Life Coaching Secret The GROW Model

The GROW model is an incredibly simple, yet incredibly effective model for evaluating and achieving your goals in life. I first discovered before I got into life coaching in a book by John Whitmore called "Coaching For Performance" and I have been using it personally and within my work for some years now.

This Hub will be most useful for people who tend to travel through life without much thought about where they want to go, or indeed how they are going to get there. Now for some people, it's not that they have a bad life or anything, they simply don't specify the things they want to be, do or have.

Thanks for reading!

Dan O'Neil

Personal Development Blog

GROW is an acronym for:

• Goal
• Reality
• Options
• Will

It's really pretty simple as I mentioned in the introduction! So lets break down each of the four areas and explain...

Firstly Goal: What is it you want to be, do or have? (Don't make a list of loads of goals, we are dealing with one at a time.) What are the details of this goal? Be as specific as possible - if you want to own a fast car, what make, model, colour, extras will you have? What number plate will it have on it?

Secondly Reality: Where are you now in relation to your goal? How far along are you towards achieving it? In this section it's quite worthwhile also considering whether you believe it's possible to be, do or have this goal. Think about things like finances, personal obstacles, other people it might affect etc.

Next Options: This really is a crucial section of this model. Here you need to get down as many options as possible (even if you think they are stupid or unattainable) - the more the merrier! What you will find as you get beyond your obvious options is that you'll start to think about really crazy ideas and some of them may be crazy, but others will help you to uncover new options that will really help you towards achieving your goals.

Lastly Will: What will you need to do? Which option(s) are you going to choose? How long is it going to take? Who do you need to speak to or work with? etc. This is really where you begin your action planning and start to make it all happen.

It's so simple that most people will not bother to do it! However from experience, having a process like this that can shape and steer your thinking and planning, you will find that your goals move from being pipe dreams into reality.

This is so powerful a model, that most Life Coaches around the world use it for the sessions with their clients. It's slightly different in that it's called TGROW (the T means Topic) and the client is normally asked what they want to talk about first, then the goal for the session is established and it moves neatly into the rest of the model.

Good luck with your goals! I welcome feedback in the comments section below.