Coaching Employees: How to Improve Performance With GROW

Coaching employees to improve performance means helping each person see the gap between where they are and where they want to be, then guiding them, mainly through questions, to choose their own next step and follow through. The simplest structure is the GROW model: agree the Goal, explore the current Reality, generate Options, and confirm what the person Will do and by when.

Coaching is not a separate program reserved for senior people. It is a way of talking that any manager can use in a weekly one-on-one or a five-minute chat after a meeting. This guide shows how, with example questions for every stage and a full worked conversation.

What does coaching employees mean?

Managers help people improve in several ways. They teach, they give feedback, they mentor and they coach. These are related but different, and choosing the right one at the right time is a core management skill.

Four ways managers develop people

	Who has the answer?	Best used when
Teaching	The manager	The person is new to the task or the risk of error is high
Feedback	The manager shares what they saw	The person needs to know how their behavior landed
Mentoring	The mentor shares their experience	Long-term career and judgement questions
Coaching	The employee, with help	The person has some skill and needs to apply or stretch it

Coaching works because people are more committed to plans they create themselves. It also builds thinking skills: an employee who has been coached through three problems starts asking themselves the same questions before they come to you.

Why does coaching improve performance?

Managers have an outsized effect on how their teams feel and perform. Gallup estimates that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units. In other words, the experience of working on a team depends heavily on the person leading it.

Regular, meaningful conversations are a big part of that. In its 2023 article on managers’ most important habit, Gallup reported that 80% of employees who say they received meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged. Yet in a study of nearly 15,000 employees, only 16% said the last conversation with their manager was extremely meaningful. Gallup also notes that 15 to 30 minutes is enough for a meaningful conversation, as long as it happens frequently.

These are correlations from survey data, so they do not prove that coaching causes engagement. They do point clearly in one direction: short, frequent, useful conversations between managers and employees matter, and most managers have room to improve them.

What is the GROW coaching model?

GROW is the most widely used structure for coaching conversations. It was developed in the 1980s by Graham Alexander, Alan Fine and Sir John Whitmore, drawing on the “inner game” ideas of tennis coach Tim Gallwey. Whitmore made it famous through his book Coaching for Performance, first published in 1992. Exactly who deserves the most credit is still debated, but all three are usually named.

The GROW coaching model

1. Goal: what do you want?
2. Reality: what is happening now?
3. Options: what could you do?
4. Will: what will you do, by when?

The letters stand for:

• Goal. What does the employee want to achieve, in this conversation and beyond it?
• Reality. What is actually happening now? What has been tried? What are the facts?
• Options. What are all the possible ways forward, before choosing one?
• Will (also called Way forward). Which option will they act on, when, and how will you both know it happened?

The power of GROW is its order. Many managers jump straight from a problem to a solution. GROW slows you down just enough to understand the goal and the real situation first, which usually leads to a better and more owned plan.

GROW coaching model example questions

Here are coaching questions for managers at each stage. You do not need all of them. Pick two or three that fit, and ask them one at a time.

Goal questions

• What would you like to get out of our conversation today?
• What would a great result look like a month from now?
• How will you know you have achieved it?
• Why does this matter to you?

Reality questions

• What is happening right now? Give me a recent example.
• What have you already tried? What happened?
• What is getting in the way?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, where are you now compared with where you want to be?

Options questions

• What could you do? What else?
• If you had no constraints, what would you try?
• What would the best person you know do in this situation?
• Which of these ideas excites you most, and which worries you most?

Will questions

• Which option will you start with?
• What exactly will you do, and by when?
• What might stop you, and how will you handle it?
• What support do you need from me?
• How committed are you, on a scale of 1 to 10? What would make it a 10?

A worked GROW coaching conversation

Here is a hypothetical example to show the flow. It is an illustration, not a transcript of a real conversation.

Imagine Mai, an account manager in a 25-person marketing agency. Her clients have started complaining that reports arrive late. Her manager, Tom, has already given her clear feedback on the facts in a previous one-on-one. Now he wants to coach.

Goal. Tom asks: “What would you like to be true about your client reports by the end of next month?” Mai says she wants every monthly report delivered on the agreed date without working late the night before.

Reality. Tom asks what happens today. Mai explains that she starts each report two days before the deadline, then waits for data from the analytics team, who are often busy. Tom asks: “Of the last six reports, how many were delayed by the data?” Mai thinks and says four. Tom asks what she has tried. She has sent reminders, but only on the day she needs the data.

Options. Tom asks: “What could you do differently?” Mai lists ideas: request data a week earlier, agree a fixed monthly data date with analytics, build a template so she can draft before the data arrives, or ask Tom to raise it with the analytics lead. Tom asks: “What else?” She adds that she could pre-book two hours in her calendar for each report.

Will. Tom asks which she will try first. Mai chooses two: agree a fixed data date with analytics this week, and build a template for her two biggest clients. Tom asks what support she needs. She asks him to mention the new data date in the managers’ meeting. They agree to review next month’s delivery dates in their one-on-one on the 5th.

Notice what Tom did not do. He did not tell Mai to start earlier, which she might have resisted. He asked questions until she found a cause, data timing, that was partly outside her control, and a plan she owned.

How do you coach employees to improve performance?

GROW structures a single conversation. Improving performance usually takes a short series of them. These five steps put the conversations in context.

Five steps to coach performance

1. 1Pick one focusOne skill or result that matters most now.
2. 2Agree the standardDescribe what good looks like, with an example.
3. 3Coach with GROWLet them own the goal and the plan.
4. 4Observe and practiseWatch the real work; give quick feedback.
5. 5Review and repeatCheck results on the agreed date, then adjust.

Step 1: Pick one focus

Trying to fix five things at once leads to fixing none. Choose the one behavior or skill that would make the biggest difference to results right now.

Step 2: Agree the standard

Coaching works best when the employee understands what good looks like. If there is a gap, start with specific feedback. The SBI feedback model is a quick way to describe the situation, the behavior and its impact. If the gap involves strong emotions or a long history, our guide to difficult conversations at work can help you open it well.

Step 3: Coach with GROW

Use the questions above. Talk less than half the time. Resist the urge to fill silences: a pause often means the person is thinking.

Step 4: Observe and practise

Coaching is not only talking. Sit in on a sales call, review a draft together, or watch a process being done. Then give short, specific feedback right away while it is fresh.

Step 5: Review and repeat

On the agreed date, look at the result together. Ask what worked, what did not and what they learned. Then run another short GROW conversation on the next step. Tracking a simple measure, such as on-time reports per month, makes progress visible. Our guide to lead and lag measures explains how to choose one the employee can influence.

When should you coach and when should you tell?

Coaching is not always the right tool. A useful decision rule is to look at the person’s skill on this specific task and the risk if they get it wrong.

• New to the task, or the risk is high: teach or tell. A new hire handling their first customer refund needs clear instructions, not open questions.
• Some skill, moderate risk: coach. This is where most performance improvement happens.
• High skill, low risk: delegate and get out of the way, with light check-ins.

This idea is close to the situational leadership model developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, which matches the leader’s style to how ready the person is for each specific task. As people grow, you move from telling, to coaching, to delegating. Our pillar guide on how to delegate tasks effectively covers the last step.

Short coaching in the moment

Not every coaching conversation needs a meeting. Some of the most useful coaching takes five minutes, straight after a client call, a presentation or a tricky shift. A compressed version of GROW works well here:

1. “What were you hoping would happen?” (Goal)
2. “How did it actually go?” (Reality)
3. “What would you do differently next time?” (Options)
4. “When is the next chance to try that?” (Will)

These four questions take a few minutes and keep the learning close to the event, when the details are still clear. Done regularly, they also change the team’s habits. People start reflecting on their own work without waiting for you to ask, which is the long-term goal of coaching.

If the employee cannot think of anything to change, offer one observation of your own, then return to questions: “One thing I noticed was the pricing came up late. What do you make of that?”

What are the most common coaching mistakes?

A coaching session template you can copy

Use this as a 20-minute agenda inside a regular one-on-one meeting.

20-minute GROW coaching session

• Before: note one specific fact or example to discuss, and one strength you have seen.
• Minutes 0 to 3: check in and agree the topic. 'What would make this useful for you today?'
• Minutes 3 to 6, Goal: agree what a good result looks like and how you will measure it.
• Minutes 6 to 11, Reality: explore what is happening, what has been tried, what is in the way.
• Minutes 11 to 16, Options: list at least three possible actions before choosing.
• Minutes 16 to 20, Will: one or two actions, a date, support needed, commitment out of 10.
• After: send a two-line summary and put the review date in both calendars.

Summary

Coaching employees to improve performance means helping them find and own their next step, mostly by asking questions. Use the GROW model, Goal, Reality, Options and Will, to structure each conversation. Start with clear feedback so the gap is understood, choose one focus at a time, observe the real work, and always end with a specific action and a review date. Coach when people have some skill and the risk is manageable; teach when they are new, and delegate when they are ready.

Prepare your next coaching conversation with a ready-made script.