The Problems with the GROW Model
Or how I learned to stop worrying, stop exploring goals and be fully present
Hello.
Welcome to the first edition of my newsletter for coaches and all those who coach.
Sir John Whitmore is a legend in the coaching world. A true exponent of coaching as a force for the betterment of humankind, I hugely admire the courage he showed and the wisdom he espoused. A key sentiment in his approach is responsibility and I admire how he viewed the ‘primary product of coaching to be self-responsibility’.
For some decades now, the first days of coach training introduced have introduced us coaches to the GROW model. It has become the most widely used of all the coaching models.
My concern is that it is being overused and misapplied and contradicts some of the spirit that Whitmore espoused. I’ll set out a case here that it is possibly the most harmful coaching model out there.
1) Growth is Good?
When we sit down opposite our client as enquire how they want to grow or develop, are we implicitly suggesting to them that they need to grow and develop? That they are not already whole, complete, capable, enough.
We run a danger of colluding with our client’s deficit thinking - their assumption that they might not be already good enough. In a world where our clients are regularly blasted with messages that they are not good enough, what pressure might be placing on them when we speak about ‘high performance’?
In a provocative talk to the ICF in 2009, Whitmore eloquently and passionately challenges an economic system that ‘encourages us to buy more, get more, pollute more’.
2) The Attraction of Action
The GROW model was born in the 90’s and readily up-taken by the corporate and business worlds. Here was a simple, operational model to help us achieve, and progress and GROW.
The linear structure biases a rational, logical way of thinking towards our client. Following a process, with an action at the end. In my experience, much of its application favours ‘doing’. The attraction of action.
The cost of this is that it can rush us away from really feeling our feelings. Checking in with our guts. Our hearts. Our spirits. Keeping things ‘above the neck’ and constantly looking for movement and progress is not conducive to self-understanding, reflective, healing or learning.
What is the cost to our clients of using a coaching model which focuses on process, and what might be missed by fixating towards goals, actions and progress?
3) The Culture of Me
Societally and culturally we seem to be in the later years of the culture of ‘me’. The era of personal development, personal growth and the selfie.
The downside of such a strong focus on the self has meant that the ‘more than self’ has become neglected.
I believe strongly that the future of coaching is systemic. Honouring and exploring all the parts of the system that might affect your client - and honouring and exploring all the ways that they and their actions might be affecting the system.
Whatever your approach to coaching, I believe that our clients, our stakeholders and our society needs coaches to think more broadly and more systemically in how we coach the person in front of us.
4) Goals vs Dreams
Last year I had the pleasure to speak to Richard Boyatzis, a very experienced voice and coaching leadership and cognitive science professor based over at Case Western Reserve University in the USA. I share below an extract from our podcast conversation - full episode in the links below.
‘Hope. The emotion of hope. It turns out, when you talk about vision, ‘what’s your vision? ‘What’s your dream of the future?’ Not goals! Goals actually constrain people’s consideration of alternatives. And every time we fall prey to saying to somebody…let me use an analogy to show how idiotic that is. What makes us as coaches think that the client’s presenting problem is even the problem, other than a symptom? That it is their current framing of what they need relief on? …’
‘The context for change is not solving a problem, it is what you dream your life should be. It is bigger, it is the big picture. And that is what we’ve discovered in a series of FMRI studies and in a series 39 longitudinal studies of behaviour change, that it is when you talk to people about - this is the question that should be the most important opening context … ‘if your life were fantastic or ideal 10-15 years from now, what would that be like?’
6) Goals Harming Progress
To offer some further words from the man himself, here’s an extract from an article in the Human Capital Leadership Institute:
‘We now know that goal setting only helps a small segment of employees – people who have a high need for achievement. The other 80% of employees find goals to be a source of stress that leads to cognitive impairment’.
‘Furthermore, goals only help when your work activities are routine and simple. But as soon as you need to innovate, adapt or learn on the job, goals hurt’.
7) Comfort in Structure
Having been part of the assessments of around 300 executive coaches-in-training these last few years, there is one phrase that I have heard about GROW more than any other: ‘I like the structure of it’. And indeed, I too have experienced the shallow end of the pool that GROW provides.
‘It is nice, I feel safe using it. I know I can get back to it if I stray too far’ were my reflections in my training.
In a coaching session, what is the cost to your client of you feeling safe? How are we to model risk-taking, new thinking, challenge or creativity to our client if we are rigidly clinging to the side of the pool? What are we implying about vulnerability and surrendering if we are rigidly clinging to our own structural safety blanket?
Many coaches in training can use the GROW model as a crutch. And the cost of this, I believe, is a lack of real presence. Of really showing up, really being with your client - and of being with yourself. I suggest coaches aim for total atunement, where your inner insecurities are quietened, and let go of the comfort of rigid structure - and you can really be fully with your client.
Statistician George Box quipped, ‘all models are wrong - some are useful’. In the rapidly growing world of coaching in an increasingly complex world - perhaps coaching will outgrow the GROW model?
As always, I welcome thoughts, comments, challenges.
With this newsletter starting with this very post, I appreciate you spreading the word and sharing this with coaches and your coaching communities who you think this might help or interest.
With Gratitude,
George
Resources
Here’s the link to the full podcast episode with Richard Boyatzis, available on all podcast platforms
And John Whitmore’s excellent - if poorly edited - ICF speech can be found here
Shout out to Steve March and the folks over at Aletheia in the US who are doing some interesting work regarding the ‘fourth-generation’ of coaching