5 Ways to become Coachable

Coachability is the capacity to learn, to grow, and to allow yourself to be taught by people who are more experienced and are willing to teach. Being coachable, or allowing yourself to learn and possessing the humility and patience to mature, will take you to new heights. In Aristotle’s words, “Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.” 

Here are some ways you can become coachable:

1. Patience

The process of learning and growing takes time and you need to be patient enough. But like all other things that take time, it’s worth it. You can’t rush the process of learning, or the quality of what you’ve learnt isn’t going to measure up.

2. Humility

You can’t learn anything if you have an unshakably high opinion of yourself. While confidence is important, what’s more important is to recognize that you need to lower yourself to allow learning. You need to accept the fact that you don’t know everything and there is room to learn, and go from there. Ego can in no way facilitate learning, it only discourages it. 

3. Allow Mistakes

Mistakes are inevitable, and more so while learning. In fact, the mistakes you make are a measure of how much you’re testing unfamiliar waters, and therefore learning and growing. Allow yourself to make mistakes, and have the humility to accept those mistakes and learn from them.

4. Believe in Yourself

While humility is important, believing in yourself is important too. You should recognize your worth and realize that you’re capable of learning and evolving. You need to have faith in the process and believe that everything will work out. 

5. Learn for the Sake of Learning

This is perhaps the most important. You can only truly learn if you learn for the sake of learning and not as a means to achieve something else. If you want to learn, your priority should be learning and not to use what you’ve learnt to achieve some material dreams. Dreams and aspirations serve as good motivation for learning, no doubt, but avoid making them the centre of everything. When you’re learning, avoid focusing and calculating the effect it has on your future, and just learn. 

And most importantly, never give up. Don’t allow any obstacles, failures or setbacks to keep you from learning. Remember why you started in the first place, and let it serve as motivation, but not the reason, for you to learn.