What It Actually Means to Be Coachable
You Got Here by Being Excellent. That Might Be the Problem.
You matched into a competitive residency. You published. You got the faculty appointment. At every stage, you succeeded by knowing the answer, performing under pressure, and proving yourself.
So when someone suggests you might benefit from coaching, something in your brain pushes back. I don't need help. I figured out everything else on my own.
I get it. But that reflex—the one that made you a high achiever—is often the exact thing that makes coaching harder than it needs to be.
Coachable Doesn't Mean Compliant
Let me clear something up. Being coachable has nothing to do with being passive or agreeable. It doesn't mean doing whatever someone tells you. That would be a terrible definition for physicians, who are trained to think critically about everything.
Being coachable means you're willing to sit with discomfort long enough to learn something. It means you can hear feedback without immediately building a defense. It means you can admit that your current approach—even if it's working—might not be the best one available to you.
That's not weakness. That's intellectual honesty. And it's harder than it sounds.
The Three Traits That Matter Most
In the physicians I coach, I've noticed three qualities that separate the ones who get the most out of the process from the ones who spin their wheels.
Curiosity over certainty. The most coachable people ask questions about themselves the way they'd ask questions about a complex case. They're genuinely curious about their own patterns, blind spots, and defaults. They treat self-knowledge as a skill, not a threat.
Willingness to experiment. Coaching isn't a lecture. It works when you try things between sessions—a new way of running a meeting, a different conversation with your chair, a boundary you've never set before. The coachable ones don't need to be convinced it will work first. They're willing to test it and see.
Honesty about what isn't working. This is the hardest one. Academic medicine rewards looking like you have it together. Admitting that something is off—your leadership approach, your relationship with a colleague, your career trajectory—feels risky. But coaching can't do much for you if you won't name the real issue.
Why High Achievers Struggle With This
There's solid research on this. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck's work on fixed vs. growth mindset shows that people who've been rewarded for talent their whole lives often resist situations where they might look incompetent. The stakes feel too high.
That describes a lot of physicians. You've been the smart one in the room since you were a kid. Your identity is built around competence. So anything that asks you to be a beginner—even temporarily—feels like a threat to who you are.
Coaching asks you to be a beginner. Not at medicine. At self-awareness, at leadership, at the kind of reflection that doesn't come with a clear right answer. That's uncomfortable for people who are used to being right.
You Don't Have to Be Perfect at This
Here's the thing I tell every new client: you don't have to be good at being coached. You just have to be willing.
Willingness is enough. If you can show up, tell the truth about what's happening in your career, and stay open to trying something different, the process works. You don't need to have read the right books or done any prep work. You just need to stop performing for an hour and be real about where you are.
That sounds simple. For most physicians, it's one of the hardest things they've ever done. And also one of the most valuable.
A Small Way to Start
Before you ever talk to a coach, try this: the next time you get feedback that stings, wait 24 hours before you respond. Don't defend. Don't dismiss. Just sit with it. After a day, ask yourself what might be true in it—even a small piece.
That pause is the muscle. Being coachable is just building that muscle over time.
If you're curious about what coaching looks like for someone in academic medicine, feel free to explore the blog or reach out directly. No agenda. Just a conversation about what you're working on.
