To acquire the best out of people, we have to first believe that the best is in there. But how do we know it is? How much is there? And how do we get this out? The answers to all these questions are easily found in the Grow Model for coaching. Whether we coach, recommend, promote, counsel, or mentor; the effects of what we do depends upon our own human perspective. The expression, “To acquire the best out of someone” and “your concealed potential” asserts that more lies within the person holding off to be released. 

GROW MODEL – The Coaching Tool

The GROW Model is perhaps the most broadly utilized goal setting and a problem-solving model designed by Sir John Whitmore. It offers a systematic, methodic and yet powerful framework of four main stages of a coaching or mentoring sessions. 

The acronym GROW stands for – 

• G: Goal (What you desire?)
• R: Reality (Where you stands now?)
• O: Options (What can you do?)
• W: Will (What you are willing to do?)

The GROW Model is the power key for unlocking a person’s inner potential through a sequence of coaching conversations. It’s well renowned for its success in problem-solving and goal setting.

This model is effective in two cases;

When the members of the team (employees or your clients) eagerly want to be coached and select their own issues and challenges, and the coach (or manager) facilitates a two-way discussion and structures the conversation towards some resolution.  

Step 1 of the GROW Model – Goal Setting

The first coaching stage is to determine the goals that your client or employee wants to achieve. You need to make a crystal clear goal for the coaching session and also a long-term accomplishment goal. Make sure you and your coach know the objectives of your conversation as it’s essential to give value and direction to each discussion. The common questions during this goal setting phase are:

• What’s the aim of this discussion?
• What results do you want from this session?
• How much personal command you’re having over your goals?
• What’s your first step in achieving your goal?
• In what context do you want this?
• Is it positive, challenging, or attainable?
• When will you carry out the goal?
• Do we have sufficient time for attaining this goal?

Step 2 of the GROW Model – Reality

Next, it’s time to analyze the swinging reality. Ask your team members to scrutinize their current reality. This exploration is for raising the awareness and self-awareness of individuals. For doing this, you need to be empathetic and tap into their emotions by asking questions such as:

• What’s happening right now?
• How are you treating your goal?
• What do you think you’re scared of?
• How far are you from the absolute situation?
• What’s the impact of your goal on you and your life?
• What are the hurdles you are facing?
• What will be the result of this?
• Have you already taken any step towards this goal?

Step 3 of the GROW Model – Options

Once reality and all the obstacles to your current goals have been discussed, a full range of options on how to overcome the current dilemmas preventing the progress of a client should be examined.  By the end of this stage, the coach should ensure that at least some of the choices are made to overcome the obstacles.  Some common examples of these coaching questions are:

• What ideas do you have?
• What are the actions that have worked for you in the past?
• Who could help you in achieving your goals?
• What else could you do?
• Is there any information which you need?
• How could you acquire the information?
• What if the obstacles didn’t exist?
• What are the things which you need to stop doing for achieving this goal?

Step 4 of the GROW Stage – Will

The objective of this stage is to revamp a discussion into a decision by using conclusions of the three previous coaching steps. Moreover, by analyzing the current reality and by examining the options, your coach will get a perfect idea for achieving his personal goals. That’s remarkable! But by kicking off and driving future actions without any goal, it has no value. Both the coach and the client should remain flexible throughout the process and the goals and actions needed to be altered for reaching out the positive and negative events. The common examples are:

• What are you going to do?
• Will this action meet your future goal?
• Who needs to know?
• What support do you need?
• What are the other considerations which you have?
• On a scale of 1-10, give a rating of how confident you are that you will achieve this goal. 
• What prevents it from being a 10?
• How can you make it a 10 on 10?

As you see, the GROW model can be such a simple and amazing tool for you and your team to accomplish their goals for growth.

To Your Success,

Jairek Robbins