Coaching, the ability to support, motivate, and empower team members to maximise their potential, is a key skill of great leadership, and yet alarmingly, the Harvard Business Review identified some troubling stats: 64% of appraisals are not thorough or timely enough, 55% of employees claimed that they did not agree with their performance reviews, 25% said that performance evaluations were their most disliked activity within work, and 63% of senior HR executives stated that their biggest challenge when it came to performance management was poor managerial coaching and feedback skills.
Given these statistics, it is important that leaders take time to hone their coaching skills. There are several coaching methods and frameworks, but here I will one of the most widely known (and my favourite), the GROW model which was developed by Sir John Whitmore in 1992.
The GROW model can be used to unlock potential for coaching for problem solving, performance management and goal setting.
The model is split into four parts: Goal, Reality, Options, Way Forward, and for each part there are a set of powerful coaching questions that will help increase satisfactory outcomes, build confidence and ramp-up productivity. The below details the four stages and provides some example questions that can be asked by the coach.