Becoming Teachable

“One of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received was being told I am teachable.” ~ BJ Burns The most talented guitarist will stagnate and fall behind the much less talented player who is teachable and treats playing as skill to be honed. The same goes for software development. Even the most talented senior developer will not be as good as an average junior developer who is teachable and hungry to learn more. The true greats, like Slash or Hendrix, are a combination of talent and teachability that leads to growth in skill. Teachability is an aspect of humility. It is the ability to accurately assess and recognize your skills and talents knowing that there is more to learn, even if you are at the top of your field. Senior developers who are teachable take on the attitude of a junior when learning a new skill. Being teachable means that when someone comes along with new knowledge, even someone with less overall knowledge than you, that you take on the role of a student to learn the new thing. Teachability is not about how you learn or your ability to learn but an attitude toward learning. A teachable person is a lifelong student who has a desire to learn and apply what they’ve learned. It is an ability to unlearn what does not work and relearn a new way of doing something. Being teachable will rapidly advance your career as you will show your peers and managers that you are willing to set aside your ego for the betterment of yourself and your team. Even as a seasoned developer being teachable will help you to keep up with the changes in technology and engender you to the newer developers as you lead by example allowing them to teach you things about the newer tech. Teachability is a skill as much as it is a personality trait. It is one of the easier things about our personalities that we can change. It takes a little bit of work and some self-reflection to be able to improve teachability but it is possible. On the same note, it’s an easy skill to loose if you are not careful about maintaining it. Use this information to help you understand your own level of teachability and improve it so that you are considered teachable by your peers, mentors, and managers. Not only will it improve your career but it will lead to a happier life as you continue to learn and grow. Episode Breakdown Characteristics of an Unteachable Person An unteachable person doesn’t want to grow or learn because they don’t think they need any improvement. Sometimes this is from arrogance but a lot of the time it comes from knowing a lot and not realizing there is more to learn. Ignorance An unteachable person won’t expose themselves to new thoughts or experiences that will challenge what they “know” to be the truth or the “best and only” way to do something. They think they already know all there is to know about a topic or that they know enough and do not need or have time to learn more. The unteachable person doesn’t take notes or ask questions in training sessions (unless it is to profess their own knowledge) and are basically unengaged in learning environments. Pride Beyond just being shy or not wanting to bother a more experienced developer, the unteachable person won’t seek guidance even when they are stuck or need help on something like legacy code where the author is still employed there. They refuse to ask any questions that might make them look uninformed or inexperienced, which in turn makes them look even more inexperienced. There are two types of unteachable coders, the one has never heard of StackOverflow whereas with the other all of their code is copy/pasted from there. Arrogance An unteachable person refuses to be wrong or even admit the possibility they might not be right, they attempt to justify their thoughts or actions to the ...