Personal GROW model: coach yourself to better leadership
Use one of the world’s most trusted coaching frameworks to set clear goals, explore your options, and commit to action – with Mindtools by your side.
What is the GROW model?
The GROW model is a structured coaching framework developed in the 1980s by Sir John Whitmore, Alan Fine and Graham Alexander. It’s one of the most widely used coaching tools in the world, adopted by organizations, executive coaches, and individuals across every industry.
GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options, and Will. The framework provides a clear, repeatable process for moving from a vague aspiration to a concrete plan of action. It works equally well in a formal coaching session, a conversation with a mentor, or as a self-coaching tool.
In the context of leadership development, the GROW model is particularly powerful. That’s because leadership goals often start as broad ambitions – ‘become a better communicator’, ‘be more strategic’, ‘develop my team more effectively’. GROW gives you a structure to sharpen those ambitions into something specific and actionable.
Here’s how to take this famous coaching model and adapt it to coach yourself!
The four stages of the GROW model
Goal – What do you want to achieve?
Start by defining what success looks like. Use SMART objectives to help you. The more specific and measurable your goal, the more useful the rest of the process will be. ‘Improve my delegation skills’ is a starting point, but ‘delegate at least two significant projects to team members this quarter and provide structured feedback throughout’ gives you something concrete to aim for and evaluate against.
Good goals should stretch you without being unrealistic. They should be within your control – or at least your influence – and they should connect to something you genuinely care about. If you’re unsure which goals deserve your focus, conducting a thorough leadership self-assessment can help you identify the capabilities that will make the biggest difference.
Reality – Where are you right now?
The Reality stage of the GROW model is about an honest, evidence-based assessment of your current situation. What have you already tried? What’s working? What’s getting in the way? What resources, skills, and support do you already have?
This is where self-awareness and external feedback are essential. If you’ve recently completed our Manager Skills Assessment, your results provide an excellent foundation for this stage. For a more conversational approach, Ask M: Coach can help you explore your current reality through guided questions – acting as an always-available thinking partner when you need to work through where you stand.
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Options – What could you do?
The Options stage is about generating possibilities – as many as you can, without initial judgment.
- What different approaches could you take?
- What resources are available?
- Who could help?
- What would you do if you had no constraints?
- What would someone you admire do in this situation?
The goal is to broaden your thinking before narrowing it down. We tend to default to familiar solutions, but the most effective path forward isn’t always the most obvious one. Push yourself to generate at least five or six options before evaluating them.
The Mindtools Content Hub can be a valuable resource at this stage. If your goal involves developing a specific skill – e.g. communication, delegation, strategic thinking – exploring our expert-written articles and practical frameworks can surface approaches you hadn’t considered.
The Content Hub
Will – What will you do?
The final stage of the GROW model is about commitment. From your options, choose the specific actions you’re going to take. Define when you’ll do them, how you’ll hold yourself accountable, and what support you need. This is the stage that turns a (self) coaching conversation into a development plan.
If your chosen actions involve practising difficult conversations – e.g. giving feedback, managing conflict, handling resistance – our AI Skills Practice tool lets you rehearse those scenarios in a low-stakes environment. It’s a way to build confidence and refine your approach before facing high-stakes situations for real.
Develop your skills with AI Skills Practice
Using GROW for leadership development
The GROW model works especially well for leadership development. That’s because leadership growth tends to be incremental and practice based. You’re not learning a technical skill from a textbook – you’re developing behaviours, habits, and judgement through experience and reflection.
Use a GROW session whenever you want to set a new leadership development goal, if you’re feeling stuck on an existing one, or when feedback has revealed a gap you want to address. You can complete the process in 20–30 minutes on paper, in a structured template, in conversation with a mentor, or by working through the framework with Ask M: Coach.
For the best results, combine GROW with regular reflective practice. After each action, reflect on what happened: did the approach work? What would you do differently? What have you learned? This creates a cycle of goal setting, action, and learning that drives sustained development.
If you want to develop your coaching skills alongside using GROW for your own development, our workshops offer facilitated sessions where you can practise coaching conversations with peers and get expert feedback in real time. Learning to coach others through GROW is itself one of the most valuable leadership skills you can build.
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