Why should a startup care to be coachable?

[Conversation between a startup founder and the mentor, if you have mentored a startup you probably have been in such situation ☺️]

Startup founder (asking for advice): I want to better understand my customers and the problem they have. My startup will help patients to take pills according to a schedule. Can you please give me some advice?

Mentor (giving some advice): I’m happy to! First, let’s understand the problem. Umm… So, you are trying to help patients to take pills on time. In my opinion you are targeting very wide range of customers, I’d recommend you to narrow it down and not solve a general problem for all patients, but be specific — for instance you can start by thinking about the frequency of taking pills, whether the patient is in hospital or at home, or for what is the patient taking pills [it is just for healing purpose or it is for medical preventive purpose or maybe it is for a post-surgery treatment]. So, what I mean is that there are many “why”-s and many factors that might influence the necessity of “taking pills on time” ․ My advice is to think about them and talk to people.

Startup founder (confronting): Oh, but why? I am sure everyone has the problem of knowing when to take pills.

Mentor (sharing his opinion): Um… maybe, but not every patient who takes pills needs to be reminded to take pills at a concrete time. A doctor prescribed vitamin C to me few months ago, but the instructions were very simple: I just had to take 1 pill per day without any strict schedule, and moreover, nothing bad would happen if I skipped for a day. And I needed no reminder for taking it.

Startup founder (is not ready to listen to any opinion): Well, that’s true but most need.

Mentor (trying challenge the founder to do better research): Um, how about understanding the experience of taking pills for different patients and cases like for diabetes, post-surgery treatment, for elderly, for kids, etc. and then understand for which type of patient and in which situation taking the pill at the exact time is “mission critical”. Plus, you can also try to figure out what are the reasons those patients forget to take pills.

Startup founder (showing that he is not open to feedback): Aha! Maybe in an alternate universe, but not now. It’s a great idea in theory, but I’m lucky as taking pills is difficult for any human being, and every patient needs a reminder for that. I’m really motivated to move to the next step.

The conversation described above is a classic case of “yes, but…”. Yes, mentor, I see your point, but I have made a prior decision that nothing will change. It is a classic situation when startups ask for help then ignore it, as they cannot listen and analyze any advice.

I see lots of startups every week who seem to have answers to every question without even questioning the logic of their answers, that’s why I decided to share my thoughts on what it means for a startup to be coachable and why a startup should care.

What it means to be coachable

If you’re a startup founder and you have no funding, no growing number of customers, no dozens of employees, and your attitude to any advice is like the one in the conversation above, please think again. Maybe you should leave a room for the possibility that there’s something you don’t know yet and that something could make you even better — maybe you should be more coachable. Being coachable is one of the most important skills and attitudes in life, whether you’re a startup founder or a tennis player or a doctor or even a candidate for president.

If you are a founder who wishes to improve product metrics, improve marketing metrics, raise money from VC-s, grow business, etc., you should do a self-assessment on whether you are coachable or not.

Being coachable relates to resilience and being open to changes. It simply means that the startup founder is open to radical changes that might lead to prioritizing new product features, testing new customer acquisition channels, changing product roadmap, and many more things…. and all the changes usually should be done in the middle of the journey. This is mentally the toughest part that blocks founders “to listen to feedback”.

So, what it means to be coachable? Being coachable for a startup founder means:

• They are open to listening to feedback, instead of trying to respond quickly to protect their position, understand that feedback deeply, then try to distill any useful information out of it for decision making. Listening to feedback is a hard thing for startups, but it means that the startup founder is ready to receive constructive criticism to learn, and instead of attacking any feedback, just stop for a moment to ask himself a simple question: “What can be the benefit of this feedback, is there something for me to learn?”
• They are willing to experiment new things. They don’t stick to the same ideas with the same approach if they see the performance is getting poor. They generally have a super-badass-enthusiastic go getter type of approach to experimenting new things. “I need to work, I need to improve” are the most important words in their mind and [instead of telling “ambitious words” about the future success of their startup], they are ready to stop for a moment and ask themselves “What other experiments do I need to conduct to learn more about X, Y, Z?”

Let’s take a look at the alternative attitude just for comparison’s sake. A startup founders who are not coachable will display different kinds of behaviors, including but not limited to:

• They always think they’re right and don’t possess the ability to self-reflect.
• They are not willing to experiment, learn new things and are not open to change.
• They are “full of” negativity and pessimism.
• They usually are rolling eyes during constructive criticism (that one is in here for my teenage readers/startups I met last week 😊).
• They are disrespectful of others and/or others’ opinions.

There are so many more…

Being coachable doesn’t mean you don’t know your market, customers, technology, product etc. It means you have the determination to seek out someone to help you better understand some hidden aspects of your startup (like customer behavior, technology performance, marketing tricks and so many more). It means you’re willing to have a discussion about something that might help you to improve something related to your startup.

Why to be coachable

Being coachable is about awareness and the ability to take the gold nuggets from a situation and use them to your advantage. There’s wisdom in being coachable. It means you’re paying attention to other people and the experience, wisdom, skills and knowledge they’ve earned and you’re willing to listen close enough to see what might help you on your own journey.

Being coachable is very important for achieving many or most of your startup goals. Startup founders who benefit from being coachable usually:

• Understand their customers better and their customers are happier.
• Find better performing customer acquisition channels.
• Have impressive product metrics.
• Attract the best talent to their startup.
• Understand challenges and prepare for them better.

When you look at the characteristics of startup founders who are coachable, it’s easy to see that they’re the ones who will succeed when it comes to growing business, raising funds, having new partners, etc. The way that coachable startup founders interact in the world continually helps them when they’re striving for growth, learning and success. And interestingly you can see that coachable startups develop growth mindset and value commitment to self-improvement over “good fortune” which again helps them to get things done. The attitude of someone who’s coachable is easy going, open and receptive, making anything they want to do in their life to seem doable. They become an inspiration to those around them because they get results.

If you’re reading this and you’re not successful yet (most likely) so maybe, just maybe there’s something to be gained by taking a look at the way you approach the feedback you are receiving from mentors, your team members, etc. Unless you’re coachable, willing to challenge your own status quo, no amount of coaching or mentoring will ever make a difference. There’s a saying that applies to mentorship: “When a doctor cares more about an illness than the patient does, that patient will never improve.” I love coaching and mentoring professionals. But I’ve figured out that, if mentees don’t care MORE than the mentor about improving their condition, they’re never going to achieve much improvement.

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