Forbes
Do You Pass The Tom Brady Test?
By: Mark Murphy
I grew up in Buffalo, NY, so when it comes to the NFL, I'm a lifelong Buffalo Bills fan. And I currently live in Atlanta, GA, so I'm also an adopted Atlanta Falcons fan. Both of those things mean that there aren't that many people that have more reason to dislike New England Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady than me. And yet, this article is going to convey a deep respect for him.
Yes, he's a great quarterback, with vision, smarts and the ability to throw a perfect spiral. But that's not actually what makes him so remarkable; it's his coachability.
When I conducted the study on Hiring For Attitude, we tracked 5,247 hiring managers from 312 public, private, business and healthcare organizations. Collectively these managers hired more than 20,000 employees during the study period. We found that 46% of newly-hired employees will fail within 18 months, while only 19% will achieve unequivocal success. But contrary to popular belief, technical skills are not the primary reason why new hires fail; instead, poor interpersonal skills dominate the list, flaws which many of their managers admit were overlooked during the job interview process.
The study found that 26% of new hires fail because they can't accept or anticipate feedback (aka Coachability), 23% because they're unable to understand and manage emotions, 17% because they lack the necessary motivation to excel, 15% because they have the wrong temperament for the job, and only 11% because they lack the necessary technical skills.
And it's the coachability piece that makes Tom Brady so special. At first blush, coachability is the ability to accept and implement feedback from bosses, colleagues, customers and others. But it also goes deeper than that; coachability means that there's always something more to work on and improve. It's the drive to never be satisfied with the status quo, to never think that one has run out of opportunities for improvement.
For example, when Brady says "You wanna know which ring is my favorite? The next one" he's saying very clearly that I will never be content with just having come this far. In fact, he has said exactly that: "I didn't come this far to only come this far, so we've still got further to go."
There have been quarterbacks in the NFL that can throw a perfect pass, but it's arguable that there haven't been any that combined his physical talents with this drive at quite the same intensity. So, the big question for us mere mortals is "do we have a similar drive to keep getting better?" Or put another way, are we as coachable as Tom Brady?
Here's a simple way to test coachability; think about your boss at your last job and ask yourself "is there anything I could have done, or done differently, to make our working relationship even better?"
For many people, the answer is a simple "nah, we had a pretty good relationship, so I don't think there's much I could have done." Others will say "well, my boss was the one with all the problems, so I really couldn't have done much to fix them."
Unfortunately, both of those answers evidence a lack of coachability. Let's say that our previous boss really was a jerk. Even given that, is there nothing that we could have done better? Maybe the way we managed their jerkiness? Or how we talked to them during meetings? Or better anticipating their moods so we could nip-in-the-bud some of our problems with them?
In most workplace situations, there's something that we could have done better. The difference between most people and someone like Tom Brady is that Brady is a lot more likely to scour those situations to identify exactly what he could have done better and then actually start working to improve them.
There's a dangerous natural tendency to blame others for what happens to us. Of course, our boss may really have been a jerk; I'm not disputing that. But what I am offering is a caution that a knee-jerk reaction to make everything that boss' fault obscures our own personal growth opportunities.
But even the cases where our previous boss was really nice still present a challenge because there are lots of people who are quite content to say "yeah, it was all good, nothing I would change." And it's that thinking that drives a complacency that all but guarantees that someone never gets any better. Maybe the relationship really was fantastic, but as before, is there nothing we could have done to make it even better? I have a great marriage, but really, is there nothing I could do to make it even better? I couldn't be more thoughtful, anticipate when the garbage needs to go out, keep my area of the kitchen counter a little neater?
I can't honestly say that I'm rooting for the Patriots to win the upcoming Super Bowl. But I will say that the coachability quality that makes Tom Brady so likely to win it is a quality that every one of us should emulate.
