Coaching sessions are about asking questions and helping the other person to get closer to a solution. Start by preparing the scene and exploring the final objectives and goals of the coaching session. Follow this with an evaluation of the reality of the situation.  This may require further analysis and self-probing. Then identify obstacles. There must have been some obstacles that the person could not overcome, otherwise there won’t be any coaching to do. Obstacles will lead to several options which you should encourage the coachee to come up with. Finally get the coachee to choose a way forward from the set of options.

These four steps, Goals, Reality, Options/Obstacles and the Way Forward are famously known as the GROW model (Whitmore 2002). It is an effective and relatively simple to follow structure to use while you are coaching others.

An example is as follows:

• Goal: I am having difficulty getting my message across, especially in meetings.
• Reality: How does this impact your work? How does this impact other people’s work? -> They miss my part of work and our software interface will have bugs.
• Obstacles/Options: What can you do about it? -> I can talk to them individually. I can shout in the meetings to get their attention.  I want your support so they respect me and my efforts are appreciated.
• Way Forward: What are you going to do about it? -> Choose options.