Coaching for Performance summary

The first step in the GROW model is goal setting. Whitmore defines four different levels of goal, moving from your grandest ambition down to the more granular day-to-day tasks.

At the highest level are dream goals. These are broad and often inexact wishes that a coachee might bring to you as a coach. It can help to think about these as the why goals.

When working toward improvement, it’s essential that you understand your current reality, the R in GROW. But for coaches, exploring reality isn’t about looking at data. Sure, you probably want to start there, but coaching at this stage is about finding the root cause of the problem, not just looking at the symptoms.

This means asking descriptive, nonjudgmental questions, and developing an understanding of why the situation is how it is. But what exactly do we mean by descriptive, nonjudgmental questions? 

During the options stage of GROW, you’ll want to brainstorm as many alternative courses of action as you can. This isn’t about finding one optimal solution yet, but breaking down assumptions that you or the coachee might have about how something should be done. Be creative and consider the possibilities.

People often have negative assumptions that mean they automatically reject ideas before actually considering them. “We don’t have the budget” is a classic. Ask questions that explore what could be possible if that obstacle didn’t exist. Well, what would you do if you did have the budget? Or, What if that expectation didn’t exist?

The final step of GROW is will. This is about asking, What will you do? And establishing personal will, as in intention and responsibility. Without personal will, there’s no commitment to action.

Whitmore splits this into two steps. First, the accountability set-up. Your coachee should define the action they’ll take, the measurable outcomes, and the timeframe they’ll do it in. By stating it outright, they set up accountability to follow through.

Now that we’ve looked at the fundamentals of coaching and the GROW model, let’s see what coaching can look like in practice. 

The most common form of coaching is called formal coaching, or 1:1 coaching. This is where a single coach works with a single coachee, and they collaborate in the coachee’s development. In this sort of setting, you’ll need to build trust and establish confidentiality.