Hey Everyone,
Last week I wrote about curiosity, a trait I prize in candidates.
As a reminder, I’m going in-depth on the specific traits that I look for in a salesperson. Here are my goals:
Provide a bit more insight into how I evaluate a candidate’s traits so you can set up your system for the roles you hire for.
Help you evaluate candidates for sales positions (if you ever have the need).
Keep me honest (I’ve been interviewing A LOT of Account Executives lately, so it doesn’t hurt to remind myself of the process).
Here’s a brief reminder of the three top traits I look for in salespeople/Account Executives:
Curiosity- Is this person genuinely curious about other people and organizations? Are they eager to learn, and do they ask great second and third-level questions to understand the prospect?
Self Accountability- Can this person diagnose areas for improvement, design systems to help them improve, and successfully apply, their system?
Coachability - Can this person accept and, more importantly, apply feedback? Can they do so judiciously (i.e., can they determine what feedback is valuable and isn’t?)
That’s it. Yes, there are other things I look for and measure, but they’re not nearly as important as those three.
This week we’re on to coachability - because accepting and applying feedback is a skill in and of itself.
📢What’s So Great About Feedback?📢
Over the past decade or so giving and accepting feedback has become all the rage amongst professional types.1 Which is great! Giving constructive feedback is an important skill. More importantly, learning to accept feedback gracefully is really, really hard and should absolutely be a part of every human’s personal and professional development.
But giving and accepting feedback is only part of the story. My goal for this post is to convince you that focusing on feedback is limiting and that we should focus on coachability instead.
Coachability is the ability to not only accept feedback, but to understand, judge, and consistently apply feedback. Being coachable requires humility, judgment, and discipline, in other words, it’s not an easy trait to possess. Everyone in my life will tell you that I need to work on it (and I agree).2
I’m usually not one for TED Talks or motivational speeches, but Super Bowl MVP and ESPN commentator Desmond Howard has a good talk about coachability, it’s worth a watch.
The elements of coachability
Since coachability is so important, let’s take a look at the process of being coachable.
Hear and understand feedback - “Can I impartially hear and understand the feedback?”
Judge the credibility, validity, and priority of feedback - “Do I believe that this feedback is credible, useful, actionable, and urgent?”
Accept feedback - “Do I accept this feedback?”
Apply feedback - “Can I apply this feedback once or twice?”
Apply feedback consistently - “Can I apply this feedback consistently and make it automatic?”
How to evaluate coachability
Coachability is one of those qualities where it’s much better to see it in practice. As such, I evaluate it differently than the traits we’ve previously discussed.
Like many of you, my talent evaluation process includes a few rounds of interviews. At the end of one of the early rounds, I will give the candidate feedback. It’s best if you root this feedback in something material to the job and the candidate’s success in it. Here’s a specific sales-related example:
Hey, in your early sales demo you didn’t set a clear time and day for a follow-up. We’ve noticed that successful Account Execs here always set the next meeting. When you do your next demo sales call, we’d love to see you schedule your next prospect follow-up with a specific day and time.
Again, it’s important that whatever feedback you provide isn’t just your opinion. You need to know that whatever it is you suggest has been proven to be important to success in the role. Otherwise, you risk the candidate not accepting the feedback or not viewing you as a credible source. Further, the hiring manager should deliver the feedback since they’re viewed, for better or worse, as the authority and decision-maker.
The range of candidate responses
You don’t have to wait long to learn a lot about the candidate’s coachability. Here are the three immediate responses you’re most likely to get:
The Worst Response - Some candidates immediately become defensive. This is an understandable reaction but it’s certainly not desirable from a coachability perspective. Thankfully, I only see this in about a quarter of candidates.
A Good Response - Next, you’ll have candidates thank you for the coaching. This is a fine response, but what matters is that they apply the feedback in later rounds.
The Best Response - The candidate asks clarifying questions about your feedback. This is a great sign, but again, what you’re really looking for is if they apply the feedback later on.
Again, and this is worth repeating, the real sign of success here is that the candidate applies the feedback. Their initial response offers some degree of direction, but the application is key.
Coachability > feedback
While the current corporate craze prizing feedback is a step in the right direction, let’s take it further and start rewarding coachability. Sounds good?
One more thing
That’s it on the three main traits I look for in salespeople, but you know what? I’m really enjoying writing about traits so I think I’ll keep it going for another couple (few?) posts.
If there are any traits you value, please let me know.
As always thank you for reading!
Three examples: “Giving Feedback” has its own category in Harvard Business Review, and bestseller “Radical Candor”, and my own experience at a billion-dollar company where the entire leadership training program centered on giving and accepting feedback.
Here’s a quick, personal, and damning example. I recently started playing America’s fastest-growing sport, pickleball (I’m old). And sure, I’m good enough at it because I grew up playing tennis. But recently, while waiting for our game to start, my way more experienced partner for the evening started coaching me up on some advanced strategies. Instead of being thankful and excited, my knee-jerk internal monologue was “how dare he try and coach me, a grown man! Who does he think he is?!”
Anyway, I remembered I was writing this post, calmed down, learned something, and got much better. Thanks Mike.