. The ones who are not willing to accept responsibility for what goes on in their lives, see the part they play and have played in creating their results and therefore, work with me to figure out better ways of doing things in the future.
And, before anyone writes in, this isn't about blame – it's about lessons and moving on with wisdom, not resentment or bitterness, towards yourself or anyone else.
2. The other type of person I often find uncoachable are those who have done too much therapy and who have acquired the habit of talking, without taking action.
My experience is that they talk about what they want and then talk about how they feel about not ever doing anything. Extraordinary but true.
I don't mind admitting that I have handed money back to a few people over the years!
Are you coachable?
I want to encourage you to try coaching for yourself, if you haven't already. I can recommend wholeheartedly the people who work with me here: they're great people and brilliant coaches. As long as you're coachable, you'll get excellent results in working with them.
To give you a taste of good coaching, every coach on my team here is giving away 10 free 30-minute sessions!
We're giving away 200 free sessions!
Far too generous I know! But, take advantage of our invitation to see what 30 minutes with a great coach can do for you. Simply e-mail the coach of your choice (just choose one) with a brief outline of what you'd like to focus on in the session, your availability and contact details.
You can select your coach from the team featured here and contact them by clicking on their photo and using the online contact form on their profile page.
It's first-come, first served, so if you've been lucky, the coach will get back to you straightaway.
The wonderful coach and author Francine Kaye has vast experience of coaching individuals, couples, organisations, face-to-face and over the phone. She is brilliantly placed to speak on this subject and help you gauge how coachable you are. Her approach has been described as "tough love" and I think that's rather accurate! She is tough, but with only her client's best interests at heart. Her motivation is utterly impeccable.
