Are You Coachable?

Back in 2019, a gentleman by the name of Anthony Pugh shared this story on Facebook, and I wanted to share it again here with a little additional commentary:

"Correction is not criticism. I played for a great high school coach and I would constantly get asked how I handled him 'yelling' at me. He wasn't yelling at me. He was holding me to a higher expectation because he knew my goals. We live in a generation where if a coach yells at you, you take it personally and want to quit. Most of the time a coach is yelling at you because they see something in you that you don't even see yet. To this day I am so grateful I was pushed and coached the way I was. Be worried when your coach stops talking to you." - Anthony Pugh

As a CEO, COO & CFO of successful companies and a 2x state champion HS girls' soccer coach, this resonates with me nearly every day. I have multiple conversations each week where I would really like to hold someone accountable or to a standard I believe they could reach, but pullback because of fear. It is not fear from: I am doing something wrong or unethical or untrue; it is fear from: what will the person I want to hold accountable and help reach a higher level say back to me. That fear comes in two words: I quit. Usually it is "I quit" because I do not want to be pushed, motivated, held accountable, etc. to anything above what I am doing right now. That is hard and a big reason the number of people looking for executive/managerial/administrative positions is shrinking rapidly.

I know in my 4 years of coaching HS girls' soccer that I had girls that wanted to quit and didn't. Not sure if it was because they understood why I was hard on them or was it because we were winning. I believe you do not take underachieving or average companies or teams to the next level without some hard conversations and a drive that is harder and faster than the person or persons want to go. You have to stick with what you believe in and go! While not always fun and definitely not easy, it is my hope the outcome was worth it to all that stayed.

The highest levels of success are never easy, never handed out, and by no means ever guaranteed. Millions more failures in the world than successes.