Career: Being "teachable" - Your greatest career asset: Part I

Search around for career advice and you'll find much talk about bringing value to your company, being assertive, being a team player, and other popular career topics. To be sure, these are important topics to be familiar with as you progress professionally, but there is one aspect of career development that sadly often gets overlooked. That aspect, or better yet trait, is being teachable.

First, what do I mean by being teachable? My wordy take on it is the following:

Having an awareness of your own shortcomings and lack of knowledge, and the willingness to allow those in charge of you, as well as your experiences, to help strengthen those areas in which you are lacking.

Let me clean that up a bit by simply stating it as follows: Being teachable means that you know you don't have it all together, and because of this you are willing to receive help and learn from your experiences and mistakes. And herein lies the reason why we don't hear more about being teachable. First, you're admitting that you're not perfect. Who wants to admit that? Second, you're humbling yourself in order to receive criticism and face your mistakes. This can be painful.

So what does it look like to be a teachable person in the workplace? Like the following:

• You do not become defensive or make excuses when receiving correction or necessary guidance from your boss. Rather, you take in the correction and honestly assess how you need to change in order to become stronger in that particular area.
• You actively seek out feedback on how you are doing from your boss, with the purpose of seeing where you need to grow and taking steps towards that growth.
• You actively seek to learn more than you already know so that you can become even better at what you do than you are right now.

And how does an unteachable person behave in the workplace? Like the following:

• Constantly makes excuses regarding their performance, even when given clear evidence contrary to their excuses.
• Does not take action to correct bad habits leading to their shortcomings or mistakes, even after clearly being shown how to.
• Does not proactively attempt to increase their knowledge in order to do a better job, but rather is satisfied with what they already know.

Which do you want to be? Before you decide, we'll take a look at the benefits of being teachable in regards to furthering your career in Part II. Stay tuned.

~Will