Being Coachable — Why the Best Physicians Never Stop Learning
The Moment It Clicked
A few years ago I was coaching a department chair who had been in academic medicine for over two decades. She had published extensively, held multiple leadership roles, and was widely considered one of the top people in her field. During our second session, she said something I have thought about ever since: "I used to think expertise meant having answers. Now I think it means knowing which questions I haven't asked yet."
That single shift -- from collecting answers to pursuing questions -- is the heart of what it means to be a coachable physician committed to continuous learning in academic medicine.
Why "Done Learning" Is a Dangerous Place
Medicine has a peculiar relationship with expertise. We train for a decade or more, pass boards, earn titles, and at some point the system stops formally evaluating us. The message, even if nobody says it out loud, is that you have arrived.
But arriving is not the same as staying sharp. Anders Ericsson, the psychologist whose research on deliberate practice shaped our understanding of expertise, made a point that gets overlooked in medicine: performance does not automatically improve with experience. In fact, without intentional effort, it can decline. A 2005 study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that physician knowledge and adherence to standards of care actually decreased over time for those who relied solely on clinical experience without structured learning.
That finding should unsettle anyone who believes seniority alone keeps them effective.
What Continuous Learning Actually Looks Like
When I say continuous learning, I am not talking about checking the box on CME credits. Most physicians already do that, and most would agree it rarely changes how they practice.
Real continuous learning is more personal and more uncomfortable. It looks like:
- Asking a junior colleague what they would do differently after a difficult case
- Reading outside your subspecialty to challenge your assumptions
- Sitting with a coach and admitting that a leadership approach you have used for years is not working anymore
- Seeking feedback on the parts of your work that feel most settled and safe
The common thread is a willingness to treat your own expertise as a work in progress. That is not a weakness. It is a growth mindset physician habit that keeps you relevant and engaged over a long career.
The Coaching Connection
Think about the best athletes in the world. LeBron James has won four NBA championships, four MVP awards, and has been playing professional basketball for over two decades. He still has a coaching staff. Not because he does not know how to play. Because he understands that an outside perspective sees what he cannot see from inside his own performance.
The same principle applies in academic medicine. A coach does not teach you medicine. A coach helps you see the patterns in your behavior, your decision-making, and your leadership that you are too close to evaluate on your own. The physicians who engage most deeply with coaching are almost always the ones who are already good at what they do. They are not looking for remediation. They are looking for the next edge.
The Quiet Discipline of Staying Open
Continuous learning sounds inspiring in the abstract. In practice, it requires something less glamorous: the discipline to stay open when your instinct is to protect what you already know. Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset reminds us that our relationship with learning is not fixed. We choose it, over and over, in small moments -- when we hear feedback that stings, when a trainee challenges our thinking, when a coaching conversation surfaces something we would rather not look at.
The physicians I work with who grow the most are not the ones with the most talent or the most prestigious CVs. They are the ones who decided, somewhere along the way, that being an expert does not mean being finished.
Where to Start
If you are reading this and recognizing yourself -- maybe you have felt that creeping sense that you are coasting, or that your development has plateaued -- the first step is simpler than you think. Ask someone you trust for honest feedback on one specific area of your work. Not a general "how am I doing?" but a pointed question: "What is one thing I could do differently in how I run our team meetings?"
That one question, asked sincerely, is an act of continuous learning. And it costs nothing except a willingness to hear the answer.
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