Sachin Jain, President and CEO, Board Director at SCAN Health Plan, shared on LinkedIn:
“Are you coachable or uncoachable?
Most people would say they are ‘coachable,’ but are you really? Do you make it easy for people to give you feedback? Or do you make them instantly regret it after the fact?
Years ago, my executive team worked with an early-career executive who argued incessantly about his performance evaluations. If we gave him a ‘meets expectations,’ he would plead his case for ‘exceeds expectations.’ If we gave him an ‘exceeds expectations,’ he would plead his case for ‘significantly exceeds expectations.’
And by plead his case, argue for hours about why he deserved a better rating. ‘Lobbying‘ was putting it mildly. And this was a window into how he dealt with feedback of any kind. It was exhausting.
This behavior became so tiresome that his direct manager actually asked me permission to give him ‘Significant exceeds‘ in perpetuity to save him (and me) the headache. On some level, you almost admired the guile and aggressive self-focus.
Except what happened along the way was he stopped getting any real feedback from anyone. The protective coat he built around himself—his ego defense—might have narrowly served his immediate self interest (getting a good evaluation), but he was permanently declared ‘uncoachable.’
His resistance to feedback that didn’t match his image of himself was not worth it to anyone. And he missed out on important lessons that might have helped him.
So when I ask, ‘are you coachable?’ what im really really asking, ‘do you want to grow?’ Do you care enough about your impact on others to hear what they really think? Or are you doggedly committed to the protective bubble around you that is almost certain to pop one day?”
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