Understand the tools and techniques used in coaching practice
So what exactly does GROW stand for? It stands for:
Goals
Reality
Options
What’s Next
As you can see the GROW model effectively provides a framework for the four main stages of a coaching conversation. I will now explore the four main stages in more detail:
Stage 1 – GOALS (What do you want?)
After establishing rapport, the coach asks the coachee or proposes what the topic of the coaching conversation should be. It might happen that the coachee does not have a clear idea what he or she would like to talk about. Therefore it is even more important that the coach unravels any generalized topic and gets the coachee to focus on what it is he or she really would like to discuss. The aim during this stage of the process is to establish a goal for the coaching session in order to ensure that the coachee can walk out of the conversation with a clear deliverable.
Whether the coachee would like to discuss a long term goal, a performance goal or a session goal it doesn’t really matter. What matters more is that the coach needs to do some probing to drill the topic down until a realistic goal becomes clear. Effective coaching should produce defined outcomes and it is the responsibility of the coach to ensure the outcomes are made crystal clear for the coachee. As trivial as this stage might sound, during my coaching conversations I have found this stage to be both important and insightful since gaining this clarity often plays a pivotal role to resolve the actual issue.
Stage 2 – REALITY (What’s happening?)
For an effective coaching conversation, the majority of the time should be spent around this stage. This is the prime opportunity for the coach to shed some light of awareness into the coachee’s reality. It is also a golden opportunity for the coachee to gain new insights, raise his or her own awareness and be able to see a need or the issue better. During my coaching...