Think about some of the biggest victories you\u2019ve had personally or professionally.\u00a0 Graduating from college, paying off a big loan, or getting that promotion you longed for, are all great examples.\u00a0 As you reflect on these special moments in your life remember the time and effort they took to achieve and who helped you along the way to make your goal a reality.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s a personal win or a professional victory, there are likely a few fundamental similarities. \u00a0The bigger the accomplishment, the greater the sense of achievement and the grander the investment of time, effort, money or perhaps all of the above.\u00a0 Each of these wins required personal commitment, effort over time, and support and guidance along the way.<\/p>\n
Just as every great athlete has a coach to help them hone and improve their skills, we too can benefit from having a professional coach to support our growth and help us on our journey to achieve our goals.\u00a0 Most coaching will come from a direct supervisor although the role of coach can often be played by\u00a0 others, such as peers, trainers, and mentors.\u00a0 What does not change is the effort we must put in, to make the coaching a success.<\/p>\n
We have learned about coaching on several occasions but mostly from the coach\u2019s perspective. When it comes to coaching effectiveness, it\u2019s a two-way street. The coach and their ability to provide feedback for improvement is important.\u00a0 Equally critical is our decision to receive the feedback and do the work to make the improvements.\u00a0 The best coaching in the world won\u2019t help us unless we have a willingness to learn and ultimately follow through on the feedback by listening, practicing, and implementing the feedback consistently.<\/p>\n
Are you ready to be coached? How can you ensure the coaching sessions are successful?\u00a0 Below are 4 tips to help you in this journey.<\/p>\n
A willing heart is essential during coaching and greatly affects the outcome of it. Coaching aimed at solutions rather than problems, paired with a willing heart, makes all the difference.<\/p>\n
What does a willing heart mean in a real sense?<\/p>\n
It is when you can accept constructive criticism and direction from someone and become flexible enough to leverage it to improve, resulting in a benefit for you, your customer, team &\/or company.\u00a0 As you progress this will undoubtedly help you in your current role and may even support your career growth goals.\u00a0 Being teachable is an attribute commonly sought after by hiring managers.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t have a willing heart the process can end up being an uphill battle that will likely lead to little or no improvement in performance, frustration, resentment and poor customer and job satisfaction.\u00a0 Conversely, the better we become at things, the more enjoyable they become.\u00a0 With enough practice we may even find ourselves in a position to add value to others by teaching them what we\u2019ve learned.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere the heart is willing, it will find a thousand ways: where it is unwilling, it will find a thousand excuses,\u201d said Arlen Price.<\/p>\n
Progress doesn\u2019t come without commitment.\u00a0 If you feel criticized, it can be easy to give up, unless you are truly committed to growth and achieving whatever goals you have set for yourself.\u00a0 To be thoroughly committed means believing what you do is important to your success and the greater good of those around you.\u00a0 Remember why you started down this path to begin with, what is in your control, and know your ability to follow through on what you set out to do.\u00a0 All these things can help you remain committed to the process. You are important in terms of your identity and what you do. Your coach can\u2019t make you commit to the process; it must come from within you.<\/p>\n
To allow yourself to have sufficient psychological and material resources so that you can achieve your career goals you must self-commit. If you don\u2019t, you will sabotage yourself with all sorts of excuses and negative self-talk. If you truly commit to the coaching process, a successful outcome is inevitable.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing will work unless you do.\u201d John Wooden<\/p>\n
\u201cHard work beats talent, when talent doesn\u2019t work hard.\u201d Tim Notke<\/p>\n
When there is a trying situation at work, how do you respond to it? Do you meet it head-on and get a solution, or do you make excuses to rationalize? To have a solution focus is nothing more than your ability to control your emotional responses when there is pressure and focus on what is in control to have a positive impact on solving the problem.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s discuss an example.<\/p>\n
You are an account manager, and you end up losing a major account from one of your company\u2019s most valuable customers. This huge loss will result in questions from your leadership team. Your immediate leader will ask for a meeting where you both can discuss what went wrong, how that customer could possibly be brought back, and how the company can improve so there is not a future repeat of the same mistake.<\/p>\n
Tough questions will be asked.\u00a0 Think of this as a practical coaching session. When you are solution focused, you will be able to pull yourself together, recall the interactions you had with the customer and what led them to this decision.\u00a0 Through this exercise you can come up with some practical solutions to rectify the problem, potentially win the client back, improve your services, and prevent a similar situation in the future with this customer as well as others.<\/p>\n
If you get stuck focusing on what is out of control, or making excuses (rationalizing the situation), you will limit your future potential to prevent the same problem from happening again.\u00a0 Don\u2019t do it.\u00a0 Think about what can be learned from your current situation.\u00a0 Answer the tough questions, make adjustments and fail forward.\u00a0 This is where real growth happens.<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s important to take full accountability for your actions and reactions. Remember when you are being coached at work, it is more about guiding you in the right direction and helping you see how to improve yourself to have favorable outcomes. In order to grow you must acknowledge mistakes and understand the value of improvement.\u00a0 Whether you are an athlete, a student, or on the job, having discipline and being willing to practice implementing feedback is essential.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to be humble and take full accountability.\u00a0Your coach will help you highlight your opportunities for improvement, practice alternate methods, and give you room to implement all while giving you ongoing feedback.\u00a0\u00a0 Coaches will affirm successes in your implementation and also identify areas that may need better execution. This will be an ongoing process.\u00a0 Rinse and repeat. Once you have demonstrated successful behaviors through practice, it is your responsibility to commit to implementing the feedback with consistency to take your skills to the next level.<\/p>\n At the core, if you have a willing heart to learn, you are committed, solution focused, and take accountability for your actions you will have all the main ingredients needed to achieve positive coaching outcomes.<\/p>\n Be coachable\u2026and take control of your success!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Think about some of the biggest victories you\u2019ve had personally or professionally.\u00a0 Graduating from college, paying off a big loan, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15675,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[839,840,841,331],"class_list":["post-15674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-growth-potential-by-improving-your-coachability","tag-improving-your-coachability","tag-leadership-practices","tag-leadership-skills"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.etslabs.ai\/etech26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.etslabs.ai\/etech26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.etslabs.ai\/etech26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.etslabs.ai\/etech26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.etslabs.ai\/etech26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.etslabs.ai\/etech26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.etslabs.ai\/etech26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.etslabs.ai\/etech26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.etslabs.ai\/etech26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.etslabs.ai\/etech26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}4. Be Accountable<\/h2>\n