Being Coachable Almost Broke Me

I spent the majority of my early career at C.H. Robinson, and I had a mentor there. On paper, it looked like exactly what a young woman in logistics should want, someone senior, experienced, and willing to invest time in me.

The problem? They coached everything that made me special right out of me.

Not cruelly, and probably not even on purpose. But it happened slowly. I was told to dampen my empathy, to harden up, to move, speak, and lead more like the people already at the top, who were mostly men. And because I was young and I didn't really know who I was yet, I took the feedback. I was being coachable. I thought I was doing the right thing.

Except I wasn't. I was just being compliant.

The moment I saw it clearly wasn't a big dramatic blowup. I just... noticed that leadership didn't really see us as people. We were just resources and once I saw that, I couldn't unsee it. And once I couldn't unsee it, I started to understand that all that "coaching" wasn't about helping me grow, it was about making me fit. And that's not coaching, it’s moulding.

So what does it actually mean to be coachable?

Coachability gets talked about like it's a simple virtue, be open, receive feedback, and don't be defensive. And yes, all of that is true. But the conversation stops too early, because it leaves out the most important variable: who is doing the coaching.

Being coachable doesn't mean being a blank slate for whoever has authority over you. It means being genuinely open to growth, which requires you to first have some sense of what you want to grow towards. What your values and strengths are. The things that make you, you.

A good coach sees those things, even when you haven't found them for yourself yet. They help those parts grow. They help you recognize them and develop those parts. They don't try to produce a mini-me version of themselves, they try to help you become a better version of you.

That distinction sounds simple. Unfortunately it is not that simple when you're 26 and someone senior is telling you that your empathy is a liability.

Why uncoachable people stall out

There is the other side of it, because this isn't just about protecting yourself from bad mentors. Coachability is genuinely one of the most valuable career assets you can have, and people who lack it tend to plateau hard.

Uncoachable people aren't always arrogant. Sometimes they're just defensive, or conflict-averse, or so attached to how they've always done things that feedback slides right off. The result is the same: they stop learning, which means they stop growing, which means the people around them eventually stop investing in them.

In logistics especially, an industry that is literally shapeshifting constantly, the people who can't adapt don't last. Coachability is really just adaptability with a human face on it.

How to spot it (and grow it) when you're the one leading

Coachability shows up in small moments. It's the person who asks a follow-up question after you give them feedback instead of just nodding and leaving. It's the one who comes back and says "I tried what you suggested and here's what happened." It's not about being agreeable,  some of the most coachable people will push back on you and the advice you maybe give. What they won't do is shut down.

When you're trying to develop it in someone, start by making feedback feel safe. If people only hear from you when something's wrong, they'll get defensive by default. Make it a rhythm, not an event. 

And the harder question, the one I ask myself now, is this: Am I coaching this person toward their best self, or toward my version of what they should be? Because the most damaging mentors I've encountered weren't the harsh ones. They were the well-meaning ones who coached from their own mould and called it development.

The version of me I'm still building

I don't tell the C.H. Robinson story to assign blame. That mentor wasn't a villain. They were probably doing exactly what had been done to them.

But I think about it a lot when I'm in a position to invest time in someone. The goal is never to produce another shinier version of myself. It's to see what someone is made of, even the parts they may not even see yet and help those parts shine a little brighter.

That's the kind of coaching I needed then. It's the kind of leader I'm trying to be now.

So,if you're early in your career: be open to feedback, but pay attention to what the feedback is actually doing. Is it making you sharper, or is it just making you feel and be smaller? A good mentor expands the positive parts of you. The wrong one will just sand down your edges until you're easier to manage.

And if you're leading people: your job isn't to clone yourself. It's to figure out what someone is actually good at, help them see it and then get out of the way so they can be better.