Imagine you want to make a gourmet summer salad. You have salad and ingredients available. The coach will provide you with a giant wooden salad bowl and two large wooden spoons. With the help of the container and tools, you can easily mix up the salad and ingredients to produce the gourmet summer salad.
You have goals you want to achieve (the summer salad). You have ideas, beliefs, fears, aspirations, resources, etc (the ingredients). The coach provides the coaching model (the wooden bowl) and coaching tools (the wooden spoons) to give you a safe and functional workspace to accomplish your goals.
To give you a better idea of how the coaching model works, let’s discuss the popular GROW coaching model:
- G | Goal – what do you want?
- R | Reality – where are you now?
- O | Options – what could you do?
- W | Will – what will you do?
A coach may use the GROW model to give you an idea of the steps you’ll take together to move from where you are to where you want to be. The coach will ask powerful questions to illuminate your path forward, such as:
Goal-related questions
- Where do you want to be a year from now?
- What does it mean to you to accomplish your goals?
- What does it feel like?
- Who are you with?
- How would your life change?
Reality-related questions
- Where are you now in relation to your goal?
- Have you taken steps toward your goal?
- Which steps were effective and which were not? Why?
- What could you do better this time?
- What is stopping you from reaching your goal?
Options-related questions
- What are all your options?
- What can you do next?
- Who might be able to help?
- What could you do differently?
- If anything was possible, what would you do?
Will-related questions
- What will you do next?
- How are you going to do it?
- What obstacles might there be?
- What support do you need to do it?
- What’s the cost of you not doing this?
By answering these questions, you can better understand and manipulate your beliefs and motivations (the cooking ingredients) to move toward your goals. In doing so, a coach provides you with a supportive workspace so that you can make meaningful changes to your life.
