Provocare Coaching

Have you tried the easy to use Goal Setting Tool  GROW?

GROW – Goal, Reality, Options and Will

The GROW tool is a set of coaching questions to help you identify and achieve goals by asking a set of questions to move your thinking in a positive direction.

GROW is one of the most famous goal setting techniques. It can help individuals, teams, and organisations. It is helpful for personal goal setting, case management goals, project goals, or even starting your organisation’s strategic planning process.

First, you need to agree on a Goal and Outcome. What is your Goal? Make the Goal specific, measurable, and realistic. You must believe in your Goal, also be consistent, avoid having a goal that conflicts with another goal, or you will potentially give up before you have even started.

Goal Questions:

The Goal – what do you want to achieve? Keep this as simple as possible!

The goal questions will support you to understand the Goal and when it will be achieved.

• What is the aim of this discussion?
• What is the long-term Goal?
• What is the short-term Goal?
• Who is it for? Who are your end customers?
• What do they really want and need?
• What are the benefit for your customers and you?
• What would make your customers/managers happy?
• What do you need to deliver so your customer/line managers get what they want?
• How long might it take to deliver? Is this feasible?
• What would you consider as a milestone?
• If everything went as well as possible, what would be the best possible outcome?
• What does success look like to you?
• How will you know that you have achieved your Goal?
• What is your budget? Is this feasible?
• What will you look for when you deliver it? What would make the team unhappy? What would motivate them?
• How will you measure your Goal?
• How can your experience help you achieve this Goal?
• What can you personally do to achieve your Goal?
• How much control does each of the team members have over the Goal?

 Reality Questions:

To achieve your goals, you need to understand the Reality and context of your current situation, skills, time constraints, attitudes, third party influences’, process and how far or near you are to achieving your Goal.

• What is happening now? – Who, what, where, how and when?
• What is the effect or result of that?
• How busy are you?
• When things aren’t going well, who else can help?
• What is the current situation like?
• Who is involved? What are they like? What can they add?
• What’s working and not working?
• Do you have enough time to achieve your goal?
• What is missing?
• What is holding you back?
• What can get you started?
• What keeps you awake at night?
• How easy is it to get things done?
• How often have you tried?
• Who is involved?
• What is your role in the team?
• What has already been started?

 Options Questions:

First, look at the overall big picture and break this down into more detail. Remember to take into account different experiences, perspectives and knowledge, this can open new possibilities and options.

• What are the two main options?
• What else could you do?
• What other options do you have?
• What if all constraints were removed?
• What are the benefits and negatives of each option?
• What factors will you use to weigh up the options?
• If you had more time, what would you do?
• If money was not an issue, what resources would you have?
• If you had total power, what would you try?
• How could you go about doing this?
•  How else could you go about doing it?
• What could go wrong with that approach?
• What would work well?
• How long would it take to achieve each option?
• What resource and expenditure would be needed?
• What are the risks in each option?
• What criteria will you use to select the main option?
• What should you do first, next, last?
• What are the cost and benefits of each of these ideas?
• If you had more confidence, what would you try?
• What could you use as a backup plan?

Will Questions:

Once you understand and believe in the Goal and can see that this Goal is achievable and realistic, you will be ready to start moving towards that Goal. The Will questions are designed to get you thinking about starting your journey.

• So, what will you do now?
• What options will you choose?
• To what extent does this meet all your objectives?
• What will you start first?
• When will start (each step)?
• What could stop you from moving forward?
• And how will you overcome it?
• Will this address your Goal?
• How likely is this option to succeed?
• What else will you do?
• When will you know you are ready for this? How does it light your fire?
• What will light your fire?
• Is there anything stopping you from committing whole-heartedly to this?
• Who else needs to buy into it?
• Who needs to know about the Goal or action plan?
• What needs to happen to make people enthusiastic?
• What incentives could help?
• What additional help do you need?
• What could I do to support you?
• What can get you really excited about starting this project?

 Give it a try and let us know how you get on. Have we missed some questions? We love to hear your tips too.