unit 3-reading assignment #2 vocab development

7/31/2019 Unit 3-Reading Assignment #2 Vocab Development

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Performance Coaching Utilizing the GROW

ModelContributor: Navid Nazemian

Posted: 06/04/2012 12:00:00 AM EDT

Did you know that etymologically,the English term coach is derived from a medium of

transport that traces its origins to the Hungarian word kocsi meaning carriage or cart? It was

indeed named after the village where it was first made.

The first use of the term coaching to describe an instructor or trainer arose only in 1830 in

Oxford University slang describing a tutor who carries a student through an exam. Only one

year later in 1831 it was used for the first time in relation to sports. Coaching has since then been

used in language to describe the process to transport people from where they are, to where they

want to be.

John Whitmore, who is one of the founders of the coaching GROW model, defines coaching as

unlocking a persons potential to maximize their performance. There are various structures,

models and methodologies of coaching. Most are designed to facilitate learning of a new

behaviour to enable personal and/or professional growth. There are also other forms of coaching

to help the coachee (someone who is being coached) to improve a physical skill, like in a sport or

performing art discipline.

Coaching is widely used across many modern organizations. According to the Chartered Institute

of Personnel Development (CIPD), 51 percent of companies consider coaching as a key part of

learning development and crucial to their strategy, with 90 percent reporting that they use

coaching for various reasons. Qa research found out in 2011 that 80 percent of organizations

surveyed had used or are now using coaching. According to CIPD, the actual use of the

coaching concept inside organizations varies widely:
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When talking about coaching as a means to facilitate psychological or emotional growth it must

be differentiated from therapeutic and counselling disciplines. When looking at some of the

erratic senior management behaviours of the past, some of us may actually disagree, a client of

coaching, in most cases, is considered rather healthy! So clearly there is a different purpose

aimed at coaching them, which is to enable them to move forward from their present situation

and/or perspective and grow.

One powerful coaching style is through asking questions in order to find opportunities that will

challenge the coachee to find answers from within him or herself. This is also referred to as a

"Socratic method" and shall facilitate the coachee as a learner to discover answers and new waysof being, based on their values, preferences and unique perspective. In the management

literature a model that uses its basic concept and is widely used across the globe is the so called

"GROW model." It was originally developed in the 1980s by Graham Alexander and racing

champion Sir John Whitmore. A Google search conducted in April 2012 identified over 42

million mentions.

So what exactly does GROW stand for? It stands for:

Goals

Reality

Options

Whats Next
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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 1GOALS (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 doesnt 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
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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 2REALITY (Whats 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

coachees 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

conversations I have found the entire coaching process to be much more effective if sufficient

time has been invested into this stage of the process.

Stage 3OPTIONS (What might you do?)

At this stage the coachee will have described his or her reality in more detail. It is now down to

the coach to help to generate some options and to get the coachee to agree how to take these

forward and move into some clear actionable results. During this stage, the coach usually asks a

number of open-ended questions. Here, effective coaches get the coachee to flush out a number

of ideas and options to be ultimately agreed upon. If the coachee feels blocked for some reason

or has a black out, it is fine to ask for the coachs perspective during this brainstorming stage.

Stage 4WHATS NEXT (What will you do?)

This stage is also referred to as WRAP-UP and/or WAY FORWARD in the literature. But most

importantly, it is action time now! You can immediately spot an effective coach at this stage.

Why? Because only having gone rigorously through the previous three stages will enable some

actions to become obvious and clear at this stage. It is not only important to have a coachee

defining actionable outcomes, but also to get him or her to describe the reasons for their choices!

Here it is fine for the coach to ask some closed questions to ensure the coachee has fully checked

his or her position.


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The beauty of the GROW model approach is that coachees by now have typically a number of

actions available to them. And most importantly, these actions are predominantly based on their

own wisdom, experience or creativityalbeit with some possible additions form the coach by

the end. And this in return can help to drive both engagement and performance levels up.

It is important to highlightthat coaching conversations using the GROW model dont

necessarily have to produce novel ideas or major innovations. It is rather important that the

coach gets the coachee to reflect on previous thoughts with a sharper focus and confront the

coachee to understand whether certain choices and actions proposed are desirable at the end. And

most importantly, the coaching GROW model can be applied regardless of the seniority level

involved.

Source: http://www.humanresourcesiq.com/corporate-learning-employee

development/articles/performance-coaching-utilising-the-grow-model/

Retrieved Wednesday 13 June 2012
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unit 3-reading assignment #2 vocab development

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