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Weekly Training Booster Ep#7: Use the GROW Model For Your Employees
Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the seventh episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode was about the GROW Coaching model; Goal, Reality, Options, and Way Forward. An overview of this coaching model to help you to begin coaching.
You Can Read the GROW Coaching Model Episode Transcript Below:
Andy Palmer:
Welcome to our next MBM Weekly Training Booster. We’re at number seven. Today, we’re going to be talking about the GROW Coaching Model and how to use the GROW Coaching Model. So Darren I’ve got, and as I’ve said before, in previous videos, I’ve got issues. Another one that I’ve identified is my inability to manage time. So you said you would kindly sit down with me, use something called GROW to make me better. Can you give us an overview of what this GROW thing is you keep pushing at me?
Darren A. Smith:
I can, there are a number of coaching models out there, like Oscar, GROW, a bunch of others. The one I really want to focus on because it’s the most popular is G-R-O-W, the four stages of GROW. It was designed by a guy called Sir John Whitmore, who was originally a racing driver, not many people know that. And he came up with this four stage model for helping someone to coach someone else. G is the goal, where do I want to get to? R is for reality. Where am I right now? O is for options. What things could I do? A way forward is basically choose the options before I’m going to go into.
Andy Palmer:
Brilliant. So if we decided that I do need to resolve my time management issues, how would you be using each of those stages with me, to help unlock this?
Darren A. Smith:
So the first question we’d ask you around the first stage, which is goal. So one of my questions would be where do you want to get to on your time management? And you might say, where I want to get to, Darren, is… What you say?
Andy Palmer:
Finishing on time more often, being able to prioritize my workflow, because I tend to work on all the wrong stuff at the wrong times. And ultimately, maybe to try and manage when stress, cause I’m just incredibly busy. [inaudible 00:01:49] I’ve got a job.
Darren A. Smith:
And they will be great answers, because I would then follow up that with some subsequent questions to try and get you to define that goal. What does it look like when you’re there? How were you feeling? What does it look like? What does it smell like? How euphoric would that be?
Andy Palmer:
Good stuff. All right. So once we’ve got our goal, we know what we’re aiming for. We can then move into our reality stage of trying to figure out maybe what’s not working so well right now. Is that right?
Darren A. Smith:
It could be. So we’ve got our bit over here. Where does Andy want to get to on time management? But now trying to establish, how far is he away? That’s his reality. So I might say to you, considering your goal, how would you compare that to your reality? If this is nine out of 10, what score would you give yourself now?
Andy Palmer:
And I guess flushing out with a number of different questions coming at it from multiple different angles just helps that we’re, [inaudible 00:02:43] classes that kind of conscious incompetence. I now know what I didn’t think I knew before. I know with the view to help understand that differential between where I want to get to and actually the real reality of where I am now. That then moves us into our options. And again, we’re looking to explore things that can help solve it, I guess?
Darren A. Smith:
They are, so again, GROW and coaching’s all about the answers within you, all I’m trying to do is ask you the right questions to pull it out your head. What I’m not doing is giving you the answers, because we move into more mentoring, which is very different. This is all about, I should be able to coach you to do anything, as a coach. I don’t need to be a subject matter expert. So I might say to you, what have you tried before? What’s worked, what hasn’t worked, what have other people done that you’ve seen work? What things float your boat, do books float your boat? Videos? Online training? And I’m trying to prod and poke your brains when you go oh, it’s these things over here I quite like to do.
Andy Palmer:
Because that develops, creates a bunch of options for us, which then allows us to move forward into that way forward, that wrap up parts of the model. What does that look like?
Darren A. Smith:
So that might be me saying too, when you think about those three things that you’ve chosen to do, it might be an online training course. I’ll have some coaching from someone else and I’ll go and do three activities. I might say, well, which one of those isn’t going to work for you? And I’m trying to poke and prod to look to the future to see, well, where is Andy going to fall over? Because I’m trying to look forward ahead through you to see what might and might not work.
Andy Palmer:
I guess, following this work for me, the GROW coaching, we’re very much a cycle. One that often kind of recycles, but allows, and that’s kind of close that circle and move us towards create a plan to help achieve that goal.
Darren A. Smith:
Absolutely, absolutely. They’re the four stages of the GROW model. A lot of people don’t want to coach because they just want to tell, but actually the difference in coaching is you’re much more likely to do it because it’s coming from within you, rather than me just say, “Andy, go and read that from the book.”
Andy Palmer:
People have an emotional connections to the things that they help create. And if they’re then help creating their own plan, their own training, their own development, then they’re in a really strong place. So what’s one top tip. And it’s very leading question. If people want to embrace the GROW model, what suggestion have you got to help them take that on board?
Darren A. Smith:
Well, I’ve got a pitfall that people fall into, then a solution. The pitfall most people fall into is they talk too much as a coach. So my top tip is 80/20. Make sure as a coach, you’re only talking for about 20% of the time, come up with cracking big open questions and almost watch your coachee in the nicest possible way, squirm a little looking for the answers. That would be my top tip. [inaudible 00:05:40] Would be to buy our coaching cards. We now have 17 decks of coaching cards. They look like playing cards. There’s about a hundred in a deck. They’re only about seven pound 50, and they enable amateur coaches to become more professional coaches.
Andy Palmer:
So, let’s put a link to all those coaching decks in there. I know there’s one specifically around GROW. There’s also an advanced GROW deck as well. Prompt example questions across a number of different subject matters. Tell people to help unlock the potential in both themselves and others around them. Good stuff. All right. Thank you, Darren. That was our weekly training booster for this week. I’m not going to retake that because we’ve been here for too long already. That was how to use the GROW Coaching Model. Thank you.
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