GROW Yourself

Did you know you can coach yourself? Absolutely!

You can set goals and embrace a solutions-focus to keep you on track and achieving. Super, right?!

A great framework to use if you’re coaching yourself, [one that I still hold very loosely in the back of my mind during sessions] is GROW, which stands for: Goals – Reality – Options – Wrap-Up.

So this is what you do. You choose a great goal – these ideas might help. And then you commit to a coaching session with yourself, say each week or fortnight. I recommend putting this in your diary and sticking to it as you would an appointment with a paid professional. Keep that promise to yourself!

And then in that session you go through the framework:

GOALS

• How is my Ultimate Goal tracking?
• What do I want to explore this session?
• Am I still clear on my sub-goals: the chunked down goals that will lead me to my Ultimate Goal?

REALITY

• What has happened over the past week / fortnight?
• What [if anything] got in the way of me achieving last week’s actions?
• What worked well in addressing these challenges / barriers?

OPTIONS

• What are all the possible actions available to me this week? The stuff that will lead to my sub-goals. [Make a list!]
• What is my best/most desired course of action?
• What will be the costs/benefits of taking this action?

WRAP-UP

• Narrow it down: what are my specific tasks for this coming week / fortnight?
• Who / what can help me with this?
• How will I know if it’s going well?
• What might get in the way?
• What will I do if those barriers arise?

This is obviously a very simple framework. The headings and questions are simply meant to focus your attention on where you’re going and how you’re going to get there, and encourage you to stay committed to the process. Plenty of detail will [of course!] emerge and that is more than fine. Make room for it, write it all down, stay open to exploring!

Tags: career-coaching, life-coaching, Melbourne