The GROW model is a four-stage coaching framework used by managers and executive coaches to structure goal-focused conversations. GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options, and Will (or Way Forward). A GROW coaching session moves a coachee from a vague aspiration (“I want to be a better presenter”) to a specific, committed action plan in a single conversation – typically 30 to 60 minutes.
In this guide
- What Is the GROW Model?
- How Does Each Stage of the GROW Model Work?
- What Are GROW Model Example Questions for Managers?
- What Does a GROW Coaching Conversation Look Like? (Full Example)
- How Do You Apply the GROW Model in a One-on-One?
- What Are the Limitations of the GROW Model?
- Frequently Asked Questions
The GROW model was developed by Sir John Whitmore and popularised in his book Coaching for Performance. It is now used by managers, HR professionals, and executive coaches in organisations across every sector. This guide explains how each stage works, gives you the exact questions to ask in each stage, and shows you how to apply GROW in a real one-on-one conversation.
What Is the GROW Model?
The GROW model structures a coaching conversation into four sequential stages. Each stage has a specific purpose, and each stage builds on the one before it. Skipping a stage – particularly Reality – is the most common coaching error and produces action plans that are disconnected from the actual situation.
| Stage | Purpose | Manager’s Role | Time in Session |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goal | Define what the coachee wants to achieve | Clarify and sharpen the goal | 15-20% |
| Reality | Understand the current situation honestly | Surface facts, challenge assumptions | 30-35% |
| Options | Generate possible paths forward | Expand options without directing | 30-35% |
| Will | Commit to specific next actions | Lock in accountability | 15-20% |
| Best used for | Development conversations, career goals, skills coaching | Not suitable for disciplinary or performance-correction conversations | Any session length |
The GROW model is not a therapy session and it is not a performance review. It is a structured conversation that the coachee leads, with the manager holding the framework. The manager’s primary tool throughout is a question, not an answer.
In a GROW conversation, the coach’s job is to hold the map – not drive the car.
How Does Each Stage of the GROW Model Work?
Goal: What do you want to achieve?
The Goal stage sets the destination for the conversation. The initial goal stated by the coachee is often too broad (“I want to get promoted”) or too narrow (“I want to fix the way the retrospective runs”). The manager’s job in this stage is to help the coachee arrive at a goal that is specific enough to work toward in the current conversation and meaningful enough to be worth their full attention. The goal does not have to be the final, perfectly formed objective – it is the working target for this session.
Reality: What is actually happening right now?
The Reality stage is the most undervalued part of the GROW model. It surfaces what is actually true – not what the coachee believes to be true. A coachee who says “I want to improve my presentation skills” may, in the Reality stage, discover that the real problem is anxiety specifically in front of the leadership team, not presentations generally. That insight changes every option in the next stage. The manager surfaces reality through questions that invite honesty, not performance.
Options: What could you do?
The Options stage generates possible paths forward – without the manager selecting among them. The manager’s instinct here is to jump to the “right” answer and offer it. Resist this. A coachee who generates their own options is more committed to executing them. The manager’s role is to push the coachee beyond the first two ideas – which are usually what they mentally generated before the conversation started.
Will / Way Forward: What will you do, and when?
The Will stage converts the conversation into a commitment. A GROW session that ends with “I should probably do X” has produced an intention, not a plan. The Will stage requires: a specific action (what), a deadline (by when), and accountability (who will the coachee tell, or where will they track it). Managers who use Profit.co’s OKR management platform log their GROW session commitments as individual goals with a weekly check-in date – making the accountability visible and trackable from day one.
What Are GROW Model Example Questions for Managers?
GOAL STAGE QUESTIONS
- “What would you like to get out of this conversation today?”
- “If this coaching session is a success, what will be different by the end of it?”
- “What does ‘success’ look like for you in the next quarter, specifically?”
- “If you could change one thing about how you work right now, what would it be?”
- “What is most important to you about this goal?”
REALITY STAGE QUESTIONS
- “What is actually happening right now – in concrete terms?”
- “What have you already tried?”
- “What is working, and what is not?”
- “What is getting in the way?”
- “How confident are you, on a scale of 1-10, that your current approach will produce the outcome you want? What would need to change to move that score up by 2 points?”
- “Who else is affected by this situation, and what do they see?”
OPTIONS STAGE QUESTIONS
- “What are all the possible ways you could approach this?”
- “What would you do if you had no constraints?”
- “What is the option you have not considered yet?”
- “If you could only try one thing this week, what would it be?”
- “What would make the biggest difference?”
- “What are the trade-offs of each option you have listed?”
WILL STAGE QUESTIONS
- “Which of these options will you commit to?”
- “What specifically will you do, and by when?”
- “On a scale of 1-10, how committed are you to this? What would make it a 10?”
- “What might stop you from following through, and how will you handle that?”
- “What support do you need from me?”
What Does a GROW Coaching Conversation Look Like? (Full Example)
The question bank tells you what to ask. A full conversation shows how GROW actually unfolds – how the manager holds back, how the coachee’s thinking shifts, and how a vague frustration becomes a committed action in under 40 minutes.
The scenario below follows John (Senior Customer Success Manager) and her manager James. John has been struggling to influence cross-functional decisions – her ideas surface in team meetings but product and engineering rarely act on them. James runs a GROW session.
STAGE 1 – GOAL · Minutes 0-8
James: “What would you like to get out of our time today?”
John: “I want to figure out why my input on the product roadmap never seems to land. I raise things in the cross-functional meetings, but nothing changes.”
James: “So the goal is to understand what’s blocking your input from landing – and identify what you can do differently before the next product review. Does that capture it?”
John: “Yes – and ideally come away with something concrete I can try.”
✦ What happened: James sharpened John’s vague frustration into a specific, actionable goal with a named deadline.
STAGE 2 – REALITY · Minutes 8-22
James: “Walk me through what actually happens when you raise these points in the cross-functional meeting.”
John: “I mention the customer feedback, give the context, and the product lead usually says ‘thanks, we’ll take it into consideration.’ Then it doesn’t come up again.”
James: “What format do you use when you raise it?”
John: “Verbal, mostly. Sometimes I’ll drop a summary in the team chat after.”
James: “And how does the product lead frame priorities in those meetings?”
John: “She goes through the roadmap by engineering effort and strategic impact scores.”
James: “So she’s operating in a framework – effort versus impact. When you raise your points, are you connecting them to that framework?”
John: “…Not explicitly. I’m presenting them as customer problems, not as scored priorities.”
James: “What do you think that means for how she hears them?”
John: “She probably hears them as context, not as a case for action. I’m giving her information, not a decision.”
James: “On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you that your current approach gets these issues onto the roadmap?”
John: “Honestly? Three. Maybe four.”
✦ What happened: John discovered the real gap herself – wrong format for the audience. James asked seven questions and gave zero advice.
STAGE 3 – OPTIONS · Minutes 22-35
James: “What are all the ways you could approach this differently?”
John: “I could write a brief before the review. I could meet the product lead one-on-one beforehand. I could build an impact score case from my customer call data.”
James: “What would you try if you had no constraints?”
John: “I’d want a standing slot in the product review to present CS insights – not just one point among many.”
James: “What would need to be true for that to happen?”
John: “I’d need to show my input is already formatted the way they think, so they see value in giving me the time.”
James: “Which of these options builds the fastest credibility signal?”
John: “Probably going to the product lead directly before the next review – with a one-pager that frames the three issues in effort-impact terms. If she sees I’ve done the work, I think she’d be open to a standing slot later.”
James: “What would stop that from working?”
John: “If my impact scores are off. I’d need to anchor them in something she already trusts – probably the customer health data from our CRM system.”
✦ What happened: John generated four options independently. The “no constraints” question unlocked the standing-slot idea; the “what would stop that” question made the commitment realistic before it was made.
STAGE 4 – WILL · Minutes 35-42
James: “Which option will you commit to before the next product review?”
John: “I’ll prepare a one-pager that frames the three onboarding friction points in effort-impact terms, using the customer health data. I’ll send it to the product lead three days before the review – in three weeks – and ask for 10 minutes to walk through it.”
James: “On a scale of 1-10, how committed are you to that?”
John: “Eight.”
James: “What would make it a 10?”
John: “If I had a template for the effort-impact format. I’ve never written one of those before.”
James: “I can send you the format the product team uses internally. Does that get you to 10?”
John: “Yes.”
James: “I’ll log this as a goal in Profit.co so we can both see it before the review. What does success look like in three weeks?”
John: “The product lead has read the one-pager, we’ve had the 10-minute conversation, and at least one of the three issues is flagged for the next roadmap discussion.”
✦ What happened: The commitment moved from 8 to 10 when James removed one concrete obstacle – the only directive move he made in 40 minutes.
Key takeaway from this session
James gave no advice. He asked fifteen questions across forty minutes. John identified the problem, generated the solution, named the obstacle, and set the deadline – entirely on her own. James’s value was in the structure, not the content.
Turn GROW Commitments Into Tracked Development Goals
How Do You Apply the GROW Model in a One-on-One?
GROW MODEL + ONE-ON-ONE COACHING
Managers default to one-on-ones as information-gathering sessions – the GROW model flips this
The one-on-one becomes a thinking session for the employee, and the manager’s value is in the quality of the questions asked – not the advice given. Organisations that embed GROW into their one-on-one cadence using Profit.co’s continuous performance management platform see coaching conversations produce specific committed actions rather than vague intentions – because the framework replaces advice-giving with structured questioning.
Profit.co’s pulse surveys give managers a quarterly signal on whether GROW coaching is producing visible team-level change – not just individual goal progress. When managers log GROW commitments in Profit.co’s platform as individual development goals with a weekly check-in cadence, the coaching effect compounds across the quarter, not just in the session itself.
A structured GROW one-on-one follows this 30-minute format using Profit.co’s one-on-one meeting platform:
Context
The employee brings the topic. The manager asks: “What would make this the most useful 30 minutes we could spend today?”
Goal
Clarify the session goal. Ask: “What specifically do you want to have decided by the time we finish?”
Reality + Options
Surface the actual situation, challenge assumptions, and generate 3 to 5 options. The manager should speak no more than 40% of the time in this phase.
Will
Lock in one specific commitment with a deadline and an accountability mechanism. Log it in the performance system before the meeting ends.
What Are the Limitations of the GROW Model?
GROW requires the coachee to have some self-awareness
The Reality stage depends on the coachee being willing and able to reflect honestly on their current situation. Employees who are in a fixed mindset, under significant stress, or in conflict with their manager often cannot access this level of reflection in a structured session. GROW is most effective with employees who have a baseline of psychological safety and a degree of self-awareness already developed.
GROW is a tool for development, not performance management
The GROW model is a coaching tool – it is not a corrective process. A manager using GROW with an underperforming employee risks creating a pleasant conversation that avoids the direct feedback the situation requires. Use GROW for development conversations; use a structured feedback framework for performance correction conversations. Profit.co’s Feedback Agent supports the structured feedback side – prompting managers to document specific behavioural feedback at the point of the event, separate from the GROW coaching cadence.
GROW sessions without follow-through infrastructure lose their impact
A GROW conversation that produces a commitment with no tracking mechanism rarely produces behaviour change beyond the first week. The Will stage must name a specific accountability mechanism: a logged individual development goal, a scheduled follow-up conversation, or a written commitment shared with a peer. Profit.co’s performance review software provides this infrastructure natively – GROW commitments logged as individual development goals are visible to both manager and employee through the quarter, and surface automatically in the next formal review.
Build a Coaching Culture That Drives Measurable Performance
Frequently Asked Questions
The GROW model is a four-stage coaching framework used by managers and coaches to structure goal-focused conversations. The four stages are Goal (define what the coachee wants to achieve), Reality (understand the current situation honestly), Options (generate possible ways forward), and Will or Way Forward (commit to specific next actions with a deadline). Managers and executive coaches in organisations of every size and sector apply GROW because it requires no assessment tools, no certification, and no specialist vocabulary to run effectively.
GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options, and Will (sometimes called Way Forward). Each letter represents one stage of a structured coaching conversation. The model was developed by Sir John Whitmore and is applied in manager one-on-ones, executive coaching, and team coaching sessions across organisations of every size and sector.
In the Goal stage: “What would you like to achieve in this conversation?” In the Reality stage: “What is actually happening right now, in concrete terms?” In the Options stage: “What are all the possible ways you could approach this?” In the Will stage: “What specifically will you do, and by when?” The most effective GROW questions are open, specific, and invite the coachee to think rather than report.
The GROW model works best in one-on-one development conversations, not formal performance reviews. It moves an employee from a vague development area to a specific committed action plan within a single session. When managers log GROW session commitments as tracked individual goals in a performance management system, the coaching effect extends beyond the session itself. The OKR University covers how to connect GROW commitments to quarterly OKR cycles so development goals stay visible between reviews.
The GROW model differs from alternative coaching frameworks primarily in its directness and simplicity. GROW requires no assessment tools, no specialist training, and no certification to apply – making it the most accessible coaching framework for frontline managers. Its limitation is that it assumes a degree of coachee self-awareness; for employees with very limited self-reflection skills, frameworks with more structured contracting and listening stages may be more appropriate. For role-specific examples of how development conversations connect to team goals, see OKR examples for HR and People teams.
