A GROW Coaching Cheat Sheet for Leaders

As a leader, people development matters to you, and of course you want to boost employee engagement and performance. To achieve this, you have decided to apply more coaching techniques as a leader.

A key element in coaching is asking “powerful” questions. In fact, you could say that Coaching is the art of asking the right question. As with any art, practice makes the master, and for beginners, finding the best question to ask next during an intense coaching session can be challenging.

No worries, trust that you will get better over time. To help you make the start easier for you, I have created this cheat sheet below which you can use when you embark on your “leader as a coach journey”. The questions are structured according to the GROW Coaching Model which we discussed last time as a simple but powerful framework for coaching in a corporate environment.

The questions below give you just a rough guideline to get started.

“Coaching is the art of asking the right questions”
—Gerrit Pelzer

Goals

• What do you want to achieve?
• Why do you want this?
• How will we know that this is achieved? (Can you make it S.M.A.R.T.?)
• What excites you about achieving this goal?
• How will you/the organization/others benefit from achieving this?
• What else?

• For a single session: What would be a great outcome of our conversation today? or: What should we discuss today that would make a difference for you?
• Further probing: Is this the right goal? Is the timeframe challenging yet realistic based on what else you have on your agenda?

Reality

• What is happening? 
• How is the situation today (business, organization, individuals) different from how you want it to be in the future?
• On a scale from 1-10, how do you rate … today?
• How many times have you been thinking of this/working on this?
• Who else is involved?
• How might X see this? What would Y say if we asked her right now?

Options

• What could you do?
• How can you close the gap between where you are now and where you want to do?
• What would Steve Jobs/Richard Branson/Jason Bourne do?
• If budget was not an issue, what would you do?
• What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
• What experience form others could you draw on?
• Who could help with this?
• What else can you think of?

Way Forward

• What will you do?
• What past experience can you build on? I.e. what is more likely to work for you?
• What might get into the way?
• Do you need a Plan B?
• How will you make sure that..?
• On a scale from 1-10, how committed are you to doing this?
• How can we measure progress?
• What else can I do to support you with this?
• Recap: so let me repeat, when we meet next time in two weeks, you will have taken these actions specifically: 1)… 2)… 3)…

As your coaching skills grow, the quality of your questions will improve. And with improved questions, your coachee will get better results. Thus, on your path to mastery, bear in mind what makes a question “powerful”:

A powerful coaching question

• is open-ended
• triggers thinking
• interrupts patterns
• is not guiding
• solution-oriented
• generates curiosity in the listener
• is thought-provoking
• surfaces underlying assumptions and beliefs
• invites creativity and new possibilities
• generates energy and forward movement
• eventually evokes more questions

Further Recommended Reading:

“Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work” by David Rock
“Coaching Questions: A Coach’s Guide to Powerful Asking Skills” by Tony Stoltzfus
“Coaching for Performance: GROWing Human Potential and Purpose – The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership”  by John Whitmore

Would you like to develop people, drive employee engagement, and get better results? Let’s talk! Contact me now for an individual consultation without any obligations:

email: [email protected]

phone: +66-2 107 2025

Related article:

What is Coaching, actually?