The GROW model is a coaching framework used to to help coaches around the world structure coaching sessions and achieve targeted results. The model, which is an acronym for Goal, Reality, Options, Will or Way forward, has grown since the 80s to become one of the most popular and one of the most effective coaching models adopted by coaches globally.   Who Created the GROW Model? The GROW model was introduced to the big public in 1992 by Sir John Whitmore, in his book “Coaching for Perfomance”. The model, developed in the 1980s by Whitmore, Alan Fine, and Graham Alexander, ‘grew’ out of the Inner Game coaching method developed by Tim Galley for sports. What had happened was that John Whitmore a sports car racer, supported by his colleagues Graham Alexander and Alan Fine had started studying and analysing how coaches used the Inner Game in sports coaching. Together they

Coaching is an important concept in achieving personal and professional development. It allows a person to find self-discovered solutions to their challenges through the guide of a coach. Therefore, one can say that coaches are not trained to find solutions for their coachees but to help them, using different  methodologies, to evoke their inherent abilities to find solutions themselves.  So what is coaching then? And what does it entail? What Is Coaching According to ICF? According to the International Coach Federation (ICF), coaching is defined as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”((International Coaching Federation. Retrieved on May 28th, 2022 https://coachingfederation.org/)) One of the core values of coaching is that a coach is trained to see a client as an expert in his life or work. Hence, the responsibility of a coach is to guide the client towards

As people delve into self-discovery and strive at navigating a world of challenges and achievements, one key human desire is to attain a balanced and fulfilled life. People are not just satisfied with barely living, but seek to fill their daily awake hours with something of true worth. This principle of seeking, finding, and exploring a worthy life is what is referred to in Japanese terms as Ikigai. What Is Ikigai Ikigai pronounced [ee-key-guy] is a concept with Japanese origins that combines the words iki meaning “life” and gai meaning “worth” or “reason” to translate to “a life of worth,” or “a life worth living.”((Jeffery Gaines. March 7 2022. The Philosophy of Ikigai: 3 Examples About Finding Purpose. Positive Psychology. Retrieved on March 19 2022. https://positivepsychology.com/ikigai/)) It is popularly described as a life principle that motivates us to want to get up every morning and find fulfillment or happiness in

At a Ted Talk in 2004, Csikszentmihalyi said, “there’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback”.((Alice Robb, “The ‘flow state’: Where creative work thrives”. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190204-how-to-find-your-flow-state-to-be-peak-creative on 6 December, 2021)) The word “flow,” suggests a state of ease and fluidity. It naturally paints a picture of nature where everything will come and go without any obstruction, issues, or delays. This picture you imagine is not too distant from the concept of flow in psychology.  As a software developer, you always want to get better at productive programming. You must have heard about programmers who are the best at what they do because they found a way to “hack their flow,” or “be in the groove“, therefore allowing them to create stuff

The world of software development employs several levels of strategies to achieve success. Many of these strategies had been adopted by a single company at first before they succeeded and became the blueprint that every other company began to follow. Getting the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to market as quickly as possible is a popular strategy among product development organizations.((Product Plan. Lean Software Development. Retrieved on 19 October 2021. https://www.productplan.com/glossary/lean-software-development/ )) After the MVP has been brought to market, developers add to or remove features from the product based on feedback received from the users on features that they enjoyed or didn’t find useful. To achieve building this Minimum Viable Product in time, software companies have to optimize their processes and ensure that the value of the product to the end-user is maximized.  This method of optimizing the production process to reduce wasteful activities and bring a product that has the

Lean principles got their origin from manufacturing. It started in the mid-20th century when Toyota, a large Japanese automobile manufacturing company, was having problems with meeting its production target in time.  Consequently, Toyota had decided to come up with a new production management method. It was this new management system that revamped the company’s process and focused on reducing waste in production while maximizing value to the customer or end-users. Since then, this Toyota management system has spread to become popular in other industries of manufacturing where it was known as Lean manufacturing.  In 2003, Tom and Mary Poppendieck published a book titled Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit that taught the implementation of lean manufacturing into software engineering. Today, that book has become topical, and due to its popular application, many software engineers now utilize lean principles as an efficient way to optimize functionality while eliminating waste.((Alexander Sergeev. 15

A CEO would succeed at aligning everyone in the company’s environment and driving them in a linear course when company goals are made public and accessible to every team and individual to work towards. This is the base concept of the popular tool known as Objectives and Key Results, or simply OKRs. OKRs help organizations and individuals to focus on results and arrange them in an itinerary in order to arrive at the desired goal. Today, its use is very popular with most successful companies including Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Airbnb, and others adopting this goal management tool. However, this concept was not recently founded. Its history goes down to decades ago when early founders sought a way to set and drive all teams towards precise objectives. A brief history of OKRs The OKR framework was originally developed by Andrew Grove who was the co-founder of Intel in 1968.((Perdoo. The Ultimate

To improve product performance, it is important to understand the concept of key performance indicators and how to differentiate leading indicators from lagging indicators (also known as trailing indicators). While it is true that both terms could be confused for the other, and that the concepts could be quite difficult to nail down and identify, the ability to understand and differentiate between them would afford managers a better understanding of KPIs. This knowledge would tremendously impact decisions when a company makes structures for better performance. Good KPIs Are a Balance of Leading and Lagging Indicators Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, are metrics that can help forecasting a product performance. These indicators signify anything that can be considered to predicting financial or market trends.((Elizabeth Harris. The Advantages of Leading and Lagging Indicators. Resultist Consulting.  Retrieved on August 29 2021.  https://www.resultist.com/blog/leading-indicators-vs.-lagging-indicators)) In successful businesses, KPIs emerge as a result of proper combination