Effective Coaching Models To Structure Your Coaching Sessions

There are various effective coaching models you can use to structure your coaching sessions which will help you to guide your coachee through a logical sequence, get the most from the session and help you to get back on track during a session should you find yourself losing your way.

Models help to provide a framework for a session, helping it to be a meaningful conversation with a defined outcome rather than just a chat with no clear purpose. Different models provide alternative perspectives prompting different questions to help your coachee in a variety ways. The skill of the coach is in knowing what your client needs at a particular moment so a toolkit of different models is helpful to draw upon and use as appropriate.

Probably the most widely known and used model is the GROW coaching model . This simple model helps you as a coach take your coachee from goal setting at the outset of the session through to exploring where they are now in relation to their goals, exploring options they have to moving forward and concluding with a commitment to action.

Adaptations of the GROW model have evolved and new models created such as TGROW which support different coaching approaches. Another example is the OSKAR model has been created as part of the Solutions-focused approach to coaching.

Some coaching approaches do not use models at all and some coaches would argue that models are constraining. Instead emphasis is put on the coach responding entirely to the coachee and their needs at a particular point in time, more emphasis being put on the process of coaching itself – raising awareness, generating responsibility and building self-belief in the coachee, rather than generating specific actions.

If you are a coach your results will be enhanced if you can respond flexibly to your coachees depending on their needs and these effective coaching models will help you. Try the different approaches and see what works.

GROW Coaching Model

Applying The GROW Model

GROW Coaching Questions

TGROW Coaching Model

OSKAR Coaching Model

CLEAR Coaching Model

Effective Coaching Approaches

Implicit Explicit Formal Informal Coaching

Further Reading:

Coaching for Performance, 4th Edition: GROWing Human Potential and Purpose (People Skills for Professionals) by Sir John Whitmore (Paperback - 12 Mar 2002)

Effective Coaching: Lessons from the Coach's Coach by Myles Downey (Paperback - 15 Nov 2003)

Co-Active Coaching, 2nd Edition: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success in Work and, Life by Laura Whitworth, (Paperback - 15 Feb 2007)

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