The GROW Model and Solution-Focused Coaching

The GROW model, developed by Sir John Whitmore in the 1980s, sits at the centre of this video, which addresses AC 2.2 of FREE07 by examining the frameworks practitioners use to structure coaching conversations. The video works through each of the model's four stages — Goal, Reality, Options, and Will (or Way Forward) — explaining what each stage is intended to achieve within a coaching interaction. Alongside GROW, the video covers solution-focused coaching, a distinct approach that has moved from therapeutic origins into mainstream organisational use.

Within its treatment of solution-focused coaching, the video introduces three specific techniques: the miracle question, scaling questions, and exception-seeking. Each technique represents a different way of orienting a coaching conversation towards desired outcomes and existing strengths rather than towards problem analysis. The video positions these techniques as a coherent alternative to the GROW model's stage-by-stage structure, giving viewers a comparison between two named approaches relevant to AC 2.2's requirement to discuss models used to structure coaching.

The broader indicative content for the unit — including active listening, powerful questioning, summarising and agreement, feedback frameworks such as SBI and STAR (situation–behaviour–impact), and feedforward — is signposted as territory the unit covers, with the coaching skills that animate GROW and solution-focused approaches noted as the subject of a subsequent video. The questioning techniques associated with each GROW stage, and those specific to solution-focused methods, are treated as concrete illustrations of how structure and skilled questioning interact in practice.