Are you coachable?
Reminder: It's time for your Weekly 1:1™
Today's agenda: 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 is a Leadership and Executive Coach with deep expertise in Meetings, Events, Travel and Hospitality. The Weekly 1:1™ publishes every Tuesday at 8am PT. Subscribe at lisaenglishsg.substack.com or subscribe below.