Sir Jonathan Whitmore, in his seminal work, "Coaching for Performance," eloquently defines coaching as "unlocking people's potential to maximize their performance." In your role as a leader-coach, it is about helping them to learn rather than teaching them, about assisting them in surpassing you.
GROW coaching model
The word Grow is an acronym for:
Goal
Reality
Option
Will
These words stand for the different stages you need to go through when coaching, the process is linear (not directional) so it is important to vet each stage fully for impactful coaching, as every stage forms the foundation for the next one.
The model is grounded in the following core assumptions:
- Our beliefs about the capability of others have a direct impact on their performance (remember: coaching is about unlocking potential).
- The coach must adopt an optimistic view and build the self-belief of others.
- No judgment, no blame, no control about the solution, but trust, encouragement and treating the other as an equal instead.
- Awareness and self-awareness are key to create responsibility.
- Responsibility demands choice, choice implies freedom.
The role of the coach is to create awareness and responsibility.
1. Topic – what are we talking about?
Frame the conversation by aligning on what you are talking about first and discuss the confidentiality of the conversation if need be.
Here are some sample questions to frame your topic:
- What would you like us to talk about today.
- What is the topic we need to address?
- How much of this topic is within your (or my) realm of influence?
- To what extend is this topic relevant for you?
- Why is it important for your right now?
If your coachee has different topics, ask which one needs to come first or what they have the most energy around.
2. Goals – what do you want?
Once you have clarified your topic, you need to enquire about the goals of the person who comes to you for coaching, as well as determine a goal for the conversation.
Questions about goals include:
- What is your long term goal? How will you know you’ve arrived there?
- What will make you say you are successful (with this topic)? How will you know?
- What would you like to achieve? What are you aiming for?
- What would you like to walk away with at the end of our conversation?
Focus on one goal, and make sure it is "smart", "pure", and "clear":
- SMART goals (specific, measurable, agreed/achievable yet aggressive, realistic, time-bound)
- PURE goals (positively stated, understood, relevant, ethical)
- CLEAR goals (challenging, legal, environmentally sound, appropriate, recorded)
2. Reality – what is happening?
Then, you start exploring the situation as it stands now, and encourage the coachee to use descriptive terms: enquire about facts and figures, incidents, actions, obstacles, resources and people.
This stage of the process is very important, so make sure you dwell long enough in it as it is often surprising how often the thorough investigation of reality throws up the answer!
Questions about reality include:
- what makes it a problem now?
- why is it important?
- what happened?
- what are the implications/stakes?
- what have you done so far?
- what were the effects of that?
- how do you feel/what emotions are you left with?
- what is the hardest/most challenging part, what worries you the most, what are you happy about?
- what have you learned so far?
NB: if you feel the coachee is going off track, ask her: “In what way does this relate to our topic?”
3. Options – what could you do?
The purpose of this stage is not to find the ‘right’ answer but to list as many alternative courses of action as possible – quantity is more important than quality and feasibility at this stage.
Here are some exemples of questions around options:
- what options do you have, what other option can you think of?
- What would be another out of the box or crazy option?
- what would you gain or lose with this option? Pros & cons?
- what if you had... (a large enough budget, more resources,…)?
- what else?
At this stage, and only at this stage, AND after the coachee has exhausted his list of options, the coach can share particular knowledge, ideas, and expertise. This way the coachee’s sense of
ownership is not undermined :
- “I have another couple of possible actions, would you like to have them?
- Would you like one more option to consider?”
After that, you examine the advantages and disadvantages of each option, relate them to the goal, and rank these options.
4. Will (what, when, whom) – what will you do?
At this stage, you need to convert a discussion into a decision and establish an action plan to meet the goal.
- what are you going to do/which of these options are you going to act on?
- when are you going to do it (timing needs to be highly specific)?
- how will this action meet your goal?
- what obstacles might you meet along the way?
- who needs to know?
- what support do you need – how and when are you going to get it?
- Rate on 1-10 scale (1 being “not at all” and 10 being “completely”) how likely you are to take this action?
- what prevents it from being a 10?
End the conversation by summarizing what has been decided and ask if the coachee feels she has reached her goal for the conversation. Then agree on how you will be kept up to date on progress.
Make sure you keep enough time to close the discussion properly, it is something we often rush through too much. Ideally, you would start closing when 75% of your allotted time is up.
Lastly, let me give you a caveat about questioning: be careful when asking “why” questions as they sometimes evoke defensiveness. Use what, when, who, how much, how many instead, or “what were/are the reasons…?”
There are other coaching models out there but I think this one is as straightforward as it is transformative, making it the best go-to model for managers. So don’t worry if you are used to follow another framework, this one is just the most popular one.
If you have questions or would like to get a coaching training or supervision, give me a call.
Happy Coaching !