GROW and Questions?

In my last article I wrote about self-evaluation and how a coaching conversation can help this process. Today I will take you through a useful self-evaluation technique that you can use and give to your clients. You may have already heard of it, it was made famous by Sir John Whitmore, who was one of the instigators in bringing coaching to the driver training industry. Tri-Coaching Partnership had the pleasure of meeting with him several times during the development of the BTEC Level 4 in Coaching for Driver Development and we were lucky that he chose to attend one of our training modules and offer us guidance when we first started delivering the course.The GROW model is a solution focused coaching conversation and is based on the structure below.
Goal: What do you want to achieve?
Reality: What is the current situation?
Options: What could you do?
Will: What will you do?
Questions that you can use to help generate a conversation:
GOAL
What are you trying to achieve?

• Imagine that you have successfully achieved your goal. How will you know that you have been successful?
• What does success look like for you?
• What does success feel like for you?

REALITY

• Why is it important that you achieve this goal?
• Where are you now in trying to achieve this goal?
• What skills do you currently have that will help you achieve this goal?
• How confident do you feel?

OPTIONS

• What options do you have - What else could you do?
  • What advice do you think I would give you?
• If you had absolutely no constraints, how would you choose to achieve this goal?

WILL

• You have just generated a set of options. Looking back at these options, give them a rough score of 1-10 according to your own preference.
• Looking over your list of options which ones would you like to try and for each one what, specifically, do you need to do?
• How much time do you need to achieve this? What help and support would you like?
• What is the first step?

I also found a list of questions from the University of Warwick with regard to problem solving and learning from experience. These types of questions can be very helpful when your client is evaluating their progress.

Questions for problem solving

• What would make the situation better?
• What do you want?
• What else?
• How do you feel about the situation?
• What is most important to you in this situation?
• How do you want to feel about this situation?
• What assumptions are you making about the situation?
• What assumptions are you making about someone else in this situation?
• What could be the cost to you of not solving this problem?
• What does your response to this situation tell you about yourself?
• How do you know this?
• What could you do differently?
• Where could you get help to improve this situation?
• What is positive about the situation?
• What is the most radical thing you could do?
• What is the simplest thing you could do?
• What don't you know about the situation?
• What is the relationship between how things are now and how you want them to be?
• What about this situation would you most like to change?
• What would you like someone else to do it differently?
• How does this situation affect you personally?
• Can you explain that further?
• If you get what you want, what will this achieve for you?
• What do you need to do first?
• What is stopping you?
• What do you want instead?
• What will happen if you are not successful in getting what you want?
• Why do you believe what you want is reasonable?
• Why do you believe what you want has value?
• Why are you the best person to be doing what you are thinking of doing?
• What about this situation causes you most anxiety or distress?
• If you are successful how will you feel?
  
  

Questions to prompt learning from experience

• What would have made this better?
• What did you want? What else?
• How did you feel about the situation?
• What from this experience do you most appreciate about yourself?
• How do you feel about this situation now?
• What result did you want?
• What could you learn about yourself from this experience?
• How do you know this?
• What could you do differently next time?
• What do you remember thinking but not saying?
• What did you feel but not reveal?
• What is the most radical thing you could have done?
• What is the easiest thing you could have done?
• What don't you know about the situation?
• What can this experience tell you about how you 'see' the world?
• What could you definitely not have done?
• What might you have invented or imagined about the situation?
• What surprised you about the situation?
• What surprises you about it now?
• What else?
  
  

These questions can be very effective when having a coaching conversation and using a coaching conversation tool such as the GROW model. If you want to learn more about effective questions, self-evaluation and coaching conversations then enrol yourself on the BTEC Level 4 Professional Award in Coaching for Driver Development.

Regards Graham Hooper