Employee Coachability: New Insights to Increase Employee Adaptability, Performance, and Promotability in Organizations

Abstract

Researchers, like practitioners, often examine managerial coaching in isolation, focusing on the coach without considering the impact those being coached (i.e., coachees) have on the success of the coaching process. Thus, utilising a survey-based design, this paper explicates the behaviours of highly coachable employees – proactively seeking, demonstrating receptivity to, and implementing constructive feedback – and examines critical outcomes they achieve, while controlling for the influence of effective managerial coaching behaviours. Our findings demonstrate employee coachability drives individual job performance, adaptability, and promotability to a greater extent than effective managerial coaching behaviours.