Thomas J. Leonard’s Coachability Index

In my Laser Focused Coaching class, we talked about Thomas J. Leonard’s Coachability Index.

He used this as something he gave to potential clients to gauge their coachability, each on a scale from 1 to 5:

1. I can be relied upon to be on time for all calls and appointments.
2. This is the right time for me to accept coaching.
3. I am fully willing to do the work and let the coach do the coaching.
4. I keep my word without struggling or sabotaging.
5. I’ll give the coach the benefit of the doubt and “try on” new concepts or different ways of doing things.
6. I will speak straight (tell what’s really true) to the coach.
7. If I feel that I am not getting what I need or expect from the coach, I will share this as soon as I sense it and ask that I get what I want and need from the relationship.
8. I am willing to eliminate or modify the self-defeating behaviors that limit my success.
9. I have adequate funds to pay for coaching and will not regret or suffer about the fee. I see coaching as a worthwhile investment in my life.
10. I am someone who can share the credit for my success with the coach.

Coachability is super important to determine in your potential clients. Some people really aren’t in a position to be coached right now. It is much better to determine this from the very start rather than spending a ton of time on a client and getting nowhere, which can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction in both coach and client. These are all barriers to moving forward that simply cannot be resolved by coaching itself, especially if the client has some underlying issues that prevent them from being open to any change at all, or discussion around them. Therapy may also be more appropriate than coaching for these people.

In class, we discussed how this was deployed. I don’t think we talked about how Thomas J. Leonard used it but only how the instructors used it.

Some have put it on their website on their coaching request page, as a way for people to self filter a bit. If they get past the questions and still want to coach with them, then that’s one signal of confidence for coachability. Yes there is a scoring which results in coachability or not. It is here:

If each is on a scale from 1 to 5, adding up the points you get:

10-20 Not coachable right now
21-30 Coachable but make sure ground rules are honored
31-40 Coachable
41-50 Very coachable! Ask the coach to ask a lot from you!

Another instructor would query live during their intro session, so you can convert those items into coaching questions. There were also some suggested questions along with this material but out of respect for the course I did not post them here. However, it may be easy to see what questions might emerge from the Coachability Index’s queries for responses.