Coaching Model

If you are looking for a coaching model, then the GROW model is a popular and respected one that is successfully applied in both business and sport. It offers a framework that you can use to guide the way that you approach helping others.

Over the past decade, many organisations have trained their managers to adopt this method to help guide their staff with their career planing and development for example.

• Coaching skills

The GROW coaching model emphasises an approach in which the coach applies the coaching skills of listening, questioning, probing, encouraging, clarifying, paraphrasing, challenging and suggesting.

The model is more about helping the "coachee" to find some answers for themselves, as opposed to the coach playing the role of expert and telling the coachee what they should do. The guiding rather than telling approach thereby enables the coachee to potentially develop a greater sense of self-reliance and confidence in their own decision making and problem solving

• The four coaching stages

1. Goals - What is the goal of the person? What are they wanting to achieve? What will be the benefits of achieving the goal?
2. Reality now - What is the current situation? What's working and what isn't? What exactly are the obstacles that are preventing the person from achieving their goal? What would need to change?
3. Options - What is needed for the person to move from where they are now to where they want to be? What are some possible ways of overcoming the obstacles that exist? What are the pros and cons of each of the options? What seems to be the best option?
4. Way forward, wrap up. Developing an action plan. Summarising what the coachee has decided and what they are going to do

In closing, the GROW coaching model offers you a structured approach to helping guide someone through a reflective process of considering how to bridge the gap between where they are now and where tehy want to be in the future

A short video clip helps to illustrate the application of this coaching model and the power in asking the right questions to stimulate deeper thinking and reflection by the coachee...

For many more management tips and resources, go to Management Skills Development

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