The GROW Model of coaching is one of the most established, time-tested, and effective frameworks for coaching employees about goal setting and performance. It was popularized by Sir John Whitmore in his best-selling book, Coaching for Performance.
It has four components, each represented by a letter of the GROW acronym.
- G-Goal setting. What do you want?
- R-Reality. What is the current reality?
- O-Options. What options have you tried? What options could you try?
- W-Way Forward. What are you willing to do and how will you do it?
GROWTH Model of coaching
The GROWTH model of coaching is my enhancement of the time-tested GROW model of coaching. I modify the four elements of the GROW model and add two additional steps to create the GROWTH model.
T = Team Capabilities
H = How-to-Manage
Big goals and problems cannot be achieved or solved alone. We need a team with certain capabilities. We also need helpful systems and structures to support the team and capabilities.
I have woven Michael Bungay Stanier’s excellent coaching questions into my GROWTH model. Stanier’s questions are identified with an asterisk.
A key thing to note about this approach is that it helps you resist the strong temptation to tell your people what to do or to give them advice. Instead, you focus on asking questions that help them work their way through the issues and come up with solutions that they can follow. With this approach, you should rarely give any advice.
I. The Problem
The problem is a person’s perception of reality. Practice empathic listening with reflections to listen to their problem and make sure they feel understood. Open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries.
- What’s on your mind?* And what else?*
II. The GROWTH Solution
G-Goal (Imagine things going perfectly)
- “Imagine everything going perfectly. What do things look like?” Imagine a better future. What does it look like? Get them to paint a picture of success or their desired future.
- “If you did know, what would it be?” — Ask this if they can’t imagine a perfect future without their problem. A coach I know doesn’t accept, “I don’t know” as an answer to the “imagine” question. When someone replies with, “I don’t know”, he follows up with, “if you did know…” He finds that approach usually gets people talking. I use this with patients and other clients and it works excellently.
- How would you know you were being successful or that you’ve achieved your goal or solved this problem? –Â Define success. The goal or problem needs to have the elements of a SMART checklist.
- How could this goal or problem be broken down into more manageable chunks?
R-Reality (Inner and outer current reality)
Review or recognize, understand, and name the current inner and outer realities.
Develop awareness of the current reality or situation we are dealing with. This indicates how far we are from our goals. Here, look at both the internal and external realities. The inner reality looks at emotions and motivations surrounding the issue and desired change. The outer reality looks at the region to play (playing field) and the challenges and problems going on. It also looks at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) that will come into play.
Here are some questions to try at this stage. You don’t have to use them all.
- What is the current reality?
- What’s the real challenge here for you?*
- Where are you now in relation to your goal?
- What steps have you already towards your goal? What impact has that had?
- What has contributed to your success so far?
- What progress have you made so far?
- What is working well right now? What is not?
- What is required of you?
- What’s keeping you from having reached that goal already?
- What obstacles/challenges are you experiencing?
- What can you learn from others who have achieved this goal?
- What can you learn from what has not worked so far?
- What could you do better?
- What is any current resistance to change telling you?
You want to describe the current reality in specifics and detail. What is happening? how long? What are the effects? Who is involved (stakeholders)? What do they think?
O-Options (Options tried, and options to try)
A) Options tried: What options have you tried? B) Options to try: What imperfect options can you try
- What options have you already tried?
- What options or possibilities for action (even imperfect ones) do you think you could try that may move the ball forward? What else…? Ask what else until they give enough options. Don’t worry about how realistic they are at this stage. You’re just brainstorming.
- Which of these options do you like the most? Why?
- What obstacles do you see in the path? i.e. (What might get in the way? What seems to stand in the way of achieving this goal?) What else…? Ask what else until you get enough options.
- What are the benefits and pitfalls of these options?
- Rank each option on a scale of 1 to 10 how practical each one is.
- First, take them through a brainstorming session of sorts where they generate options. Then evaluate these options by looking at benefits and risks/obstacles to help chose your next step or way forward.
W-Way Forward (things to Stop, and things to Start doing)
- What will you stop doing?
- What will you start doing? Things you will stop doing are just as important as the things you will start doing. You want to know, if you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?*
- Get a detailed step-by-step process or recipe for doing each of the things you will start doing.
- What are your next steps?
- Precisely when will you take them?
- Agree on SMART steps to try to solve the problem or achieve the goal. Set goals for today, this week, next week, etc till the next visit with you. No need to set yearly, 5-year goals at this point.
T-Team Capabilities
- Who might be able to help?
- What capabilities will be needed?
- How can I help?*
H-How-to-systems
- What systems (e.g. management systems) will you need to help you achieve your goals or solve the problem?
- You need these habits and systems to support yourself and your team and capabilities to get the job done.
Debriefing
- What was most useful for you?*
GROWTH approach and Motivational Interviewing
The approach used in GROWTH is compatible with Motivational Interviewing (MI). However, the stages of MI don’t correspond 1-to-1 with GROWTH. MI’s four stages are Engaging, Focusing, Evoking, and Planning. All of these fit into the GROWTH framework. The basic communication skills of MI–Open-ended questions, Affirming, Reflective listening, and Summaries are also excellent for coaching.
GROWTH for Strategy making vs. Coaching
**Besides coaching someone, the GROWTH framework is also useful for creating a strategy. When creating strategy, some elements are slightly different but not by much–mostly by how one views them. For strategy creation, GROWTH may be presented as follows:
- Goals or guiding aspirations
- Region to play. In coaching, Reality is the better word here because you already have the region selected for you. In both cases, this is the stage of diagnosis and understanding the situation. For a strategy, that also includes choosing the region to focus on.
- Options. In a strategy, these would be options to offer to solve the problem. For coaching, you are guiding the person to brainstorm ways they can choose to solve their problem.
- Way to win, instead of Will and Way forward. For strategy, the assumption is that the team is willing to pursue the options that they choose to achieve their goals. There is no need to assess willingness or intention as one needs to do in coaching.
- Team capabilities
- How-to-manage
Check out this excellent coaching video
Related Articles and resources
- The 7 Powerful Coaching Questions.
- Related article: See Dan Rockwell’s PIT SIT’N mnemonic which uses the same principles.
- Mindtools.com also has some good resources on the GROW model.
- Goal Setting: A Fresh Perspective. An Oracle White Paper, June 2012. Last accessed as online PDF on 8/2/2018
- http://www.growthcoaching.com.au/about/growth-approach
