We all know that having a coach, having someone in your corner to hold you accountable, to push you, to talk to you, and to teach you is vital to your success. Coachability is a difficult quality to pinpoint. However, those who are willing to never quit and instead get feedback, even if it isn’t particularly kind, take it in stride, hear it, process it, and make changes to their game, inevitably go from being a pretty lousy player to, at the very least, the most technically reliable and dependable one on the field. Discover the three ingredients required to embody coachability, the benefits of being coachable in all stages of life and its effects on results, and how being coachable opens your heart to possibility. Learn how leveraging coachability can work to your advantage.
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Leveraging Coachability As A Channel To Opportunity And Possibility
We’re going to be talking about leveraging coachability as a channel to opportunity and possibility. We all know that having a coach, having someone in your corner to hold you accountable, to push you, to talk to you, to teach you as a mentor, as a coach is vital to your success. What we want to talk about are the ingredients to being coachable, to embody coachability. What are the benefits of being coachable in all stages of life and its effect on results? How can being coachable open up your heart to possibility?
I, myself, have multiple cultures and multiple mentors that have helped me along the way. Some that I know on a personal level and some that I have never met at all, but I have read the material, I have listened to them. I have gleaned all sorts of information from them and then not have those coaches that I meet with on a regular basis, some that are paid, some that coached me voluntarily and some that I pull information from whenever I see them, whenever I talk to them. Some that I speak with more regularly than others. The point is they are vital and crucial to our success.
What I want to talk about is how to be coachable and how to leverage coachability to your advantage. I believe that when you have a coach in your life, it provides advantage. It provides opportunity. It provides possibility for you to go further, to do more, to have more. We sometimes try to accomplish our goals and our dreams, and we try to do it all alone. I believe that having a coach in your life is vital to your success. You can accomplish more, like being in the gym whenever you have a spotter.
Those of you that that work out, if you are in the gym and you have that spotter, it seems you can do more. You can lift more weights, you can accomplish more, you can go farther when you have someone in your corner pushing you and helping you go along the way. I like to have that distinction between a coach and a mentor. Sometimes people get that mixed up. I have both, but I understand that role that they play in my life in terms of a coach or a mentor. I was always taught that a coach is someone who can see the potential in you. Although they’ve not done what it is that you’re trying to do, they can see that you are capable of doing it.
Leveraging Coachability: Having a coach, having someone in your corner to hold you accountable, to push you is vital to your success.
For example, there may be a particular goal that you’re trying to reach and you have a coach that’s coaching you on. They may not have accomplished that goal before, but they see that you have that potential. They see something in you and they coach you. They push you, they motivate you, they inspire you. They may even give you information on how you can accomplish that goal. How you can do that, even though they have not done that. Whereas a mentor is totally different. A mentor is someone who’s walked that path. They have real life experience with the goal, the challenge, the obstacle or the level of success, the destination that you are trying to accomplish. It’s good to have that distinction between the two of a coach and a mentor. What is more important than the coach and the mentor is the coachability of the mentee.
That’s what we want to get into because I believe that sometimes people are not coachable. They’re just not for whatever reason. None of you are un-coachable. I’m going to assume that as I go forward that none of you are uncoachable. You’re going to have some tools, you have some techniques, you’re going to have some things that you can implement in your life that will allow you to be more coachable. Perhaps you’re dealing with someone who’s not as coachable as they probably could be. You’re going to have some insight into how that person can be more coachable. Let’s jump into this and I want to jump into the three ingredients that are required for you to embody coachability.
One of the first things that a person should have whenever they are being coached by someone is an open mind. I coach people myself and I’ve ran across several individuals who want advice. They want someone to help them accomplish their goals and their dreams, but they don’t have the open mind to the coaching. They have their own idea of what it’s going to take for them to get where they want to go. They come to me and they say, “I want you to coach me.” I give them some pointers. I give them some things to do and they’re like, “I don’t like this,” they’re not open to the suggestion. They have their own agenda. They have their own fixed mindset on what it’s going to take for them to accomplish the goal.
I ask myself, “Why did you come see me? Why are you reaching out to me if you’re not going to take the advice?” How many of you have seen that? How many of you have done that before where you’ve reached out for advice and you weren’t particularly excited about the advice that you got back? You were a little apprehensive about what the coach was offering to you to do. I think you have to have an open mind. Sometimes we get in that state of mind where we think we know or perhaps we don’t feel that the advice or the suggestion that someone is offering is going to get us where we want to go. I’ve had my own personal experience where a coach has mentioned something to me that I needed to do in order to go to that next level and be more successful. It seems this isn’t going to take me where I want to go, or it seems very uncomfortable or it seems benign. It seems like, “Why do you have me doing this?”
I have a coach in the gym and sometimes the exercises that he dictates to me to do are not things that I want to do, especially not right away. I felt like, “Why are we doing this? This is not going to get me where I want to go,” because we have that big picture, we have that goal or that dream that we want to accomplish. In order to get there, we have to step back in and do this thing. That’s not particularly comfortable or something that we want to do. We may not have considered that as a viable step in the process to get where we want to go.
Sometimes it requires having an open mind to suggestion. Having an open mind to something new. Something that you may have not thought of, may have not have not even implemented ever. There’s something that you don’t want to do. I have to offer to you that sometimes the coach knows best. It’s like mom, mom knows best. Sometimes you have to take heed to that. You have to adhere to that. You have to be open to that suggestion and willing to do it and step in there and say, “I’m going to take this advice, I’m going to implement it, and I’m going to do it.”
That takes me to my second ingredient to embody coachability, which is listening to understand. I love the scripture that says, “In all thy getting, get understanding.” It’s a proverb. I live by that because sometimes when we are being coached or even mentored, we hear things. There’s a difference between listening and hearing. I heard someone say that hearing is a biological skill versus listening is a learned skill. You automatically come out of the womb being able to hear, but listening is something that you have to learn to do. Listening is something that you have to have whenever it comes to being coachable. Lot of times we don’t listen to the advice. We don’t take heed to it. We don’t take action on it. We don’t listen to it. Sometimes don’t even seek to understand it. It goes in one ear and out of the other. Sure you’ve heard that before.
If you want to reap the benefits of being coached, you have to listen. Sometimes you have to listen to understand. You have to seek to understand. You have to be that person that’s not hearing the words, but actively taking the words in, understanding what the steps are and then taking action on that. Doing it and understanding where your coach, your mentor or whoever is speaking with you, where are they coming from? A lot of times they are genuinely trying to help you. I believe that a lot of times when we don’t see the results that we want whenever we’re being coached, it’s not so much that the coach wasn’t a good coach. It could be that there was some disconnect, there was a breakdown in communication or an understanding of what the required action is. A lot of times we don’t get clear about that.
We don’t get clear about what our step is and what our part of this process is whenever we were receiving advice and coaching from our coach. Being a person who’s willing to listen whenever they are getting feedback, whenever they may be getting feedback that’s not particularly kind. Sometimes you have to take it in stride, you have to hear it, you have to process it. You have to make changes to your game, make changes to whatever it is that you’re doing. You have to take that on and it may be uncomfortable. It may even hurt. It may cut and you may not like the feedback that you’re getting from your coach. Your coach may be on you, they may be digging into your stuff and sometimes we don’t want to hear that. Especially when we feel like, “I’m doing my best. I’ve tried hard as I could,” but yet that coach can see more. That coach knows that there is more, and that coach is squeezing you, trying to get that last drop, that last ounce of greatness out of you.
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Sometimes we feel enough is enough, but the coach sees more and listening to that, getting that feedback, processing it, being able to be someone that has thick skin and take it all in stride. Whenever you are getting information that may be cutting you, that may be uncomfortable for you about your performance, about your way of life, about the things that you have been doing, whatever it is. Sometimes we can take this to relationships. Sometimes our significant other can give us some coaching, coaching that we truly don’t like.
Sometimes we don’t hear it. We don’t listen to it. We don’t like it. How many of you have had situations where you will receive information, you will listen to information, the same information as long as it’s not coming from your spouse? Someone like Joe Blow down the street or you can hear something on television. Perhaps you can hear something on this podcast that you know that you need to do that’s dead on about you and stuff that you need to take in your life to be a better person. Perhaps a better husband, a better financial manager, a better employee, a better CEO, whatever it is but someone close to you perhaps have told you that same thing before and you weren’t willing to receive it, you weren’t willing to accept that. That’s what I’m talking about what when I’m saying coachability, because you can have a coachability spirit.
You can walk around being coachable, willing to take that advice and willing to take heed to any type of information that’s going to allow you to be a better person. Sometimes we’re not willing to do that and that’s not embodying coachability. It isn’t but whenever you’re able to listen and you’re able to understand and you’re able to take it in stride, when you’re able to get that constructive feedback and take it gracefully and gratefully, you’re talking about possibilities opening up for you. You’re talking about avoiding pitfalls. You’re talking about accelerating your success and your growth as a human being or in whatever field that you may be in.
That takes me to my third ingredient of coachability, which is commitment. You have to be committed to that. You have to be committed to greatness. You have to be committed to getting better, being better, doing better, having better, experiencing better. Whenever you are committed and you’re willing to take that advice and you’re willing to implement it, it’s that level of commitment that brings about the transformation.
You can hear it, you can listen to it, but if you’re not committed to a plan, if you’re not committed to being coachable, if you’re not committed to receiving that constructive feedback, that final step in the process of action, of implementation, of consistency. That’s going to get lost. You’re not going to do that. That’s where the magic really happens. This is one of the most powerful key ingredients of being coachable is being committed. Committed to yourself, committed to the goal, committed to the destination, committed to the goal of the team, committed to the mission, and committed to the vision. Whenever you have that commitment and you realize that the coach is in your corner, that he’s there for you, and then there’s that trust in what the coach is seeing, that trust in the process. These are all things that are going to get you where you want to go. This is what’s going to take you to the next level. This is what separates those that achieve greatness versus those that settle for mediocre.
It’s that commitment, being able to implement, go forward, take it in stride and apply it to your life. I love coachability. I love a person that’s coachability. You can give me a person with a lot of talent, but is not coachable. I would rather have someone who has not as much talent but is coachable. Coachable, because we can achieve more if the person is coachable. There are benefits of being coachable and there are benefits in all stages of life. It has an effect on your results.
One of the benefits of being coachable is flat out simply achieving goals, getting to your destination, and going from one level to the next. That’s the benefit of being coachable because you learn, you’re inspired and you hear. Sometimes the reason why we’re not able to go to that next level, sometimes the reason why we’re not able to experience the greatness, the success, the goodness that we want to experience in life is because we don’t have anyone that’s telling us where our blind spots are. We don’t know what we’re doing wrong.
You’re trying hard. You’re putting all this effort forward and you’re doing great. Perhaps you’re not getting there. You’re missing the target and you’re so close. You are right there, but sometimes we have to understand where our blind spots are. That’s why I love a coach because a coach can observe from a different angle. They can observe you when you’re on the court, when you’re making your move. They can tell you little small changes that you can make in order to increase your game, to increase your speed. Sometimes this can be little changes that make such drastic differences in your life.
The course of your life can be changed by one small piece of information. Without a coach, it perhaps can take years for you to understand that this one small piece of information is missing. This one small piece of information can alter your life for the better. I believe that having a coach allows that possibility. It allows you to achieve goals. It allows you to avoid pitfalls, and I’m going to say that again, avoid pitfalls.
Sometimes that coach can be the bridge between the hole in the ground and the destination that you desire to reach. They can see things that you possibly can’t see. They can hear things that you possibly can’t hear and they can share things with you about you and your game. You’re focused on performance and they can forecast, they have the foresight; they have the view of you at a different angle and perhaps can see things that you can’t see. They’re able to share that thing with you and that accelerates your success.
Leveraging Coachability: One of the first things that a person should have whenever they are being coached by someone is an open mind.
It accelerates your success because you don’t have to go through that pitfall and then figure out how to get out of that pitfall. Even having a coach, if you do happen to find yourself in a pitfall, can you help you get out of that pitfall? Shorten the time that you are in that pitfall. This can be in all areas of life. It can be a marriage, business relationship, in the gym, nutritional habits, nutritional goals, eating habits, eating clean, taking care of your body, your finances, your budgeting, your investments, starting a business, in all areas of life it’s good to have a coach. We live in an information world.
This is the information age. What I like about coaches is they have access to information. I have a friend of mine, he talks. He goes around the world doing talks about having a mentor and how having a mentor allows him to cheat, so to speak. He teaches kids, young and old, about the importance of having a mentor in your life. Having a mentor or coach, it gives you a cheat sheet.
They can give you certain types of information that you perhaps wouldn’t have access to and perhaps you wouldn’t even know about. They can research things for you. They can step in and give you keys and pointers about how to do better, how to be better. It’s good to have someone that you can go to talk about your performance, to talk about the things that are going on in your life and let that all out. Have someone that will hold you accountable.
Put deadlines and timeframes around the task that you need to do so you’ll be responsible towards your goals. That can help you accomplish your dreams much faster. We would like to do that to ourselves. Some of us are good at discipline ourselves, but it’s something different when you have that coach that you have to be accountable to, to hold you accountable, that you have to check in with, that person that’s going to ask you, “Did you do this?” or “Did you do that?”
That same person could be the guy that will say, “Have you decided to look at it this way? Have you decided to do it this way?” I love being coachable. In my life, I’ve had many experiences of coachability, of being coachable that has allowed me to accomplish many things. I think about on my job, about being a person with a disability and learning how to overcome all of the suggestions that I was given to by certain therapist, even friends in the healing community who suggested to try certain themes or research certain themes, eat certain things, not eat certain things. I am grateful to have a coachable mindset to do some of those things because some of those things have allowed me to make leaps and bounds, quantum leaps in my success, in my recovery, even in my business.
I’m talking about getting clients, even doing this podcast, even setting up my business, and running my business. It has allowed me to increase my revenue, increase my profit margin. and having a coach in your corner, it’s vital. Being coachable is even more important. I can’t say that enough. When I think about coachability, I think about how it opens up your heart to possibility about how the coaches in my life have allowed me to produce that courage and that confidence. I’m talking about the competence and the courage to think the incredible, to think the incredible things about my life. We all have a certain level that we would like to live, but we don’t always live at that level.
Sometimes we’re living at a level that is way beneath what we would like to live. My coaches, at the very least, have allowed me to think about and pursue living at the highest level possible. Living with complete abundance, complete joy, complete freedom. It takes a coach to help you push beyond your current circumstances, to believe in the incredible, to think the impossible, and to pursue the impossible. Sometimes that’s what we need. We need someone else to believe in us, someone else to give us the courage to believe in ourselves and then hold us accountable to our goals, to our personal goals, to our personal dreams and be there for us to assist us. You have to be coachable. When you have that coach and you are coachable, these are the things that are available to you.
You’re talking about increasing your faith and increasing your belief in living a life that you love. Who wouldn’t want that? Why wouldn’t you want that? How could you not accept that from your coach? They’re pulling out the best you, your best self. That’s one of the things I love about being coachable. I’ve grown so much in my life as a result of being coachable. I’ve experienced much more in my life as a result of being coachable. I’ve become an author, a writer, a speaker and a trainer. Ever since I’ve gotten to this business, I started with a coach. I got into this business and I wanted to learn how to write a book and one of the first things I did is I found someone to teach me and to coach me through writing a book.
[Tweet “You have to be committed to greatness.”]
I wanted to speak. I wanted to go all over the world speaking. I found someone to help me speak. I wanted a podcast. I found someone to help me start my podcast. All of these things required me to be coachable and I’ve grown tremendously. My life has completely changed and you’re talking about a short amount of years. I’ve gone from having an idea of writing a book to becoming an international bestselling author, speaking, coaching, training all over the world. My voice, my material, the themes that I’ve experienced, the knowledge, the education that I received as a result of going through my experience, as a result of starting my business and becoming a CEO, President, and Founder, I’ve been able to share that knowledge and share that information. I’m talking to hundreds of thousands of people around the world and I’m going to be honest with you.
For those in our audience, coachability and having a coach has been the crux of all of that. It has truly been the foundation along with being committed, open minded, listening to the advice; it has extremely accelerated my success and has allowed me to accomplish things outside of my wildest dreams. The beauty of it is all of that and more is available to you. All it truly takes is you opening up your heart, being accountable, taking it in stride, getting the positive feedback, being the person that’s going to hear it. Process it and make changes to your game. You end up becoming one of the most technically reliable and dependable players on the field. It will completely change your game and you will become a game changer. That’s what this is all about.
Game changers are coachable. You can’t make a difference in the world if you’re not coachable. Let’s face it, a lot of us are treading paths and out here trying to make a difference in the world and some of the things that we’re attempting to do that we’re trying to do, we’ve never done this before. It’s new. It’s uncomfortable, it’s unfamiliar, and having a coach and being coachable, that brings some normalcy to the game, if you will. It brings some calmness, a little peace of mind, a little can do attitude to the game.
We all need that. Sometimes it’s a little difficult for us to think the incredible. If you would’ve told me that you’ll be a bestselling author with three books, you have your own podcast; you will be speaking all around the world. You have your own business, changing lives, teaching people how to be resilient. If you would have told me that five years ago, I would have been like, “That sounds nice. “I wouldn’t have believed that. I wouldn’t.
I’ll tell you the beauty of this is once you become coachable, you have a good coach, you have someone who truly believes in you. It doesn’t stop. You go from one level to the next. There’s the thing, you probably heard that there are levels to this. It truly is, there are levels to your success, there are levels to your greatness, there’s level to your forwardness of expression and it keeps going. Whenever you accomplish one thing, there’s more to accomplish. There’s another challenge yet for you to overcome. That’s where that coachability has to remain consistent, has to remain a vital part of your life because you’re going to need it because you go from one stage to the next.
You go from one level of income to the next level, one level of transformation to the next level, one level of open-mindedness to the next level, one level of understanding to the next level. Hear this one, one level of commitment to the next, because I’ve heard someone say that, “The greater you become, the higher you go, the more success for you attempt to obtain, the more distractions they are, the more there is less room for error.” It’s like that big game where everything is on the line.
You’ve made it through the season, you’ve made it to the playoffs and you are in the championship game. Everything is on the line. You have to remain coachable and the beauty of it is you get to remember all of the coaching. You get to remember all of the experiences that you’ve had along the way to prepare you for your greatest moment in life and to prepare you for that opportunity and that possibility. That is called leveraging your coachability as a channel to your opportunity and possibility.
Ladies and gentlemen, anything that you want to accomplish in life, anything is possible for you. There are many things that goes into you accomplishing the things that you want to accomplish and I’m talking about anything. Yes, I’m adamant when it comes to the word anything that you want to accomplish. I’ve been in a place where they told me that I couldn’t accomplish walking again. They told me that I was going to be a vegetable for the rest of my life and that my goals, my dreams of being an effect citizen in my community, being able to be independent was not possible for me.
Here I stand, here behind this microphone with no fear, willing and able to bead you good information and inspire you, coach you and motivate you to your greatness. One of the many things that has gone into accomplishing that and experiencing those things is being able to be coachable. A certain level of humbleness has to come with being coachable as well as a good balance of aggression.
Leveraging Coachability: Listening is something that you have to have whenever it comes to being coachable.
It has to. You have to strike that balance because sometimes it’s going to be whole and that’s what it is. Sometimes you’re going to have to give it everything. Sometimes you’re going to have to grit up and you’re going to have to go and you’re going to have to have some doggone in this. Sometimes you going to have that attitude towards what it is that you’re trying to accomplish, attitude towards the task and the obstacles that are standing in your way.
At the same time, you have to have that level of humbleness to understand that perhaps you fell short; perhaps you’ve done it wrong, perhaps there’s another way than your way. Be able to take that constructive criticism, implement it to your life, to your performance, to all that you do, to all stages of your life in order to accomplish what it is that you want to accomplish. It is possible for you.
Coachability can help you leverage and channel your energy, your strength, your performance and all there is of you towards your opportunity and your possibility. I wish you the greatest success. I wish you 100% great success in your life and in your business. Thank you all for listening. I love you all. This has been a wonderful show. I hope it has helped you. Join our community.
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