Coaching & Personal Development

Growing On G.R.O.W – A More Specific Coaching Model For Busy Managers

The effective coaching of employees by their line managers is fast becoming an expectation from both senior management and from the employees themselves. Many managers are now being taught how best to coach their employees by employing the standard coaching model called G.R.O.W, where

• G equates to the Goal to be achieved,
• R to the Reality of the present situation,
• O for Options available and
• W for the Way Forward and Will.

G.R.O.W, constructed by Graham Alexander and championed by Sir John Whitmore, is a well-established coaching model and an excellent “starter” model to enable managers to get used to using a structure for coaching. Very competent managers and coaches can use the G.R.O.W. model effectively by taking time and ensuring depth at each of the four stages but busy managers or less competent managers and coaches can tend to “skip” through the stages which, can often result in the following scenarios:

• An acceptance of Goals or Objectives without checking the validity of the reasons behind wanting to achieve these goals or objectives.
• A lack of full understanding of the Performance Gap between the present situation and the desired outcome.
• A lack of exploration in the Options phase meaning that only a few options and probably the more traditional “tried and tested” options are highlighted.
• Not enough time spent checking the Motivation of the employee to move the actions forward and also discussing how the manager is going to provide onward support.

G.R.O.W provides a structure but may not provide enough “discipline” for busy managers to ensure adequate depth of understanding and support.

The OUTCOMES® coaching model has been designed to enable managers and sales managers to undertake more structured and productive coaching sessions with their employees and sales executives than perhaps they have been used to. The increased structure will result in more depth to their coaching and as such will enable an increase in more understanding, motivation and commitment to action than they may have experienced with other coaching models such as G.R.O.W.

OUTCOMES® provides more structure than G.R.O.W simply by the fact that there are more distinct stages that a manager or coach must adhere to. The initial reaction from most managers I have introduced it to has been one of initial frustration in that with it having more distinct stages to go through and check, it can take more time to implement. However, once the managers understand the reasons for the extra steps and the fact that if they use this model carefully, they will get good results, the managers have warmed to the model.

So what are the stages behind OUTCOMES®?

I am going to guide you through the model by way of a “coaching conversation” between Mark, the manager and Jonathan, the employee

O – Objectives

It is important that the objective for the coaching session is established at the onset. What are the specific reasons for meeting and what exactly would the employee look to achieve as a result of the coaching session?

In all situations it is vital that a desired outcome or objective for the session is identified and the manager must take time to fully establish exactly what is to be achieved. Only that way can the coaching session be measured in terms of its effectiveness.

Questions to ask:

What would you like to discuss and what would you like to get out of the session?

What specifically do you want to achieve in this session?

How specifically can I help you?

How will you know that we have achieved our objectives for this session?

Be careful when accepting outcomes or objectives that cannot be realised within the course of the coaching session. Sometimes employees can come with weird and wonderful challenges and ideas and many expect solutions from one coaching session. Manage their expectations and break down the challenge or idea into manageable “chunks” so that you achieve something every session on the way to achieving the overall objective. Some objectives need to be broken down this way into smaller objectives and actions before the overall objective is realised.

More about OUTCOMES®

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