Coaching is a beautiful, collaborative process between coach and client.
Being effective in this profession takes a certain amount of skill beyond being a good listener.
Asking the right types of questions to encourage a client to have a personal insight into their growth is the overall goal. Having a framework for those types of questions is incredibly helpful.
The GROW model is one of the most popular coaching frameworks. The approach can be used in a wide variety of coaching modalities. In this article, we’ll explain more about this approach to coaching leadership and personal development.
What Is the GROW Coaching Model?
This framework for coaching was developed in the 1980s by Sir John Whitmore and his colleagues at Performance Consultants International. He wrote the book Coaching for Performance (1988), which has been widely used for decades. Seeking to find a more effective way to lead in business, GROW was developed to create stronger leaders. The approach has helped improve performance across the globe.
GROW is an acronym for the following components:
- Goal (aspirations)
- Reality (current obstacles or situations)
- Options (strengths, resources)
- The way forward (accountability and personal actions – what, when, by whom, and the will to do it)
This model takes goal setting to a higher level. Well-set goals are inspirational and challenging. When reaching for a broader goal perspective with this approach, leaders are more productive, self-motivated, and fulfilled.
Coaches aren’t viewed as having the answers for their clients. Effective coaches ask powerful questions that open their clients up to their potential within this solution-focused framework. Empowered people don’t need someone else to have the solutions; they are given opportunities to find solutions for themselves.
This model is frequently used in organizations. When GROW is utilized, the culture of the organization allows growth for all employees, starting with leaders. Establishing a coaching culture helps hold people accountable for their actions in all directions.
Finding clarity around a goal allows for the structure of GROW to begin with what matters first. This type of clarity helps an individual or group to envision the steps required to move forward. This structure opens people up to broader goals and enables them to find a personal connection to that goal.
The desired change can tow emotional reactions with it. The reality stage of GROW allows people to explore their motivational connection to the goal. This part of the structure allows for the exploration of strengths and how they will support forward movement.
In the options stage of the GROW model, people are supported as they brainstorm various strategies to meet the needs of the goal. It is a vital stage to allow participants’ imagination to roam. It can be incredibly fun to imagine an unlimited budget and resources.
After the process of generating abundant options, the way forward portion of the GROW model harnesses the client’s will to create action plans. During this phase, a coach can find out what their client is willing to do to move toward their goal. This phase creates opportunities for accountability and structure for tracking future progress.
It is recommended that most of the coaching session time be spent in the goal and reality phases when utilizing this model. When goals and reality get thoroughly explored, a deeper vision helps clients to move forward more easily. This model doesn’t have to be linear. Revising the first two phases is sometimes helpful in sparking a higher commitment to goals and actions.
6 Examples of the GROW Coaching Model
The GROW model can be used in a variety of settings.
The framework allows for adaptability in creating coaching cultures. Once this culture becomes the norm, this framework allows for people to work and live together more harmoniously and productively.
1. Management/organizations
Every leader should know some form of coaching skills. The GROW model is terrific for creating a scaffolding for building employee growth potential. The structure allows for the coachee to lead the conversation and will enable the manager to better understand the employees’ connection to goals.
A coaching culture provides the opportunity for employees to feel heard through improved communication skills. It also develops rapport and camaraderie within an organization. Human beings who are more connected to a common goal will move toward that goal with better results.
2. Individual
Coaching the individual allows for a safe space to explore personal motivation toward growth-related goals. GROW can be used as a framework for any type of goal. Personal development can occur in any setting, whether it’s business, health, or any other area where obstacles need to be overcome.
3. Group or team
The GROW model can be utilized in a team or group setting to clarify team goals better. Building teamwork through group coaching is a powerful way to initiate team motivation toward common goals, as well as improve morale. Group coaching helps to get everyone on the same page and to define roles and personal responsibility toward team goals.
4. Parenting and teaching students
Like managers, parents and teachers should all have some form of coaching skills in their tool bag.
Communication in families can prove to be difficult if children are not able to speak their values. Utilizing Socratic questioning allows kids to realize their potential and their motivation to achieve personal goals (McLachlan, Eastwood, & Friedberg, 2016). GROW allows an easy framework to broaden children’s minds and to help parents and teachers better understand children’s perspectives.
5. GROW
A variation of the GROW model that is important to note is TGROW, where T stands for the topic. Before heading straight to goals, an exploration of the topic that the coachee would like to focus on better attunes them with their expectation in a session.
From time to time, human beings need to explore a topic that is unrelated to other areas of growth. Allowing first for topic exploration puts the coachee in the driver’s seat for the coaching conversation.
6. GROWTH
Another alteration of the GROW model adds tactics and habits to increase specificity toward goal attainment. The T asks questions about the specific steps the client will take toward goal achievement. The H establishes how success will be maintained.
This alteration of the GROW model allows the client and coach to forge a more precise plan. It also illuminates daily personal responsibilities and actions that one must take to stay on track.
The Grow Model Sequence is broken down
Goal:
The Goal section of GROW is addressed at the beginning of each session and referred to again from time to time to keep the focus moving forward, especially if the coachee becomes stuck. It raises energy and clarifies thinking. Identifying what we want to achieve puts us on the path to accomplishing it by focusing on the solution rather than the problem.
Some Goal questions are:
- What do you want?
- Over what time frame?
- Where would you like to be on a scale of 1–10?
- Imagine you have achieved it:
- What does it look like?
- How do you feel?
- What are people saying to you?
- What are the benefits?
- What do you want to achieve in five years/one year/three months?
- How could you say your goal in a few words?
- Which part of that is the real focus?
- How will you know when you have achieved it?
- In an ideal world, what do you want?
Reality:
This is an exploration of the coachee’s world at the moment. Time spent here helps people get clear about what is happening and how it affects themselves and others. It provides an opportunity for viewing issues from different perspectives.
Some useful questions here are:
- What is happening at the moment?
- How important is this to you?
- If an ideal situation is 10, what number are you at now?
- What impact is this having on you/how do you feel?
- What have you done so far?
- Who else is affected?
- What are you doing that’s working towards your goal?
- What are you doing that is getting in the way of your goal?
Tim Gallwey, the author of the ‘Inner Game series of books, was one of the pre-cursors of coaching. One of his key discoveries was that if he asked clients to ‘watch the ball’ they would tense up and under-perform. However, if he asked them to count how many times the ball spun as it went over the net, or how many centimeters it cleared above the net, their shots improved significantly. Neither of these measurements matters in terms of technique, but the process of focussing on the detail has the dual effect of forcing the coachee to watch the ball, and providing a distraction from internal ‘chatter’, like ‘I’ve failed before, or ‘I can never hit the ball’.
Exploring the current reality is one of the practices that differentiate coaching from the normal conversation, where we tend to go straight from the past to the future, for example from:
‘He said I was always late; I said I wasn’t; he said I was unreliable,’
to:
‘I’m going to resign!’
In the above statement, the speaker is taking the emotional baggage of the past into a crucial decision about the future. Reality questions (together with Goal questions, which can be thought of as ‘future reality’) enable coachees to step off the confusion track, gain some new perspectives, and make calm, informed decisions about how to move forward.
It may feel awkward at first to explore current reality, and new coaches are tempted to go straight to the Options or Actions stage of GROW. However, doing this without exploring the coachee’s Goal and Reality may well result in the answer ‘I don’t know what to do, that’s why I’m here!’.
All these questions help people dig deeper into their awareness. They will show signs of energy, for instance, lightness in the voice, brighter eyes, a smile, and a more upright posture. That is the time to pin the new insights down to Options and Actions, and the chances are that by this time, coachees will spontaneously start originating actions where they were stuck before.
Note that we are exploring the present, and although we may ask what someone has done so far, we are not dwelling on the past or listening to stories about it. We are focusing on what the situation means to the coachee more than on the facts. We are not asking questions to find out what has happened, but to find out what impact it is having on the coachee’s work and/or life. When the coachee reaches a new insight or level of understanding, it is wise to explore the new Reality to embed the new awareness and revisit the Goal. Possibly a new Goal or direction will emerge. Then the ‘Options’ and ‘Will’ sequences start again.
When the coachee reaches a new insight, these questions are useful:
- What do you know now that you did not know before?
- What is your insight about that?
- What have you learned about yourself from that?
- Where else could you use this?
Options
Coachees will move naturally towards the Options stage as their Reality becomes clearer. Often they show new energy by sitting up and smiling, or a lighter tone of voice. Then it is useful to ask some of these questions:
- What are your options?
- What could you do?
- What else?
- If there were anything else, what would it be?
- What has worked in the past?
- What steps could you take?
- Who could help you with this?
- Where could you find out the information?
- What might someone else do in your shoes?
- Imagine you have achieved your goal; look back on the journey and tell me you got here.
Notice that most of these questions are almost all open. Keep asking open questions until the coachee has stopped coming up with options on the table. Once it seems that the list is complete, ask the closed question ‘is there anything else?’ to find out whether it is time to finalize the process. This question often results in new options and can be asked as many times as it continues to deliver results.
The following questions probe for more information and, in order not to commit the coaching sin of ‘leading’ the coachee, should be used only when the coachee has raised the subject in question, for example:
Coachee: I need some help.
Coach: Who could help you with this?
Coachee: I need more information.
Coach: Where could you find more information?
Will
As opposed to ‘Options’, which brings to light all possibilities, ‘Will’ is about discovering which actions the coachee can commit to undertaking. When asked, ‘What will you do about this?’ there is a danger that the coachee will make a list of what they think they should do, rather than choosing a pathway that suits their talents and ways of behavior. The classic example is where a man commits to joining a gym because he wants to lose weight. However, if he is never going to attend because he hates going to the gym, he would get more benefit from committing to walk his dog every morning, if that is something he would enjoy.
Some examples of Will questions are:
- What will you do about that?
- How will you do that?
- When?
- What will it take for you to commit to that action?
- What could you do to become more committed?
- Could you do more?
- How many?
- How much?
- How often?
- Where will you find that?
- Who will you talk to?
- What else you could you do?
If the coach senses a lack of commitment, a question like, ‘How committed are you to doing that?’ should be asked straight away. If there is any hesitation, it is best to go back into the GROW process to clear any blocks and find the most comfortable way forward.
40 Best GROW Model Coaching Questions
Although there are many potential questions to ask in a coaching session, below is a list of the 40 best coaching questions.
Goal
- What would you like to focus on today?
- What’s important to you at the moment?
- What does your ideal future look like?
- What will you be doing in five years?
- What new skills do you want to learn or develop?
- Where is your life out of balance?
- What challenges are you facing at the moment?
- What would make you feel that this time has been well spent?
- What are you currently working toward?
- How can you word your goal in positive language?
Reality
- What is working well at the moment?
- What do you need?
- What excuses have you always used for not achieving your goals?
- What have you done so far to improve things?
- What parts of your life will be impacted by you achieving your goal?
- What is the biggest obstacle you are currently facing?
- What does self-sabotage look like for you?
- What is your inner critic saying to you?
- What fears are present?
- What are you passionate about?
Options
- What is your first step?
- If you had 50% more confidence, what would you be doing that would be different?
- If success was guaranteed, what would you do?
- If money was not an obstacle, what would you do?
- What action step is the best use of your time at this moment?
- If someone else came to you with your obstacle, what would you tell them?
- What strengths can you use to move forward?
- If you could do only one thing this week, what would it be?
- What would you do if you answered no one?
- What is the most efficient use of your time at this moment?
Way forward
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how motivated are you to achieve your goal?
- What will it take to get that motivation closer to a 10?
- Whatever your first step is, can you think of anything that might stop you from doing it?
- How committed are you to achieving this goal?
- How do you want to be held accountable for this goal?
- How will you celebrate when you’ve achieved your goal?
- What are you going to do in the next 24 hours?
- What will you do when you’ve achieved your goal?
- Who do you need to include in your journey to that goal?
- What else do you need to consider before starting?
How to Use the Tool
To structure a coaching or mentoring session using the GROW Model, take the following steps:
1. Establish the Goal
First, you and your team member need to look at the behavior that you want to change, and then structure this change as a goal that they want to achieve.
Make sure that this is a SMART goal: one that is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound.
When doing this, it’s useful to ask questions like:
- How will you know that your team member has achieved this goal? How will you know that the problem or issue is solved?
- Does this goal fit with their overall career objectives? And does it fit with the team’s objectives?
2. Examine the Current Reality
Next, ask your team member to describe their current reality.
This is an important step. Too often, people try to solve a problem or reach a goal without fully considering their starting point, and often they’re missing some information that they need to reach their goal effectively.
As your team member tells you about their current reality, the solution may start to emerge.
Useful coaching questions in this step include the following:
- What is happening now (what, who, when, and how often)? What is the effect or result of this?
- Have you already taken any steps toward your goal?
- Does this goal conflict with any other goals or objectives?
3. Explore the Options
Once you and your team member have explored the current reality, it’s time to determine what is possible – meaning all of the possible options for reaching their objective.
Help your team members brainstorm as many good options as possible. Then, discuss these and help them decide on the best ones.
By all means, offer your suggestions in this step. But let your team members offer suggestions first, and let them do most of the talking. It’s important to guide them in the right direction, without actually making decisions for them.
Typical questions that you can use to explore options are as follows:
- What else could you do?
- What if this or that constraint were removed? Would that change things?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of each option?
- What factors or considerations will you use to weigh the options?
- What do you need to stop doing to achieve this goal?
- What obstacles stand in your way?
4. Establish the Will
By examining the current reality and exploring the options, your team member will now have a good idea of how they can achieve their goal.
That’s great – but in itself, this may not be enough. The final step is to get your team member to commit to specific actions to move forward toward their goal. In doing this, you will help them establish their will and boost their motivation.
Useful questions to ask here include:
- So, what will you do now, and when? What else will you do?
- What could stop you from moving forward? How will you overcome this?
- How can you keep yourself motivated?
- When do you need to review progress? Daily, weekly, monthly?
Finally, decide on a date when you’ll both review their progress. This will provide some accountability, and allow them to change their approach if the original plan isn’t working.
Tip 1:
A great way to practice using the model is to address your challenges and issues. By practicing on your own and getting yourself “unstuck,” you’ll learn how to ask the most helpful questions. Then, write down some stock questions as prompts for future coaching sessions.
Tip 2:
The two most important skills for a coach are the ability to ask good questions and the ability to listen effectively.
Don’t ask closed questions that call for a yes or no answer (such as “Did that cause a problem?”). Instead, ask open ones, like “What effect did that have?” Be prepared with a list of questions for each stage of the GROW process.
Use active listening skills and let your “client” do most of the talking. Remember that silence provides valuable thinking time: you don’t always have to fill the silence with the next
5 GROW Coaching Model Exercises and Worksheets (+ PDF)
The GROW model is a great way to weave coaching and positive psychology together.
We know from Self-Determination Theory that autonomous motivation is important in effective goal setting (Deci & Ryan, 2008).
Utilizing the goals portion of the GROW framework is therefore vital to connecting with a client’s motivation.
Opportunities to introduce concepts in positive psychology that a client may be unaware of are plentiful in coaching relationships. Through the introduction of VIA character strengths, clients can begin to build creative ways to utilize their strengths in their lives and workplaces. More engaged employees produce better results (Robison & Gandhi, 2019).
Goals
In the goals section of the framework, helping a client realize their strengths and align them with their goals is a helpful exercise. Goals are anchors for hope (Oettingen & Gollwitzer, 2002), and the more human beings are aligned with their core values in movements toward those goals, the better-engaged people will be in participating in actions that will make those goals realized.
Reality
When working in the reality of the GROW framework, it is important to remember how perspective works. If a client has never experienced the beauty of reframing and growth mindset conversations, it would be a perfect time to serve them with this information.
Broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001) gives clients the ability to open themselves to possibilities through increased positive emotions. By asking a client about what is working well, you can help their brains become more open.
Offering your clients unconditional positive regard allows them to explore their perspectives. This area of GROW allows for an invitation for self-assessment. This part of the framework can illuminate the information that is required to adequately solve problems.
Here is a helpful reality worksheet to use with clients, with more shared in our Unconditional Positive Regard worksheets article.
Options
The options = of the GROW framework can be magical. It allows clients to explore possibilities and choose which of those possibilities will best move them forward. When a client develops these options, they are more motivated and emotionally connected to them.
Way forward
Each coaching session will reveal a way forward for the client. A coach’s job is to collaborate with their client to assist them in connecting with what they want to do and how they will take their next step. This portion of the framework helps to develop a commitment to goal achievement.
This stage of the GROW model clarifies action steps and prepares a specific plan forward. Identifying future obstacles allows clients to plan and keep the momentum going when these obstacles inevitably pop up. Having an accountability buddy in the process will help a client hold themselves to what they said they were going to do.
GROW Model Coaching PowerPoint Templates
The templates in this presentation highlight the “how” of the GROW model. It is a helpful presentation to offer leaders in any area responsible for others. These GROW Templates explain the GROW model.
Why is the GROW model important?
Around the time the GROW model was created, organizations were dealing with challenges related to conducting effective performance management discussions, goal-setting, and problem-solving exercises.
The GROW model offered solutions to these issues. Through the model, John Whitmore emphasized that organizations need to focus on awareness and accountability in growth and professional development sessions to drive business outcomes.
Organizations felt the need to have a systematized and structured approach with a set of questions to answer at each stage toward goal accomplishment. This requirement was met by Whitmore’s GROW model.
The model outlined the four simple, yet often ignored steps:
- Set the goals
- Analyze reality
- Explore options
- Establish an action plan
The GROW model greatly simplifies and optimizes the performance management process, helping engage and motivate employees.
The GROW Model: A Real-Life Example
Here’s a quick example of how the GROW model works in real life: Suppose an individual team member lacks good presentation and communication skills. The coach or mentor can apply the GROW model this way:
Identify the goals
- Improve verbal communication
- Improve written communication
- Enhance presentation ability
Analyze the current situation
- Difficulty in expressing clearly-formed thoughts and opinions
- Lacks proper sentence formation abilities and vocabulary
- Hesitation in speaking to a crowd
- Lacks the ability to create appealing slides
Exploring the possibilities
- Courses in English speaking
- Reading to improve vocabulary
- Tutorials for tools like PowerPoint, Canva, etc.
Establishing action plans
- Take up courses in speaking or English classes
- Practice presenting in small groups
- Spend time learning best practices for presentation tools
GROW Coaching Model Benefits
The model has been admired and is still used today by leaders, change management consultants, and managers around the world. The GROW model offers myriad benefits:
- Goal management and problem-solving exercises are no longer a challenge. The model simplifies these tasks by dividing the procedure into easy steps.
- A coaching and mentoring philosophy has been formulated. This serves as a guide not only for business organizations but also for universities and educational institutions due to its outstanding results.
- The steps outlined in the model are logical and methodical, making them applicable in any case – individuals, teams, or an organization, as a whole.
- The model emphasizes the ‘Will’ component. Teams and individuals realize that the success or failure in the accomplishment of objectives depends only on their commitment to change. This makes them feel more accountable for their performance.
- The model can be applied in many different ways and places, including meetings, performance management discussions, leadership discussions, and, of course, in professional development programs.
- Working through the stages of the model can offer greater clarity to the employee goals and serve as a roadmap toward achieving them.
- The model plays a key role in enhancing employee engagement and performance across industry spaces.
A Take-Home Message
The GROW model is a simple yet highly effective coaching framework that can be used in any coaching setting. When a coach creates a reliable scaffolding for a session, the client can easily move through whatever they need to explore to decide what action steps, if any, they’d like to take moving forward. It can be adapted to fit into any setting where decisions need to be made or obstacles overcome.
The benefit of having structure when coaching is that the client-chosen topic can move forward on their terms. It helps set an agenda, and open-ended coaching questioning allows clients to be open to the possibilities that might be revealed. Holding space for other people is hard work. The GROW model makes the process a little more structured.
