3 Essential Coaching Models for Aspiring Coaches

Discover three essential coaching models to bolster your coaching capabilities and establish you as a professional coach.

As the second-fastest growing industry in the world, life coaching provides a promising career path for professionals.

But before becoming a professional performance coach or establishing your own life coaching business , it’s worth understanding the specific coaching models to apply to your existing techniques and overall methodology.

What is a Coaching Model??

A coaching model is a framework for coaching, supplying a structure to practise your coaching skills. So, rather than teaching you how to coach, a coaching model provides the strategy for successfully coaching a client.?

A quick search on Google and you can find numerous coaching models to suit specific purposes, coaches and clients. But despite this potential for saturation in the industry, we believe this is a good thing as the coaching world is as complex as the clients who seek support.

By having access, expertise and experience coaching different models , you can provide answers and solve more issues for your clients, blending the positives you’ve taken from each model.

3 Models of Coaching

The beauty of coaching is that with every client and new experience, your coaching develops and improves. So, before you settle on a signature coaching style, here are our three essential coaching models: ?

1.???The Grow Coaching Model

So legend has it that the GROW Model was developed originally by Graham Alexander and then further promoted by Sir John Whitmore in his book ‘Coaching for Performance’ , the GROW coaching model is probably the most popular method in the UK.

Many coaching training programmes choose the GROW model as the framework for developing the coaching relationship.?

What is the Grow Coaching Model?

To understand the GROW coaching model, let’s break down the acronym:

G – Goal

R – Reality

O – Options

W – Will

Goal

As with any process, knowing where to start is vital. The “goal” aspect of GROW helps us break down our main objective into smaller and more manageable tasks.

An effective way to help your client determine their goals is to apply the SMART formula .

Establishing goals is crucial for our client’s development. Ensure before working towards a solid objective that you align their goals with their personal values and capabilities.

Reality

The second step of the GROW model is determining your client's mindset and capabilities concerning their goals. Essentially, you need to address the reality of their situation.?

GROW coaching helps people measure their progress to determine where they need to improve and whether their goal is realistic.

Options

Understanding your client’s strengths can help them achieve their desired outcomes and consider more suitable options for their development.

As their coach, encouragement is crucial in motivating your clients to pursue passions and explore unknown opportunities.

Will?

The final stage of the GROW model is the driving force behind the process. After all, anything we wish to achieve requires action and application.

Helping your client establish their motivation should align with a commitment to a specific action that achieves their goal.?

2.???The OSCAR Coaching Model

The OSCAR Coaching Model is quite simply a framework on which to hang your coaching questions. It provides you with a simple structure that helps to keep the coaching process focused, structured and time effective.

At the very start – Establish any ground rules if they are necessary and get your coachee to identify the issue to be coached on. What will they want to talk about and what are the outcomes for the session in the time you have?

The OSCAR Coaching Model developed by Andrew Gilbert and Karen Whittleworth.

O - OUTCOME

S – Situation

C – Choices & Consequences

A – Actions

R – Review

O – Outcome

This is where you help the client clarify the outcomes they wish to work towards

S – Situation

This is where you get clarity around where the client is right now, the purpose is to raise the awareness of the client and the questioning in this section is for the benefit of the person being coached not the coach.

C – Choices & Consequences

This is where you help the client generate as many alternative courses of actions as possible and help them increase the awareness about the consequences of each choice.

A – Actions

This is where you help the client review the options generated and to clarify the steps forward and to take responsibility for their own action plan.

R – Review

This is where you help the client to continually check that they are on course. This also helps you, if you are the manager, be fully informed about what your client is doing and why.

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3.???The WHAT Coaching Method?

I originally developed the WHAT Coaching Method as a training drill for our student coaches, however since the early development phase it has developed into a model of its own merits and ensures the criteria for the NLP concept of Well Formed Outcomes

The WHAT coaching method is an excellent starting point for generating a powerful questioning style to get the best from your clients.

Building from the ‘Generative Coaching Cycle’, questions are crucial to help you and your client determine the correct path.

The Generative Coaching Cycle is a four-stage process that follows the following course:

1.???Questions to create a direction.

2.???Provide objective challenges.

3.???Open new perspectives and possibilities.

4.???Reflect on insights and review actions.

Unlike the previous two coaching models, the WHAT coaching model is not an acronym but an emphasis on variations of just one question – WHAT?

What questions tend to be more open and encourage creative answers from your clients. Try it out and see how “yes” and “no” becomes more challenging as our clients must dig deeper for justifications and reasons.

An overview of the methods approach would be something like this:

WHAT

• What’s the current situation?
• What’s prompted the need for change?
• What else?
• What would you rather have?
• What would your ideal outcome be?
• What does that look like?
• Thinking about all we have explored, what outcome are we going to focus on in this session??
• Tell me in one sentence, what will this outcome do for you?
• What else?

HOW

• What resources will it take (think, time, money, people etc) to get this done?
• Let’s brainstorm strategy, explore as many options as we can in the next few minutes.?
• What is the first idea?
• What else?
• What else?
• Looking at all the options, what seems to be the best option right now?
• What is the first step in getting this outcome started?
• What do you believe has prevented you from getting this in the past?

Action Station

• Okay, so what is the first step to take to make this happen?
• What evidence (see, hear and feel) will you contract with both me and yourself that will indicate you have:
• A, made a start
• B, are halfway
• C, you have achieved your outcome
• What is the number one thing you got out of this session?
• What clarity have you got out of this session?

?Time Frames

• Reflecting on all we have covered, what time frame are you going to work to?
• What’s a date take you can commit to right now?

We have found that using the WHAT Coaching method is no longer an excellent practice drill for a developing coach, it’s now a process that enables clients to find a clear direction and set realistic outcomes by focusing and forcing their attention, they generate a direction to move forward that is meaningful and achievable.

Discover Your Ideal Coaching Model with Professional Training?

At UKCPD , we’ve provided accredited and award-winning life coaching courses since 2005. Our range of professional and personal development training and resources plus our ILM and NLP qualifications, and Association for Coaching courses can provide the following coaching models to support your development as a professional coach.

For more information about how our life coaching expertise and resources can serve your career ambitions, get in touch. ?