Are you coachable?
The question on the table: What would be possible if you stopped managing the conversation and started trusting it?
Before we start: Go ahead, pour a little more coffee.
I want to ask you something, and I'd like you to really sit with it before you answer.
Are you coachable?
Not "are you open to feedback" - that's a different question, and most of us have learned to say yes to it whether it's true or not. I mean the deeper version. Are you willing to be seen in the places that feel uncertain, unfinished, not yet figured out? Are you willing to stay in a question long enough for something real to surface, rather than moving quickly to an answer that feels safer than the truth?
Here's what I see sometimes, and I say this with a lot of care: people invest in coaching, they show up, they engage, real progress happens. And I find myself thinking about how much more would be possible if they let themselves go just a little further. Not because anything is wrong. But because there's a layer underneath the professional presenting surface where the most important material lives, and most of us have gotten very good at staying just above it.
I get it. You've built a career on being the person who knows things. Who leads the room. Who has the answer before anyone finishes asking the question. Being uncertain inside a coaching conversation, in front of another person, on purpose - that runs counter to almost everything that got you here.
But coachability isn't about having the answers. It's about being willing to not have them, at least for a little while. To say "I don't know why I keep doing this" and stay there. To let someone else into the room where you keep the things you haven't figured out yet.
I remember the moment in my own coaching when I stopped performing for my coach and started actually letting them see what was underneath. It was uncomfortable in a way that felt almost physical - like taking off a coat I didn't realize I'd been wearing. I had been showing up prepared, thoughtful, ready to engage. What I hadn't been doing was letting any of it be messy. The moment I did, the conversation became something different entirely.
When someone lets themselves go to that place, something shifts that's hard to describe but impossible to miss. They start asking different questions - and they start saying things they've never said out loud before. They stop coming to sessions with a prepared agenda and start coming with what's actually on their mind. They catch themselves in patterns they couldn't see before - not because I pointed them out, but because they finally had enough stillness to notice. They start making decisions from a place that feels more like themselves and less like whoever they thought they were supposed to be in the room.
And the most common thing I hear, from people who have gotten there, is some version of: I didn't know it could feel like this. Not easier, necessarily. But clearer. More like the real thing.
That's what coachability actually requires. Not openness as a concept. Vulnerability as a practice. And a willingness to trust - yourself, the process, the person across from you - enough to stop managing the conversation and let it be real.
If you've been curious about what that kind of conversation actually feels like, I'd love to offer you a gifted session - just an hour, no obligation, no pitch. Just a real conversation. You can book directly here.
The question I'll leave you with this week:
What would be possible if you stopped managing the conversation and started trusting it?
Lisa English, ACC, CMM has led enterprise meetings and events on both the corporate and agency sides, and is a credentialed leadership coach who builds teams that stay, grow, and deliver. The Leader's 1:1™ publishes twice a month.