"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before." ~ Jacob Riis
I've been working with someone who has the reputation of being uncoachable, they're not. It just took longer. In this case, almost two years. I think most of us underestimate how long it really takes to change behavior or master a new skill.
Tough question to have to ask yourself in that situation.
If you knew it would take two full years to see someone become coachable... is it worth the organizational resources, much less the personal resources, to spend on this person?
Even if you say yes to one person like that, one likely only has the capacity to coach a handful of these, and maybe only one at a time?
I need to clarify - it took two years to see a meaningful change in a targeted behavior. There were 'two steps forward and one step back' along the way, but it took a full two years for them to replace the bad behavior with a set of new ones. I agree, two years is a long time, maybe too much. But this person was performing at an acceptable level, just had one or two things that were holding them (and their team) back. I no longer work with his person, but we keep in touch and as far as I know, they haven't fallen back into their old habit.
"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before." ~ Jacob Riis
I've been working with someone who has the reputation of being uncoachable, they're not. It just took longer. In this case, almost two years. I think most of us underestimate how long it really takes to change behavior or master a new skill.
Tough question to have to ask yourself in that situation.
If you knew it would take two full years to see someone become coachable... is it worth the organizational resources, much less the personal resources, to spend on this person?
Even if you say yes to one person like that, one likely only has the capacity to coach a handful of these, and maybe only one at a time?
I need to clarify - it took two years to see a meaningful change in a targeted behavior. There were 'two steps forward and one step back' along the way, but it took a full two years for them to replace the bad behavior with a set of new ones. I agree, two years is a long time, maybe too much. But this person was performing at an acceptable level, just had one or two things that were holding them (and their team) back. I no longer work with his person, but we keep in touch and as far as I know, they haven't fallen back into their old habit.