Be Coachable
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I grew up playing sports. I played just about every team sport at one time or another during my childhood. I loved baseball, so I stuck with that into college, but sports, in general, taught me one of the best lessons to prepare me for my professional career: How to be “coachable.”
Throughout the years, across different teams and sports, I’ve had somewhere in the ballpark of twenty different coaches. They were all unique personalities, but one of the things they all had in common, was they wanted players who were “coachable”. It didn’t matter how talented you were at the plate, how fast you could throw from the mound or your range in the outfield. The coaches wanted to know that when they gave you feedback, you would listen to them and take corrective action to improve.
Now, what does it mean to be “coachable”? I think it’s pretty simple, all things considered. Being coachable is about being willing to sit there, listen to feedback, respond respectfully, and understand what needs improvement. If you are receiving feedback from a manager, don’t sit there and look at your phone, stare off into space, or walk away while they talk to you. That isn’t going to help anything. It can be hard, especially if the feedback is emotional. And I’m not saying that being coachable does not mean you can’t stand up for yourself when necessary. I’ll come back to the idea of self-advocacy in another newsletter. But being coachable does mean that sometimes you have to bite your tongue. Try to understand why that feedback may be coming from an emotional place. If you need to ask questions to help fully understand the next steps for corrective action, then take a deep breath, do not respond from an emotional place, and ask. Being coachable does mean that you need to own your mistakes and learn from them.
The second aspect of being coachable is taking corrective action. I’ll use a personal story to help illustrate this aspect. I was reviewing my first set of submittals for a ground-up multifamily project. I started to get lazy (and honestly, kind of bored) reviewing submittals, and instead of doing full due diligence, I started stamping and submitting things to the architect for approval. I had five different submittal packages returned marked as “Revise and Resubmit,” all within the same day. My Senior Project Manager was not very happy with me. We were starting the project off on a bad foot with the architect, who, of course, told the owner, and frankly, that put us behind the ball. And we hadn’t even broken ground yet! I received some feedback that day from a pretty emotional place. But there was nothing I could do, I got lazy and didn’t do my job correctly. I could’ve shifted the blame and tried to point fingers at our trade partners, but that wouldn’t help. I had to just own my mistake. I screwed up, that’s on me. I listened to my Senior PM, and any time I felt like being lazy and cutting corners after that day, I thought back to the time he chewed my butt out for not doing my job. I didn’t let it happen again. Taking corrective action is just as important as learning to listen and discern the feedback you are receiving.
Learning to be coachable, not respond emotionally (or defensively) in the moment, and take corrective action has helped me tremendously in my career. If you want to set yourself apart, learn to be coachable. Keep pushing boundaries, keep learning, and keep building.
-Fulton
