Chapter 4: 8 Great Coaching Questions for the GROW Model

• What is the end point?
• When will you know you’ve met your goal?

Anybody can ask a client what their goals are expect them to provide some kind of a coach. It is the role of a coach to make it crystal clear what success actually looks like so that a client knows precisely what they are working towards. Listen for specifics when your clients answer these types of questions about their aspirations so that you both have a rock solid understanding of where your client wants to be.

• What do you need to do in order to reach your goal?
• What are the steps between where you are now and where you want to be?

In a nutshell, the key point of the Reality stage of the GROW model is helping the client see exactly what steps are necessary to make it to their chosen end point. Reality questions like these help clients objectively examine their present situation without feeling immediately overwhelmed.

• When you have had success working toward your goal in the past, what was different?
• What would have to change in order for you to reach your goal?

Obstacle and Option questions are at the heart of the GROW Model, and the above questions are two solid examples of the types of probing questions that you need to ask in order to draw out why your clients have yet to reach a particular goal on their own. The point of this stage is to ask what personal, social, professional or environmental obstacles have blocked the way in the past and what resources and isolate each obstacle as clearly as possible.

Once your clients obstacles are no longer so muddled, they will find it much easier to provide clear answers to questions about their option. Questions like the two provided above help clients identify the additional resources or knowledge that they need in order to make their way forward.

• What are you going to do next?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how committed are you to moving forward?

By this stage of a coaching session, most of the hard work is behind both you and your clients. As simple as a question like What are you going to do next? might sound, you need to ensure that you are leaving your clients knowing exactly what they need to do in order to start making progress. Asking clients how committed they are on a scale of 1 to 10 allows a coach to gage how they are feeling about the process near the end of a session. When clients provide you with an answer other than 10, ask them what would need to happen in order to have them 100% committed toward reaching success and then address any lingering concerns.