As we round out the dog days of summer, most of us have two things on our minds:
These two things might seem unrelated at first glance. But in fact, the success of both of your teams—your favorite NFL or college team and your sales team—will be heavily influenced by how coachable the players are on or in the field.
Sales Interview Tips- How to Spot Coachability | Sales Coaching | Aaron Evans Sales Training
If a team project you led yielded unfavorable results, how would you take accountability?
Employers ask this question because your answer usually demonstrates your leadership skills. Effective leadership often requires several other skills, including management, responsibility, organization and communication. When answering this question, its important you highlight your ability as a leader who can acknowledge their faults and take accountability for mistakes.
Example: “When I was a project manager, one of our deliverables didnt arrive on time due to an unexpected error in our workflow. Since I was the manager, I took accountability when addressing the senior leaders and stakeholders for the misstep. I then inserted flexibility into future workflows that ensured a mistake wouldnt result in a late deliverable.”
Describe a time when you made a mistake at work and had to tell someone about it. What did you learn from your mistake, and how did you fix it?
No matter the role, mistakes can occur unexpectedly in the workplace. An employer may ask this question because it assesses your integrity and accountability and helps them gauge your ability to learn from mistakes. This also offers insight into your problem-solving skills, as well.
Example: “While working as an IT support analyst, I was working on a clients computer and accidentally deleted some of their data. I immediately alerted my senior colleagues of the mistake because this was a serious concern. They showed me how to fix the problem, and it made me realize that seeking help is always the right response.”
Think about the last time you required assistance at work. What did you need help with, and why did you decide to ask for help?
An employer may ask this question because it helps them assess whether you take initiative in asking others for help when its necessary. While independence is important, its also helpful for people to seek assistance when challenging situations arise. This ensures that you can meet critical quotas and deadlines.
Example: “The last time I required assistance was when I worked on a major project with a looming deadline. I had little time to complete the project because I volunteered for additional work. I asked for helped from my teammates so I could complete the project on time, and they asked for help with tasks on future projects.”
If you responded in the affirmative to at least five of these questions, you have a high “coachability quotient” and should consider connecting with a coach who’s a good match for your professional and personal development.
As Whitmore hints, coaching is grounded in the belief that the client already has the ability to achieve their potential. The coach’s role is to help the client pinpoint desired development areas and surface strategies to enhance his or her effectiveness.
Coaching should be based on confidentiality and trust to enable an open and honest examination of what might be limiting the client’s ability to reach their goals. Coaching usually begins with a selection of assessments to help the client self-reflect and obtain feedback from others on things like their interpersonal style, a limiting mindset, or perhaps where they are most and least effective.
People often ask me if they should work with a coach to help them kick-start their professional success or to help move them in a new direction. For me, there’s not a quick and easy answer to this question, despite the many benefits coaching offers. This decision is best made in a thoughtful, purposeful way.
In his longtime best seller “Coaching for Performance”, John Whitmore defines coaching as “unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.”
Notice how this candidate speaks exclusively in second-person pronouns (e.g., you). Not once does this candidate say, “Here’s what I did,” preferring instead to identify what you should do. If the question had asked for a theoretical outline of problem-solving techniques, perhaps this answer would be okay. But the question asked them to describe a time when they made a mistake. This answer simply doesn’t answer the question.
Coachability may sound like an incredibly difficult characteristic to assess, but with a good interview question and knowledge of the differences between good and bad answers, you can often spot a lack of coachability pretty quickly.
In a nutshell, coachability is the ability to take feedback and use it to drive positive change. If you critique someone’s work and they respond with denial or blame, that’s the opposite of being coachable.
The interview question you’ll use is, “Could you tell me about a time you made a mistake at work?”
While there are myriad factors to assess whether someone is coachable, one of the simplest warning signs of candidates who lack coachability is when they avoid answering the question, often through the use of second-person pronouns.
How to Hire Coachable Employees
First, let me say that you can’t necessarily rely on skill, experience, or knowledge.
Candidates who have hit certain levels in these areas might win once or even a couple of times in their efforts to contribute by bringing what they already have to the team. But they won’t keep winning—achieving new and bigger career goals and producing the right results for your company—unless they keep improving.
The one behavior and primary characteristic that defines serial winners, the people who are most likely continue to contribute in a constantly changing business environment, is coachability.
So what do you look for in an interview? Here are three ways to spot coachability in your candidates.
FAQ
What is an example of Coachability?
Listening skills and flexibility: People who are coachable pick up on the subtlety of a conversation and recognize verbal cues. During an interview, they can adjust when the topic moves in a new direction – they can be flexible without having to be told.
How do you show Coachability in an interview?
…
Here are three ways to spot coachability in your candidates.
- Improvement. They acknowledge that they’ve been coached in the past. …
- Eagerness. They responded to coaching with eagerness and appreciation. …
- Initiative. They describe their “next steps” after coaching.
How do you demonstrate coachable?
- You are open with others.
- You show support to your team members, or “other players”
- You are willing to put your ego aside.
- You have a growth mindset.
- You celebrate solid results.
- You take steps towards transparency and openness.
- You compliment the ability of others.
What questions will I be asked in a coaching interview?
- Why did you want to become a coach? …
- Can you describe what a typical practice looks like for your teams? …
- What are your core values as a coach? …
- How do you view the relationship between academics and athletics? …
- How will you develop community support for the team?
