LISTEN TO THE NARRATED AUDIOARTICLE VERSION
Are you coachable? How do you actually know?
Have you received feedback about something you know you should work on, but you’re not fully convinced you’ll be able to shift it? Are you curious about executive coaching, but unsure whether you have what it takes to do the work well? Does having coaching support sound appealing, but you’re not sure this is even the right time to take the leap with a qualified coach?
Here’s what may already feel familiar to you. You’re not lacking in capability or motivation, but there’s likely something you can’t yet see clearly: a blind spot, a limiting belief, or a habitual response that’s shaping your behaviour. You’re thoughtful, competent, and you’ve likely spent a great deal of time analysing your situation, and still, something feels stuck.
You may have replayed the feedback conversation, talked it through with trusted people, read the latest trending books, attended the workshops, or listened to the podcasts. On paper, you may even know what you should do next. Yet when the moment arrives, the behaviour doesn’t quite shift, the decision doesn’t land, or the same pattern shows up again. Sometimes awareness is enough to be able to change a behaviour. But when insight doesn’t translate into different choices or behaviours, and you’re not sure how to work with that gap or blind spot, that’s where coaching can make a meaningful difference.
If any of this sounds familiar, you’re in good company. Many people wrestle with the vulnerability it takes to seek this kind of support. When curiosity about coaching appears, it’s typically because you want greater awareness and traction. The question becomes: are you ready?
Over the years, I’ve worked with hundreds of leaders across sectors, levels, and personalities, and one thing has become very clear: executive coaching can be powerful, practical, and genuinely transformative. It can also be frustrating, circular, and expensive when the timing or focus is off. That difference often gets described as coachability, but it’s worth pausing here to name a distinction that will shape how you read the rest of this article.
This article’s designed to help you assess that for yourself with honesty and without judgement, while also helping you separate two things that are often blurred together: coachability and readiness. It isn’t meant to convince you to hire me or to position executive coaching as a cure-all. Its purpose is to help you decide whether this is the right conversation for you, right now.
WHAT COACHABILITY IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT
Before diving in, one important clarification. Coachability and readiness are related, but they’re not the same thing.
Coachability speaks to how you typically relate to feedback, uncertainty, and personal change. Readiness speaks to timing, context, and capacity, including what else is happening in your life and in the system around you.
You can be deeply coachable and still not ready. You can also feel ready for support, but struggle with some of the habits that make coaching effective. This assessment’s designed to help you notice both.
Coachability isn’t about being agreeable, positive, or easy to work with. Some of my most coachable clients are sceptical, analytical, and openly challenging, while some of the least coachable are polite, enthusiastic, and highly articulate about why nothing can really change.
Coachability also isn’t about having a clear goal perfectly defined right out of the gate. Many people start coaching with a vague sense of discomfort rather than a neat objective, and that isn’t a problem. In fact, it’s often a strong starting point for the coach and client to begin exploring and then crystallising the coaching topic.
Coachability’s about how you relate to yourself, your patterns, personality wiring, and defence mechanisms, and the possibility that your current way of operating, however successful it’s been in the past, may now be limiting you.
The most reliable way to assess coachability isn’t through labels or personality types, but through how you respond to a small set of very specific questions.
A SELF-ASSESSMENT YOU CAN ACTUALLY USE
Read the prompts below slowly and resist the urge to “perform insight,” meaning the temptation to sound self-aware rather than notice what’s actually happening for you in real time. Pay attention to your internal reactions as much as your answers, because irritation, resistance, relief, and curiosity are all useful data.
To make this more practical, I invite you to use a simple rating scale alongside each question. This isn’t a scorecard, and it isn’t a pass or fail test. It’s a way to notice patterns in how you typically respond.
After each question, rate yourself on a scale from 1 to 5 based on which description fits you most often.
1 = I’m protective or defensive by nature, even if I understand the feedback or situation intellectually
2 = I can occasionally stay open at first, but I close down when things start to feel uncomfortable
3 = I can sometimes stay open and reflective, but when the pressure builds, I revert to familiar patterns
4 = I can usually stay open and reflective, even when challenged, though certain situations still test me
5 = I can almost always stay curious, grounded, and willing to learn, even when the feedback or situation feels uncomfortable
There are no good or bad numbers here. The purpose is to notice where openness comes easily for you, and where it reliably gets harder.
1. HOW DO YOU RELATE TO FEEDBACK THAT DOES NOT MATCH YOUR SELF-IMAGE?
Think about the last piece of feedback that genuinely caught you off guard, not the kind you expected and not the kind you politely dismissed. What happened internally? Did you feel curious, even briefly, about what the feedback might be pointing to, or did your energy go immediately into explaining context, questioning the feedback giver’s intent, or coming up with reasons why the feedback was technically inaccurate?
Your self-assessment score: _____
Coachability doesn’t require you to agree with feedback, but it does require a willingness to stay present long enough to learn something from it. When feedback reliably triggers defensiveness, justification, or a strong need to be seen as right, coaching often feels uncomfortable very quickly. That doesn’t signal failure; it signals that the work will require a level of self-honesty you may or may not be ready to engage.
2. ARE YOU MORE INTERESTED IN EXPLAINING YOUR PATTERNS OR EXPLORING THEM?
Many leaders are excellent narrators of their own behaviour. They can explain why they react the way they do, how their background shaped them, and what pressures they’re under. This level of insight is valuable, and it’s also where progress often stalls.
Your self-assessment score: _____
Coachability shows up when someone’s willing to move beyond explanation into experimentation. Instead of staying with the question of why they’re like this, they become willing to ask what happens if they try something different.
When analysis consistently replaces action, coaching can feel repetitive. When experimentation’s allowed, even imperfectly, coaching tends to gain momentum.
3. HOW DO YOU HANDLE NOT KNOWING?
Executive roles reward decisiveness, expertise, and confidence, while coaching asks for something slightly different. It asks you to sit, at least temporarily, in uncertainty.
Your self-assessment score: _____
The question isn’t whether you enjoy not knowing, but whether you can tolerate it long enough to observe yourself in action. Leaders who are highly coachable aren’t less intelligent or decisive; they’re simply willing to slow their thinking long enough to notice what emerges.
When not knowing feels intolerable, or when ambiguity immediately reads as incompetence, coaching may feel destabilising rather than supportive.
4. DO YOU SEE YOURSELF AS PART OF THE PATTERN, EVEN WHEN OTHERS ARE INVOLVED?
Most leadership challenges involve other people, whether a peer, a boss, a team, or a system that genuinely makes things harder. Coachability doesn’t mean taking responsibility for everything, but it does involve examining how you’re participating in the pattern, even when others are clearly contributing.
Your self-assessment score: _____
It’s also important to name something explicitly here. Even highly coachable leaders can struggle to make progress if the system around them is misaligned. Organisational culture, role clarity, sponsorship, workload, and political dynamics all matter.
Coaching works best when there’s enough room in the system for reflection, experimentation, and learning. If your environment consistently punishes candour, vulnerability, or thoughtful pacing, that doesn’t mean you’re not coachable. It means readiness may depend as much on context as on personal willingness.
When your energy’s consistently focused on how to get others to change, coaching may feel limited. When curiosity extends to what’s within your control, including how you show up under pressure, and when the system allows some space to work with that, coaching has room to work.
5. ARE YOU WILLING TO EXPERIENCE DISCOMFORT IN SERVICE OF GROWTH?
Effective coaching isn’t confrontational, but it isn’t always comfortable. It surfaces habits you rely on, questions assumptions that’ve served you well, and invites you to experiment with behaviours that may feel awkward at first.
Your self-assessment score: _____
Coachable leaders aren’t fearless. They’re willing to feel mildly incompetent for a short period of time while learning something new. When discomfort consistently registers as danger, coaching may feel more threatening than helpful, which makes readiness an important consideration rather than a character judgement.
HOW TO MAKE SENSE OF YOUR RATINGS
Before moving on, pause and look across your ratings as a whole. Don’t add them up yet or average them. This isn’t about a score. What matters most is the pattern.
Notice where your ratings tend to cluster. Are there one or two questions where openness comes more easily for you, and one or two where defensiveness or hesitation reliably shows up? Those areas often point to the exact places where coaching does its most useful work.
If most of your ratings fall in the 4 to 5 range, coaching often feels like a stretch that’s energising rather than destabilising. You’re likely able to stay curious under pressure and to work productively with challenge.
If your ratings tend to cluster around 2 to 3, coaching can still be highly effective, but it may require a bit more time and patience as you build tolerance for uncertainty, feedback, or discomfort.
If several of your ratings are consistently at 1 or 2, that doesn’t mean coaching won’t work. It does suggest that timing, scope, or support structure matter greatly, and that naming this openly with a coach would be essential.
The goal of this assessment isn’t to decide whether you’re good enough for coaching. It’s to help you decide whether you’re ready to engage the work honestly, with support that fits where you are right now.
WHEN COACHING IS PROBABLY NOT THE RIGHT FIT
Coaching may not be the best investment at this moment if you’re primarily seeking advice or expert direction, if validation feels more important than challenge, if you hope a coach will fix a situation without requiring you to change how you operate within it, or if you’re navigating acute crisis, burnout, or mental health concerns that’d be better supported through therapy or medical care.
These aren’t character flaws; they’re signals about timing and fit.
WHEN COACHING TENDS TO WORK EXTREMELY WELL
Coaching’s often most effective when you sense that your current success is built on patterns that may not scale, when you’re willing to examine how your impact differs from your intent, when you want greater internal steadiness alongside external performance, and when you’re open to being surprised by what you discover about yourself.
This is often the point at which leaders move from doing leadership to inhabiting it more fully.
A FINAL REFLECTION BEFORE YOU DECIDE
The most coachable people I work with aren’t the ones who feel ready, confident, or certain. They’re the ones who are willing to tell the truth to themselves about where they are, without dramatizing it or minimising it.
If this article stirred defensiveness, curiosity, recognition, or resistance, that response matters more than whether you liked what you read.
YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE
At this point, you’ve taken an honest look at how you tend to relate to feedback, uncertainty, discomfort, and change.
Rather than treating this as a standalone exercise, I invite you to use what you’ve noticed to clarify your potential coaching topic.
Look back at your ratings and reflections and ask yourself:
Where did I feel the most friction or defensiveness?
Which question felt closest to a live issue in my leadership right now?
What pattern, belief, or habit seems to sit underneath that reaction?
Those answers often point directly to a meaningful coaching focus, not a vague goal, but a real edge you’re currently navigating.
If you’re noticing a clear theme and you’re curious to explore it with support, an exploratory coaching conversation can help you test whether this is the right time, the right scope, and the right kind of coaching for you. There’s no pressure and no obligation, just a chance to think out loud with someone certified to help you explore yourself and your situation more fully.
Reach out for a free exploratory Executive Coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com.