Sometimes a client will ask me what is coachability, or maybe they’ll ask whether I think they’re coachable. If you’ve ever wondered about either of those, I have an answer for you. It’s in the form of an example – an athlete who is coachability personified.

I stumbled across the story by accident. You’ve probably heard of Google Alerts. That’s a free service that Google offers in which you enter a keyword, a phrase or a name and Google will email you an alert if your word appears anywhere on the Internet. The keyword I have them watch is my name, ‘Charles Burke.’

Usually the Alerts point to obituaries, or some obscure rocket scientist or musician. But today was different. A story in the Albany Herald featured an exciting young high school basketball player, Alexis Burke, whose playing is continually inspired by her late father, Charles. The story was unusually inspiring.

Her coaches consider Alexis a very special player. Listen to AAU coach Kimberly Davis-Powell:

“She was so dedicated,” Davis-Powell said. “Whatever I said to do, she would do it. She would work so hard, and there were times in the beginning where she would be so frustrated she would cry, just sit down and cry after practice. But she was determined. Whatever it took, she attacked it dead-on.

“And she is so smart she knew how to run her own workout plan. She would be in the gym, four, five days a week doing nothing but shooting drills. She would wear a strap on her left arm to keep it down, and shoot with her right arm, shoot and shoot and shoot for two hours. Now she has such a pure shot.”

If you want to know how motivation behaves, read that quote again.

And coachability? Read it two or three more times.

Or maybe you’ve wondered about having a strong reason why. Go read the entire article and you’ll begin to understand what’s involved – what a winner’s inner game looks like.

All of it – the motivation, the coachability, the strong reason why – together they form a vision, an ambition so high and unreasonable that you either shrink away in fear and surrender, or you rise and spread your arms and stretch your legs and stride on up to see what lies beyond the hill that hides your view. No effort seems too great when you’re connected that firmly to your inspiring ideal.

And if, after you read that article, you feel that you just don’t have that kind of vital, living connection to your dream, then it’s time you started building one. Connections can be built. They can be strengthened and expanded. They can be used to change your life into one of enormous achievement and satisfaction.

Go read that article now, and you’ll know in your gut what a coachable player (or client) looks like. Then it’s just a matter of remaking yourself into that person.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

P.S. – Your connections are among the things we’ll be working on in the BullsEye Club. So be thinking about yours.