TGROW model coaching guide
Updated: Oct 17
Employees who see their manager as a coach are over 8 times more likely to be highly engaged, yet only 54% of workers describe their manager that way. Forrester, 2025.
Many managers intend to coach, but under pressure most of us slip back into advising. The TGROW model gives you a simple coaching framework and asks questions that help your employee think through challenges.
Below you’ll find the questions for each stage, a short worked example, and the moments when you should put the model down.
Contents
What is the TGROW coaching model?
TGROW is a five-stage structure for a coaching conversation. It helps the other person think a problem through and choose their own next step, while you ask the questions and keep things moving.
It grew out of GROW, which Sir John Whitmore and colleagues developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and which spread through his book Coaching for Performance (Performance Consultants). The coach Myles Downey later added a Topic stage at the front (Downey, 2014).
Topic: what do they want to talk about?
Goal: what do they want from this conversation?
Reality: what is happening right now?
Options: what could they do?
Will (or way forward): what will they do, and what support do they need?
Opening with Topic means the conversation starts with the other person’s agenda, rather than only yours. That builds trust and keeps the conversation relevant to what they actually need.
Where it fits: any conversation where the other person owns the problem and wants to solve it. That might be a regular 1:1, a career conversation, a development discussion where you pair feedback with TGROW questions, or five minutes in a corridor.
Why leaders should use TGROW
Do you know what a good coaching conversation feels like from the other side of the table?
I do. Years ago I took a problem to my manager that I’d been turning over for a while, half hoping to be told what to do. Instead, I was asked what I wanted to talk about, what a good outcome would look like, and what was really going on. Each question was followed by a long pause and space to think.
I’d gone in feeling stuck. By the end I had a plan, and because the ideas were mine, I felt more committed to making it happen. It was only later that I found out my manager had been using TGROW.
That’s the case for TGROW. It helps you:
Stop rescuing. The structure gives you something useful to do other than jump in with the answer.
Get to the real issue. Reality questions dig past the first thing people mention.
Build ownership. People follow through on plans they’ve made themselves.
Keep 1:1s focused. Every conversation ends with an agreed next step.
A review of 20 workplace coaching studies found that coaching’s biggest impact was on helping people achieve their goals. Wang et al., 2022.
Yet few managers are taught how to coach. When Milner and colleagues surveyed 580 managers, around 40% wanted more coaching training. If that’s you, our guide to adopting a coaching leadership style is a good next read.
🤔 Reflective question: When someone brings you a problem, how long do you usually last before you offer an answer?
TGROW model questions: a step-by-step guide
Use the stages as a map you can move around on.
Whitmore himself warned that “any dictator can use GROW”: the model only works if you’re genuinely listening. Expect to loop back, too. A new idea in Options often sends you back to Reality, and that’s fine.
Topic: agree the focus
Start with what’s on their mind, then agree whether coaching is the right way to handle it.
“What’s on your mind?”
“What would be most useful to talk about today?”
“Of everything going on, what matters most right now?”
💡 Tip: resist tidying their topic too quickly. The first thing people mention is often the safe version of the real issue.
Goal: define what good looks like
Help them turn a vague wish into an outcome they would recognise.
“I want better meetings” becomes “I want to leave meetings with clear actions and feel confident speaking up”. It can help to agree two levels: what they want from this conversation, and what they want longer term.
“What would make this conversation worth your time?”
“What would success look like?”
“In three months, what would you like to be different?”
“How will you know you’ve got there?”
Reality: explore what’s happening now
This is where most of the insight lives, so slow down.
Help them see the whole picture: the facts, the feelings, the people involved and the assumptions they’re carrying. Active listening matters most here, so summarise what you’ve heard before you move on.
“What’s happening right now?”
“What have you tried so far?”
“What’s working better than you expected?”
“What’s getting in the way?”
“What patterns do you notice in how you respond to situations like this?”
That last question invites the kind of leadership reflection that makes an insight stick.
Options: widen the possibilities
Once Reality is clear, move to Options and aim for range.
Hold back your own idea for now. If you have a suggestion that matters, offer it last, as one option among several. A question with your preferred answer smuggled inside it doesn’t count as coaching.
“What could you do?”
“What else?” (ask it more than once)
“If a colleague faced this, what would you suggest?”
“Which option stretches you but still feels realistic?”
💡 Tip: for more ways to phrase these, see our summary of The Coaching Habit questions or our list of questions great leaders ask.
Will: commit to a way forward
Turn the best option into a plan they own.
“What will you do first, and when?”
“How confident are you, on a scale of 1 to 10?”
“What would move that score up by one?”
“What might get in the way?”
“What support would help, from me or anyone else?”
Close by agreeing how you’ll follow up. A check-in two weeks later is what turns one good conversation into a habit.
A TGROW model conversation in practice
🧐 Example: Sam leads a small team, and a project keeps slipping. Sam is a composite, but the pattern will be familiar. Here’s how one ten-minute conversation runs through each stage.
Topic. Manager: “What would be most useful to focus on?” Sam: “The launch. It’s late again and I’m firefighting”.
Goal. Manager: “What would a good outcome from the next ten minutes look like?” Sam: “A plan to get it back on track without working every evening”.
Reality. Manager: “What’s actually causing the slippage?” Sam: “Honestly? I’m the bottleneck. Everything waits for my sign-off”.
Options. Manager: “What could you do about that?” Sam: “Hand smaller sign-offs to Priya. Or set a 24-hour review rule. Maybe both”.
Will. Manager: “Which will you do, and when?” Sam: “I’ll talk to Priya tomorrow and trial it for two weeks”.
The manager never offered a diagnosis. Sam found the bottleneck alone, which is why the plan stuck. Notice too that the breakthrough came at Reality, the stage most managers rush.
Your turn. In your next 1:1, ask permission first, then give it about ten minutes: two for Topic and Goal, three each for Reality and Options, and two for Will. Keep your own talking short and let the pauses run.
💡 Tip: afterwards, note one moment when you were tempted to give advice and didn’t. That’s the habit you’re building.
When TGROW is the wrong tool
A coaching leadership style includes knowing when to stop coaching.
Leave TGROW in the drawer, or keep it to a small part of the conversation, when:
There’s a crisis, safety risk or compliance issue. People need clear direction, and coaching questions in that moment can look like you’re dodging responsibility.
It’s a formal disciplinary process. Coaching and discipline have different purposes and boundaries. Mixing them leaves the person unsure which conversation they’re in.
Trust is low. If people don’t feel safe, a deep coaching conversation can feel like a trap. Build psychological safety first.
You can’t stay neutral. If you have a stake in the outcome, you’ll steer, however good your intentions. Share your view openly instead, or find someone else to coach.
There’s a hidden agenda. Never use coaching questions to gather information or nudge someone towards a decision you’ve already made.
🤔 Reflective question: Which of these have you slipped into, and what would you do differently next time?
Contracting: ask before you coach
Contracting is the short agreement that makes a coaching conversation safe.
It sounds formal, but it can take ten seconds. As a manager, you hold power over the person you’re coaching, so their permission matters even more.
Ask for permission. “Would it help if I asked you some questions rather than giving you my view?” gives the other person a real choice.
Be clear about the purpose. Say out loud that the aim is to help them think it through and decide, so nobody wonders what the conversation is really for.
Name your two roles. Be explicit about when you’re coaching and when you’re giving direction, and say so if you switch.
Respect a no. If someone would rather have your advice, give it. Coaching forced on someone stops being coaching.
🧐 Example: “I’d like to try a coaching approach here, which means I’ll mostly ask questions and you decide what happens next. It’s your call, and you can ask me for advice at any point”.
Final thoughts
The most useful thing my manager did in that 1:1 was trust me to find my own answer. The structure kept us out of advice; the listening did the rest.
Pick one conversation this week, ask permission, and hold back the answer a little longer than feels comfortable. It’s one of the most common goals leaders bring to leadership coaching with us.
References
Downey, M. (2014). Effective modern coaching: the principles and art of successful business coaching. LID Publishing.
Forrester (2025). Managers who coach their employees drive high engagement, 2025. Forrester Research.
Milner, J., McCarthy, G. and Milner, T. (2018). Training for the coaching leader: how organizations can support managers. Journal of Management Development, 37(2), 188-200.
Performance Consultants (n.d.). The GROW model: a complete guide to goals, reality, options and will.
Wang, Q., Lai, Y.-L., Xu, X. and McDowall, A. (2022). The effectiveness of workplace coaching: a meta-analysis of contemporary psychologically informed coaching approaches. Journal of Work-Applied Management, 14(1).
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