One of the biggest management pressures is figuring out how best to enable consistent employee development. But imagine if we gave managers a simple, repeatable structure. One they could follow in just 15 minutes without any fancy training or tools. That’s the GROW coaching model in a nutshell.
Keep reading to learn how GROW-style coaching works, its business benefits, and what you must do to bring it to life.
What does GROW stand for?
Like a well-maintained topiary hedge, GROW is one of those acronyms that’s perfectly sculpted for what it’s trying to achieve. Here’s a breakdown of what it means:
- Goal: Simply put, what are you trying to achieve? Setting training and development goals early on contextualizes all actions employees take and every piece of learning content they engage with going forward. Managers and employees should set these goals together so you’re both on the same page.
- Reality: The reality is what’s happening right now. This includes the skills and experience an employee has, the needs of the business, and where they need to end up. You’ll need to ask the employee open-ended questions and take what they tell you into account.
- Options: What actions can you take to overcome obstacles to employee growth? These can include e-learning, coaching, secondment, peer mentoring, and anything else you can think of.
- Way: Technically “Way forward,” but “GROWF” wouldn’t have the same ring to it. Basically, what are the next steps you should follow? These may include the options mentioned above but combined with an immediate action plan.
Why managers struggle with coaching
One of the benefits of the GROW coaching model is that it’s easy to understand and follow. This is especially important because plenty of managers struggle with this part of their jobs. But why is that?
The main reason is arguably the fact that less than half (44%) have received management training according to findings from Gallup.
This means that the majority are left to cobble together their own approach on the job. They’ll take inspiration from their own past managers, many of whom probably had bad habits of their own.
Not everyone is a natural teacher, but don’t worry. Even if that’s not you, Gallup found that teaching managers effective coaching styles can boost their performance by 20-28%.
The GROW coaching model in action
Let’s go over an example of how the GROW coaching model works in real life. Imagine you’re coaching an employee from your customer service center over Microsoft Teams. Remember that, to do this in a 15-minute coaching session, you’ll need to prepare. Do this by going over previous performance reviews, check-ins, and any other performance insights you have.
Once that’s in place, sit down with the employee and:
- Establish a goal: They want to get better at solving problems for customers. So, while talking things through in your 1:1, you set the goal of increasing their customer complaint resolution rate by 50%.
- Look at reality: During the coaching session, you and your employee agree they lack the technical skills or product knowledge to resolve most issues after looking through their performance data and 360 feedback results. Nobody likes admitting they’re bad at something, so data-driven insights are essential.
- Consider your options: After talking it through, you assign them e-learning recommendations as well as a peer mentor to ensure they can apply their new skills effectively. But this is only a starting point. To proceed, you need…
- The way forward: This would include setting up a meeting cadence with their peer mentor and assigning deadlines for their first rounds of e-learning. You should also plan check-ins with your employee, if you’re not running them already, to see how they get on.
Be sure to book your next coaching session in advance. The continued check-ins will bridge the gap and keep you updated on employee progress in real time. Respond to check-in answers for ad-hoc feedback and be ready to discuss adjustments or further support at your next 1:1.
The business impact of continuous coaching
According to Gartner, 74% of businesses used ongoing feedback in 2025. This is because, along with other forms of continuous coaching, the GROW coaching model has notable business benefits.
- More frequent feedback and progress: Coaching reinforces the habit of frequent feedback-sharing. In turn, this makes progress more attainable. Feedback is delivered at the point of impact rather than months later in a performance review.
- Greater engagement and retention: Coaching shows employees that their professional development matters and makes them more likely to stick around. When employees feel supported to grow at work, they’re up to 61% more engaged and their willingness to stay rises by up to 19% according to Gartner.
- Managers feel supported: Training managers to coach gives them practical skills to support employee development. As they get into good coaching habits and see employee gains, they’ll naturally feel less overwhelmed by the demands of their role.
- Performance management becomes human again: Coaching is fundamentally a human interaction. AI may be revolutionizing e-learning. But continuous coaching conversations will continue to be essential so that personal development support doesn’t feel overly automated.
How Perform365 brings the GROW coaching model to life
15 minutes may not sound like a lot of time in which to manage employee performance, but it’s more than enough with the right systems in place. That’s because performance management tools like Perform365 can streamline prep-work and support more efficient coaching conversations.
- Structured check-in templates in Teams: It takes just 10 minutes to complete or review an employee check-in. But our check-in templates can streamline this even further while ensuring you ask the right questions. Best of all, like the rest of Perform365, they’re completely accessible through Microsoft Teams.
- Prompts, reminders, and follow-ups: Set up automated prompts for follow-up actions to ensure timely performance management progress. You might use as check-in nudges, or to remind employees to complete their assigned e-learning, for example.
- Goals, feedback, and actions in one view: Putting goals, feedback, and actions in a single view means you’re more likely to spot critical insights. You might notice, for instance, that employee goals focus on their customer service skills but their actions focus more on admin skills like data handling. With this in mind, you can modify their recommended actions to more closely reflect their development goals.
- Less admin, more action: Automating up to 90% of performance conversations and prep leaves more time to focus on human conversations and proactive support. Instead of spending hours to prep for a brief 1:1, you can get ready in minutes and spend even more time discussing outcomes with your employees.
All of this leaves managers and employees primed to have productive coaching conversations in just 15 minutes, so you never have to worry about disrupting anyone’s workflow to talk about performance.
Support your people with continuous coaching
While continuous coaching might sound difficult in theory, in practice, it’s easy thanks to the GROW coaching model. This approach to employee development helps managers to slow down and start thinking like a mentor, and the results speak for themselves.
Once you have an idea of the support options you can provide, you should start by sitting down with each member of your team to establish development goals. Then all you have to do is follow the acronym and check in on their progress regularly.
To find out more about the power of coaching for performance management, explore why mentorship programs are so important, and learn how to build habits through continuous coaching!