Coaching is about seeing people in terms of what’s inside them and unlocking their potential to improve their performance. It’s about helping them to learn and remove mental interference and making it safe for people to think and imagine about what’s possible, and helping them find achievable first steps. Coaching is about understanding that the client is the expert of his/her own life and work, and believing that all clients are resourceful and creative and that the coach’s job is to draw out client-generated solutions and strategies. 

A simple, repeatable coaching process is the G.R.O.W. Model, jointly developed by John Whitmore, Graham Alexander, and Alan Fine in the mid- to late-1980 (Fine, 2018). Shortly after developing GROW, the three went their separate ways, each using his own approach to/version of the G.R.O.W. Model.

For all major iterations of the G.R.O.W. Model, the first three letters are the same: “G” is the “Goal” the individual seeks to achieve; “R” is the “Realities” a person should consider in the context of the decision process; and “O” is the “Options” open to the decision maker (Fine, 2018). Only the last letter, “W”, is interpreted differently. John Whitmore defined it as “Will” (Whitmore, 2009), Graham Alexander defined it as “Wrap-up” (Alexander & Renshaw, 2005), although he also used “Wrap-up/way forward” (Alexander, 2006), and Alan Fine defined it as “Way Forward” (Fine, 2010).

G.R.O.W. (Goal, Reality, Options, Way Forward) provides a practical coaching framework—a system and order for structuring conversations. The coach helps the coachee (person being coached) articulate a concise goal (Goal). Next, the coachee describes his current situation (Reality). This is followed by brainstorming options (Options) and next steps. Finally, the coachee identifies and selects one or more options to use in an action plan (Way Forward).

The GROW Model serves as a process guide for the coach to have a structured, yet non-directive conversation with the coachee (person being coached). This decision framework is systematic and focused, and helps to improve the quality of the decisions that lead to actions which then lead to results. GROW is “one of the tools Google uses to teach [its] managers about coaching conversations” (re:Work with Google: Coach with the GROW model).