The ‘GROW’ Model – Dave’s Short Bytes


Here’s another proven tip to help you TRANSFORM your driving lessons.

The ‘GROW Model’ was developed by Sir John Whitmore in the 1980s and is a proven technique to apply to coaching. Read more below 🔽🔽🔽

Cancelled driving lessons
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The GROW Model is developed to help an individual’s awareness and understanding of:

  • Their own aspirations
  • Their current situation and beliefs
  • The possibilities and resources open to them; and
  • The actions they want to take to achieve their personal and professional goals.

You can see this fits very clearly with the DVSA’s Standards Test and Part Three Test, as well as the levels from the Goals for Driver Education GDE matrix.

It’s worth noting that the GROW model was designed to help people where the trainer had no prior knowledge of the persons – they were coaching’s subject. However, we have specialist knowledge and this can be used to ‘guide’ a pupil.

So how do we use the GROW model with our pupils?

G for Goal

What does the pupil want or need? This is where we establish the needs and wishes of your pupil. Where we set the subject for this part of the lesson.

You need to remember to set the goal using SMART objectives

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Realistic
  • Time

Click here to watch the episode on SMART objectives.

R for reality

This is really the ‘current’ reality, as the reality changes as each lesson is taken and the pupil’s knowledge and skills grow.

Is the starring point of this lesson realistic?

To some degree there is a cross over with the SMART objectives here, but in coaching and the GROW model we are looking more holistically. Let’s take an example I used in SMART objectives.

A pupil has had a few lessons but wants to do a manoeuvre, you feel this might not be ‘realistic’ so we ask the pupil questions like “What skills would we need to make sure this was successful?” Hopefully this leads to good control skills and good observations so we can amend the goal for this. But, keep the bigger picture in mind of the manoeuvre. Once they have the control and observational skills then the manoeuvre might be more realistic.

O for Options

Here we discuss what they will need to know or accomplish to achieve the goal.

  • What might be difficult and how they might overcome this?
  • What obstacles might there be in achieving and what might it look like if those problems were not there?

Here we look at the options available to best help your pupil.

  • Do they want a demonstration?
  • Do they want full talk through?
  • Do they just want a bit of prompting?
  • Or would they just like to have a go?

Consider what resources you have and can use, such as lesson planners or iPad/tablet apps.

W= Way forward

Sometimes called the will

This is where we talk to the pupil and they commit to the way forward. Here you can get them to talk about levels of responsibility (again scaling is good here.) What we will do if things don’t quite go as planned and how much help they want.

We can ask about how we will review the goal and how they might know they’re achieving it. Then we will agree the time scale we will use for this goal.

The GROW model continually cycles through the lessons, when you finish one you set the goal for the next session