The Hiring 'Dynamic Duo'

"My best skill was that I was coachable. I was a sponge and aggressive to learn."

-Michael Jordan

The most iconic name is basketball and shoe industry, Michael Jordan says the key to his success was his coachability. This is a term that is often used in the sports industry, but is becoming more and more popular in the employment world too.

Coachability can be defined in 'The Learners Dictionary' as "being capable of being easily taught and trained to do something better." Which, many employers can describe this trait to be extremely attractive in a potential employee. I also see coachability as only being one piece to a much larger puzzle in the 'ideal employee'.

There are some traits that can quickly point out someone who is uncoachable and Forbes describes that as:

1. They are defensive in feedback situations
2. They find blame elsewhere
3. They are not interested in their own growth
4. They are unwilling to be vulnerable
5. They are not open to new ways of looking into a situation
6. They are unwilling to experiment quickly with new behaviors
7. They are unable to stay with new behaviors

While these all seem like very obvious signs, they can slowly poison your culture if not quickly addressed. The best way to counteract this problem, is to completely avoid it in the first place. Hiring the right talent is very hard and finding coachable talent can be even more rare.

Being the Psychology nerd that I am, I enjoy this online Coachability assessment provided by PsychTests. While being coachable is very important, there is a compatible skill that can make or break your organization. Learnability; which, can be defined as: “the desire and ability to quickly grow and adapt one's skill set to remain employable throughout their working life.”

Someone might have the ability to be coached and might attempt everything you ask, but there is an eventual ceiling we might encounter. Things that will push that ceiling higher are things such as desire, ability, and one's overall skill. Brian Herbert said something like this:

" The capacity to learn is a gift, the ability to learn is a skill, the willingness to learn is a choice."

In this verbiage, the ability to learn a skill is the learnability, the willingness or choice is the coachability and these two can make up the person's total capacity to learn.

My good friends over at ManpowerGroup have also come up with a cool tool called a Learnability Quotient to actually test one's Learnability.

From a Manager's point of view, having an employee who is coachable and carries a high learnability quotient pairing well with the position can seem very promising if handled properly. Improperly managing someone can have drastic effects not only on the overall happiness of the employee which could affect your culture, but could have lasting effects on the performance of the company if left alone.

At first the malleable individual may seem very excited to learn and will pick up on tasks fast. This employee will quickly learn procedures, industry knowledge, and will adapt to the company quickly. You may see very promising results of their performance and this individual may even be the next 'rising star.'

Robert Greene's '48 Laws of Power' talks about how the student must never 'Outshine the master', but this is not a natural skill people have. A coachable employee will quickly change his direction to your path as you have taught, but the natural Learnability will have them learn the nature of the position more in depth than many tenured employees.

This will definitely create a stir within your organization because no one wants to be 'shown up' by the new kid on the block. There can be anger arise from other employees and this shining star may even make his superiors feel threatened in their current position. The idea of hiring your replacement isn't a widely practiced idea in company culture.

If you can catch the employee with the 'Dynamic Duo' traits, you may be able to channel this type of energy, passion, and talent into great things. However, you must find out what truly motivates this employee and exploit that to the best of your ability. Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper to find those motivators and push on them.

Now that you have found out what motivates your employee you need to sit down and create a path to success and outline a future of what they need to learn and do to accomplish their dreams. Simply telling them it will take years of investment to attain the experience they need is not an acceptable answer with this type of employee.

Here is a list of how to harness the power of the 'high-octane' employee who has the Dynamic Duo Traits to be successful.

1. Analyze the employee for the total coachability and their learnability.
2. Find out what motivates this employee.
3. If this motivator is money, title, responsibility, or advancement you should outline a path of how they can achieve their goals.
4. Set smaller goals and progress check-points to make sure they are on track to complete this.
5. Check in and make sure that they have the tools to be successful, don't just ask.. analyze and pay close attention.
6. Make sure you give credit when credit is due to the employee. (Doesn't have to be public, this can be a 'Good Job' or water-cooler conversation.
7. Finally, DO NOT fall back on your commitments.this will most likely trigger a spiteful response and the employee will most likely try to assume power.

I know that this can seem either common sense to managers, but a good portion of managers will think that their path to success is everyone else's path too. This checklist can almost seem diabolical, but these are not bad intentioned moves. These employees seek success and if you are seen in their eyes as the obstacle in the way, they will revert to old habits and seek to overcome all obstacles.

We all wish to have a top performing employee who fires on all cylinders, but we have to make sure we are the leaders who are going to lead these employees. Control the situation and make sure you thoroughly check your prospective employees and not only see if they are going to be the best fit, but are going to use their 'Dynamic Duo' for good or become the next anti-hero in their own story of success.

Please feel free to use the links in this article for reference or utilization. I do not own or have influence from any outside sponsorship. This is original work and is a collection from my own personal experience.