The GROW model by John Whitmore

Who can use this: Mentors to help build their confidence in their abilities to help their mentees.

What is it: It’s actually a coaching tool but can be used to great effect in mentoring relationships also.

What’s good about it: It’s very flexible and adaptive and can be used for results needed in a short time frame.

More about it:

Goal

• Discuss and determine through conversation with you mentee - where do they want to be? What are they trying to achieve?

Reality i.e. “the perceptual framework of the mentee”

• It’s important to understand the mentees reality, what kind of situation are they operating in.

• It’s important to get them to stick to facts and not assumptions in this space. Keep them on track with this by asking questions until you’ve determined is something assumption or fact.

• This discussion and information will help mentor see things through the lens of the Mentee.

Options

• Encourage the mentee to think “outside the box” of all the options open to them.

• A good question to ask is something like “think if unicorns existed, what would be your options then?” or “if budget wasn’t a barrier, what would you do?”

Will

• Based on their self identified options, action will stem from these.

• The will is how committed are they to achieving those actions.

• Mentors can check in with mentees to see do they follow up actions through to completion.

• It's important to be pragmatic in this space, some actions might not actually be achievable for very practical reasons.