GROW is the best known coaching structure in the world and the most badly used. It has four moves, taken in order: Goal, Reality, Options, Will. Most managers who say they use it are doing the O and calling it coaching.
The model came out of the UK performance coaching world in the 1980s and was popularised by Sir John Whitmore in his book Coaching for Performance, with Graham Alexander and Alan Fine involved in its development. You do not need the history. You need the discipline not to jump straight to move three, because the conversation is supposed to narrow as it goes, and skipping to Options is the standard failure.
The four moves
G — Goal: what does good look like?
What does the other person want, stated so precisely that you would both recognise it if it happened. There are usually two goals in play: the goal for the situation, and the goal for the next half hour. Ask for both, because a conversation with no destination ends wherever it runs out of steam.
R — Reality: what is true right now?
What is actually happening, with evidence, in numbers wherever numbers exist. Not “sales are soft”. Quotes out, quotes won, average value, days to respond. Adjectives are where problems hide; figures are where they stop hiding.
O — Options: what could you do?
What could be done. Volume first, quality second. Three at an absolute minimum. Bad options are useful, because they mark the edges of the field and make the sensible ones easier to see.
W — Will: who does what, by when?
What will actually be done, by whom, by when, and what the very first step is. Then the honest question about whether it will really happen, asked out loud rather than assumed.
Where the time should go
Watch an untrained management conversation and the shape is nearly always the same: a few seconds of goal, a short burst of reality, then a long stretch of the manager listing solutions, then a vague ending. It feels efficient and it changes very little.
A well-run conversation is weighted differently. As a working target, spend around a fifth of it on Goal, a third on Reality, a third on Options and the remainder on Will. Those proportions are a guide rather than a rule, but the direction of travel is the point: the single biggest improvement available to most owners is spending several times longer on Reality than they do now.
There are two reasons for that. First, a surprising number of problems partly dissolve when somebody is forced to describe them precisely instead of in adjectives. Second, your private version of reality is usually months out of date, and if you skip Reality you will spend the rest of the conversation solving a problem that stopped existing in the spring.
How to use it this week
Take a conversation you were going to have anyway
A performance issue or a stuck project. Run it as GROW rather than as a briefing. You do not need a new meeting; you need a different shape to an existing one.
Write the four letters at the top of the page before they arrive
Then tick each one off as you genuinely complete it, not as you touch it. The letters on the page are what stop you drifting into advice at minute four.
Do not leave Reality until a number has been said out loud
If nobody in the room can quantify the situation, that is the finding of the meeting: you do not measure it. Fixing the measurement is then the first action, and it is usually a small one.
Ask “what else?” three times in Options
Say nothing between asks. Silence is uncomfortable and it is doing the work. The third answer is usually the one worth having, and it belongs to them rather than to you.
Close with the ten-point check
“Out of ten, how likely is this to happen?” Anything under eight, ask what would make it an eight — then change the commitment rather than lean on the person.
Diarise the review in front of them
Same day, same time, next week, put in the calendar while you are both sitting there. If it slips twice, the problem is not the plan.
The mistakes to avoid
The first is skipping Goal because it feels obvious, then skipping Reality because you believe you already know it. That gets you to Options in about forty seconds, at which point you start listing what you would do, and the conversation becomes a briefing with pauses in it.
The second is options that are instructions with a question mark on the end. “Could you maybe chase the quotes?” is not an option, it is an order in a soft voice. It gets compliance if you are lucky and nothing if you are not.
The third is accepting a Will with no number, no date and no first step. “I’ll focus on follow-up” is an intention, not a commitment, and intentions do not survive contact with a Tuesday. If the Will comes out weak, resist the urge to push harder. A weak Will almost always means the Goal was yours rather than theirs, and the correct move is to go back to G.
Questions to ask yourself
- Out of 10, how often do your management conversations end with a specific action, a name and a date rather than a general agreement?
- In your last three conversations about performance, how much of the talking was yours? Estimate honestly, then check with the other person.
- What is the number you have never asked for, because you suspect you will not like the answer?
- Which recurring conversation have you now had four times with the same outcome, and what does that tell you about whose goal it is?
GROW is not a script, and it will feel mechanical for about a fortnight. Then it stops feeling like a model and starts sounding like the way good managers have always talked.
Where this fits in coaching
GROW is the spine of the coaching skills we teach owners and their managers. It is worked through in Leadership Coaching, and it sits alongside two related mindsets: The Identity Iceberg and Kettle Logic.
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Frequently asked questions
Is GROW only for formal coaching sessions?
No, and treating it that way is the quickest way to never use it. GROW is a shape for a conversation, not a meeting type, and it works in a corridor as well as a scheduled one-to-one. A five-minute version still asks what good looks like, what is actually true, what could be done and what will now happen. The place it earns its keep is the ordinary management conversation you were going to have anyway: the stuck project, the missed target, the person who keeps raising the same problem. Run one of those as GROW this week rather than adding a session to the diary.
What should I do if someone gives a weak commitment at the Will stage?
Do not push harder, because pushing is what produces polite agreement and no action. Ask the ten-point question instead: out of ten, how likely is this to actually happen? Anything below eight is useful information rather than a problem, and the follow-up is what would make it an eight. Usually the answer is a smaller first step, a protected slot in the diary, or something removed from their week. If the score stays low whatever you change, the goal was almost certainly yours rather than theirs, and the right move is to go back to G rather than lean on W.
How long should a GROW conversation take?
Most useful ones run somewhere between twenty and forty minutes, and the length matters far less than the balance. If you finish in ten, you almost certainly skipped Reality and went straight to telling. If you run past an hour, the goal was probably too broad to work on in one sitting. A practical discipline is to watch the proportions rather than the clock: roughly a fifth of the time on Goal, a third on Reality, a third on Options and the rest on Will. Owners who lengthen only one stage should lengthen Reality.