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Hey Subscriber First Name

Someone brings you a problem, and within about thirty seconds you're telling them what you'd do.

It feels helpful. They nod, say thanks, and a week later nothing has moved. Most of us have been on both ends of that conversation, often in the same week.

I first learnt there was another way in the second year of my engineering apprenticeship at Network Rail. We had a leadership and management module, and one session covered a coaching framework called GROW. Graham Alexander, Alan Fine and Sir John Whitmore developed it in the 1980s, and Whitmore made it famous in Coaching for Performance.

It was pitched as a way to coach other people. Four questions, asked in order, so the person in front of you finds their own way forward rather than borrowing yours.

Goal. What do you want from this?

Reality. What is actually happening right now?

Options. What could you do?

Will. What will you do, and by when?

That was over ten years ago, and I've ended up using it far more on myself than on anyone else. It became the way I think. Before a difficult meeting, when a plan starts slipping, when I'm going round in circles on something at home, I run the four questions in my head, in that order. More often than not the answer is sitting there by the third one.

GROW is at its best as a habit of thought, one you can use on anyone, yourself included.

The order is the whole trick, and it's easiest to see in something we've all done. You walk into a shopping centre looking for one shop and head for the map. First you find the shop. Then you find the red dot that says you are here. Only once you have both can you see the ways to get there, pick one and start walking.

That's GROW. The shop is your Goal. The red dot is your Reality. The routes between them are your Options, and setting off is your Will.

Nobody stands at that map planning a route before they've found the red dot. Yet most conversations do exactly that, jumping to options before anyone has agreed where they're going or checked where they're standing.

What it has given me, more than anything, is something steady to reach for when everything else is loud. Work gets busy, life piles on, and it's easy to react to whatever shouts first. Four questions, in the same order every time, bring me back to what I actually want.

It has also got me started on things I'd otherwise have put off. When something feels too big, or I'm nervous about getting it wrong, it tends to just sit there. Asking what I want, where I really am and what my options are shrinks it down to a next step. I've tried things I wouldn't have gone near, and got further than I ever expected.

That's why I'm sharing it. Whatever stage of your career you're at, and whether you're talking something through with someone or working it out on your own, it's one of the simplest ways I know to get unstuck.

I've turned all of this into a one-page cheat sheet, with a worked example and the questions for each step. It's just here, so save it somewhere you'll find it again.

The sheet covers the model. Five habits are what made it stick for me outside of coaching.

Ask for the Goal out loud. "What do we want to leave this meeting with?" takes ten seconds. It's the most useful sentence I have in a project review, because it shows you when four people came for four different outcomes.

Keep Reality to facts. Under pressure, Reality fills up with interpretation. "I'm just not a morning person" is a story. "I set the alarm for six every day this week and turned it off four times" is something you can work with. I ask what happened, when, and what has already been tried.

Notice the urge to jump to Options. Everyone has it, whether it's your first week in a job or your twentieth year. A friend says they're fed up at work, and within a minute someone tells them to update their CV. Maybe that's right, but nobody has asked what they want yet, or what's making it feel that way. Take the letters one at a time. When an answer turns up early, I write it down and leave it until I reach the O.

Use it on yourself, on paper. In your head the questions blur together. Written down, the feeling of being stuck turns into four lines, and the gap is usually obvious. For me it's normally the Goal. I've been solving something without deciding what good looks like.

Never leave without a Will. That goes for coaching someone else and coaching yourself. A conversation without a commitment is a chat, so write it down plainly. What are you going to do, what does good look like, and by when? At work, that might be "send the team a one-page handover note by Friday". At home, "walk thirty minutes, four mornings a week". And if you're helping someone else, let them be the one who says it. A step they name is a step they own.

I sat in that module thinking I was learning how to help other people find their answers. It turned out to be how I find mine. Whenever I'm stuck, I come back to the same four things: where I'm going, where I am, what I could do, and what I'll actually do next. Answer those honestly and things start to move. For me, that's what making it happen looks like in real life.

I'd love it to do the same for you, so give it a go this week with one real conversation, with someone else or with yourself. Then let me know how it lands.

I write this newsletter to share what I've picked up from years in the field, so you can build that judgement a little faster than I did. If this one helped, forward it to someone who could use it. The more people it reaches, the better.

MAKING IT HAPPEN: Your Weekly Strategy

Pick one thing you've been going round in circles on. Work or home, it doesn't matter.

Write G, R, O and W down the left side of a page and give each one a single line. Keep Reality to things that actually happened, and write at least three options before you choose.

To sit with: which letter you were most tempted to skip. That is usually where you've been stuck.

To do: make your Will a named action with a day attached, then put that day in your calendar before you close the page. If you're coaching someone this week instead, try getting through all four questions without offering a single option of your own.

CHEAT SHEETS

The GROW sheet above now sits alongside the rest in the free cheat sheet library, which is here. It keeps growing with one-page sheets like this one, covering the conversations, decisions and delivery problems that come up week to week. Save the link and grab whatever helps.

Share this with someone who has just started running one-to-ones, or anyone who always seems to have the answer before you've finished explaining the problem.

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Hit reply and tell me how your first run through the four questions went, or which letter you were most tempted to skip. I read every one.

Have a great week and speak soon,

Bilal