COACHABILITY AND THE KNOW-IT-ALL DISEASE

I’ll start with the bottom line: If you think you know-it-all— you are severely deluded. Now of course, this idea of knowing-it-all is not literal, it’s rather a phrase that marks out someone who operates from a closed-mind. It indicates someone who think, feels, and talks as if he or she has got such a solid grasp on something, that there’s nothing else to learn. The person behaves as if he or she has received the last word about something, so there’s no curiosity left in them. Now they have closed shop.

The first time I got a shock of meeting people like that was when I got a contract to do some “in service training” with teachers in the District 51 School system here in Colorado where I live. My father was a teacher and a perpetual student so I just assumed that teachers would be great learners and that doing a training with them would be the most dynamic workshop imaginable. Was I wrong!