As someone who regularly coaches professionally I read with interest Seth Godin’s discussion on [1] coaching the uncoachable. While I agree with his point, one of the main presuppositions in the post is just plain wrong.

He describes some of the symptoms of uncoachability and almost all of them imply that coaching is about the coach, when in facts it’s really about the person being coached. These symptoms also point to failures within the relationship between the coach and coachee.

* Challenging the credentials of the coach

This is a requirement. Of course, the challenge should be in regards to understanding how the coach can help your performance, not as a methods of discrediting their suggestions.

* Announcing that you’re being unfairly singled out

If a coach offers you a suggestion, you are being singled out. The coach (we hope) is professional enough to see in your behaviour things that can be improved or modified. It makes very little sense for the coach to single someone else out for your mistake.

* Pointing out, angrily, that the last few times, the coach was wrong

Yep, the coach may have been wrong in the past, and may be wrong now. It’s not about the coach, it’s about you.

* Identifying others who have succeeded without ever being coached

Yep. Those other people are not you. If your results are as good, or better than the person you identify, then we can discuss this further.

* Resisting a path merely because it was one identified by a coach

This is just ridiculous behaviour. The coach is there for your benefit, your improvement or the benefit of your team. If you want to act like a two year old child, is it any wonder that the coach begins to treat you like one. This, of course, just increases the difficulty and tension felt by both parties. Luckily, this behaviour is very easy to deal with by a competent coach.

Does this mean you roll over and do whatever the coach says? Of course not. It does mean you have to stop treating the coach like a parent and more like a peer. While this might cause different conflicts with your coach for a time, a professional coach will (should!) be able to modify their own behaviour to match.