Coach Your Team To G.R.O.W!

 

The GROW model is often used in coaching, to help your coachee clarify their Goal, examine their Reality, create their Options and decide what they Will do (their Way Forward).

You can use this approach as a line manager with your team too.

It’s simple but it works. We used GROW when developing a coaching style of leadership at Southern Railway.

I am extremely proud of the difference this made to a whole raft of outcomes; for individual managers, their team members and the organisation as a whole.

It was a fantastic moment when Gallup found a statistically significant increase in employee engagement where the manager had attended our training and adopted this new style of holding 1:1 conversations with their team members.

So what is the GROW model, and how could you use it in 1:1 conversations too?

The first step is the Goal, where you clarify what the team member wants to discuss. I often find “What would make this a good use of your time?” works well here.

It can relate to the goal of the conversation, or maybe a bigger picture or longer term goal, for example how they might achieve their performance objectives, or handle a pressing challenge.

The next step is to ask about the Reality of the situation. What is the starting point? What has happened up till now? What limitations are in place? (e.g. time, budget).

It can be important to take a more future focussed and aspirational angle here too. For example: How would you like it to be? How could it be at its best? This approach can help your team member think higher, bigger and better than the immediate, linear approach to problem solving.

Next, comes Options. Here you hold the space for your team member to think about what the answer could be. It’s critical that you have high expectations here. Most people think of one or two options. I like to ask coachees to create six. They then reliably create four or five, astonishing themselves in the process!

Finally, there is Will or Way Forward. Idea generation is of limited value if a next step is not taken. Encouraging your team member to decide on how to move forward with an action point is key.

So far, so good, yes?

The benefits of a line manager engaging with team members with this approach are clear.

• The team member is much more likely to take responsibility for the task, activity or initiative. The ownership level will be much higher for something where they have created the way forward.
• The line manager can concentrate on their own role, and fulfil their strategic responsibilities more easily, rather than staying wrapped up with or micro managing the activity.
• Both are happier. Both growing, either in the doing (team member) or strategic overview (manager).

There are also two more things it’s really important to know:

The first thing is that, in my experience, it’s actually quite rare for the GROW model to be used, or effective, in a linear manner.

Humans are not nice, neat machines who go from one step to another G-R-O-W.

We leap around. Thoughts come from different directions. So as the manager, your role is to allow the apparent chaos in the conversation to cover the model as a whole.

For example, a member of staff may come to you with:

• Six decimal places of detail on the current situation (R). Your job might be to gently draw them back to the goal. Then you can work out where else to go with the model.
• Frozen in the headlights trying to decide between various routes forward (O). Your job may be draw them back to the reality of the situation (R), and the aspirational outcomes, to help them decide.
• The answer! They are telling you what they plan to do. And yet it may not be delivering what the organisation needs. Your role may be to call on other parts of the model to help them get more grounded and connected moving forward.

I like to think of it as the gears you have in your car, which you use to get the most out of the engine, driving along the road. Sometimes you race up the gears, and then come down again quickly. Sometimes you miss out a gear on the way up or down, or start in second, as you adapt to the other traffic quite quickly. Sometimes you need the reverse gear, or the brakes!

The second thing is to reassure you, that as the line manager, you are still in charge. Your views are part of the data, part of the reality. You are still needed, from a content as well as process point of view.

At Southern Railway we found that the managers really enjoyed acquiring new skills which made them and their teams more effective. It was also fantastic to win a National Training Award for the coaching programme and the recognised, measurable difference this leadership style made to results.

What does this story spark in you? Would you and your team benefit from acquiring these skills too?

Whetted your appetite? You can read more about the GROW model with some more sample questions for each of the stages here:

Or get in touch for a conversation to find out more!

Gill How is an internationally recognised Leadership Developer delivering programmes globally which enable senior managers, executives and professionals step into their strategic leadership capability and stretch their strengths. She is a Fellow of the Association for Coaching, a Team Facilitator and Strengths Expert. She has founded an EDI Bookclub+ to which ALL are welcome. If she can help you in developing the potential of the professionals and leaders in your organisation, get in touch: 

“Gill supported Southern at the inception of our ambition to transform our leadership approach towards a more coaching style. Gill was instrumental in working with us to develop, from a blank sheet of paper, a comprehensive and effective approach to deliver this strategy. Gill was creative and expert in guiding Southern to achieve a scalable product with complete knowledge transfer to our development team. The business results have seen tangible improvements in employee engagement scores with organisational health measures improving alongside them. Winning a National Training Award together was the cherry on top of an excellent business partnership.”

Chris Burchell, when Managing Director, Southern Railway

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