Being open to correction is a skill you build, not a personality you’re stuck with.
WHAT THIS MEANS
Most people think feedback is something to survive. Nod, wait for it to end, go back to doing things the same way. But there’s another way to hear it: as raw material. Something to actually use.
The difference isn’t talent. It’s what you do in the ten seconds after someone tells you what you got wrong.
WHERE THIS SHOWS UP
Most people think feedback is something to survive. Nod, wait for it to end, go back to doing things the same way. But there’s another way to hear it: as raw material. Something to actually use.
The difference isn’t talent. It’s what you do in the ten seconds after someone tells you what you got wrong.
WHERE THIS SHOWS UP
The second time it happens, something clicks. A coach, a manager, a friend says the same thing they said last week, word for word, and this time it lands differently. Not as repetition. As proof it didn’t stick the first time. The pen comes out. The note gets written. Not because the feedback changed, but because ignoring it twice finally cost more than writing it down.
The notes app has forty-one entries, and every one of them exists because a correction got repeated before it got written down. Nobody assigned this list. Nobody checks it for anyone else. Scroll up and it’s a timeline: what someone said was wrong, dated, saved the day it stopped being deniable, some with a line through them once they got fixed. The list keeps growing because writing it down the first time was never the instinct. Writing it down the second time is what finally stuck.
The hand moves toward the thing that needs fixing before the mouth finishes the sentence it started. “Yeah, but I was trying to—” and then the hand is already there, already correcting it, while the explanation is still only half out. A full defense was ready, reasons lined up in order. It doesn’t get used. Nobody sees the version that didn’t get said. That’s the one that mattered.
RECOGNITION MOMENTS
#NoddingThenNotChangingAnything
#WritingDownTheNoteButNotUsingIt
#GettingCorrectedAndGoingQuiet
#AskingHowToImproveThenArguingTheAnswer
RECOGNITION STATES
#ReadyToBeToldTheTruth
#TiredOfStayingTheSame
DEEPEN THE PERSPECTIVE
When Looking Good Isn’t Winning
Being coachable sounds great — but does it actually change how you play, or just how you look? “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.” — MICHAEL JORDAN
THE POSSIBILITY
The Sponge Advantage Coachability isn’t a personality some people are born with and others aren’t. It’s a door that’s already unlocked, sitting there for anyone willing to walk through it: the choice, made over and over, to let correction change what you do next instead of just how you feel for a minute.
THE INVITATION
The Sponge Advantage Coachability isn’t a personality some people are born with and others aren’t. It’s a door that’s already unlocked, sitting there for anyone willing to walk through it: the choice, made over and over, to let correction change what you do next instead of just how you feel for a minute.
THE INVITATION
Start treating the next piece of feedback you get as fuel instead of criticism.
WHAT THIS IS NOT SAYING
Does this mean I have to agree with every criticism I get, even the unfair ones
Being coachable isn’t the same as being agreeable. It works because the ten seconds after correction is the only window where the old way of doing things hasn’t hardened back into place yet — before defense sets in, before the explanation gets rehearsed into a permanent excuse. Waiting past that window doesn’t make the feedback less true. It just gives the old habit time to reassert itself as the default again.
USE THIS QUOTE FOR
#CoachingHandout
#OnboardingCard
#PerformanceReviewPrep
#TeamWorkshopOpener
#StudentAthleteDeskCard
