GROW framework

Don’t chase the bone!

What do you say when a person gets into the habit of coming directly to you with their problems asking, “What do you think I should do?”

Your subconscious urge will be to provide your recommendation, or even make the decision for them. Your ego gets stroked because you get to play “the expert”. It feels good.

I call it “chasing the bone”. Someone throws you the bone, and you go galloping off to fetch it like a good dog. You bring it back with your tail wagging. You get to feel like a hero. Mission accomplished.

Don’t chase the bone!

If you are the manager, you just made a big mistake without realizing it. You unwittingly made the person dependent on you for problem-solving and decision-making.

Rather than being an effective delegator, you have become the victim of “reverse delegation”. Your people don’t learn how to think through the issues and make decisions because it’s easier to come to you. 

When people become dependent on you for decision-making, this makes you a bottleneck to company velocity and growth.

Stop playing the hero, and start coaching and developing a team of people who can think for themselves and make well-reasoned decisions (or recommendations).

One of my favorite decision-making frameworks is the GROW framework. I use GROW when coaching clients to make decisions. I use GROW when working through my own decisions.

The GROW Framework.

Use these prompts to capture your thinking in the order prescribed G-R-O-W:

G = Goal.
What is the goal? What is the desired outcome? What problem are we trying to solve?

(Start by getting aligned on the desired outcome. A problem well stated is a problem half solved)

R = Reality.
What is happening? What are the facts? What does the data say? Why is that happening?

(Tip: Use the Toyota approach of asking the last question 5 times. Why is that happening? And why is that happening? And why is that happening? and so on until you get down to the root cause. Rather than deal with superficial symptoms, dig down to uncover the underlying reality)

O = Options.
What options do we have? What are the consequences? What are the tradeoffs?

(List all the options you can think of, including “do nothing.”  Flesh out the short-term and long-term consequences of each option. One of my favorite sayings is, “There are no perfect solutions, only trade-offs.” )

W = Way Forward.
What option would you choose (or recommend)? What is the next step? How will you measure success?

(The last question comes from W. Edwards Deming. How will you know if your decision is a success? What measures will you use? Or, at what milestones will you review the results?)

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Take control of the bone, by throwing it back to them to fetch. Your goal as a manager is to coach your team members to use critical thinking to solve problems and make well-reasoned decisions without you needing to be there all the time.

When I managed teams, I encouraged people to present their problems to me in writing using the GROW framework, so I could discuss their thought process with them and understand how they arrived at their recommendations.

You know it is working when your people start mocking you. My team would catch themselves in the middle of asking me what to do, and say, “Whoops! I know what you are going to say to me. Come back and present a 1 pager using the GROW framework.”

When they came back, all I had to do as a manager was look at their 1 pager and say, “Thank you for showing me your logic. Yes, I agree with your recommendation. Go for it.”

Alternatively, “Thank you for showing me your logic. Here’s another option for you to consider.” Then we would debate the options and arrive at a robust decision together. Wherever possible, support them to make the decision vs. you making it for them.

Clients ask me, “What do you do when the employee’s recommendation is different from what you would do, but still viable?”

In that scenario, I recommend going with the employee’s recommendation to demonstrate that you trust their judgment, even if you have stylistic differences.

For decisions requiring your sign-off (expenditure, etc), ask the person to use the GROW framework to present a range of options (at least two), followed by their recommendation as to which option they would choose if it were up to them to make the decision.

Yes, it is quicker in the short term to give people your answers and tell them what to do. But that doesn’t scale. You become the bottleneck. Using GROW will slow things down in the short term, but you are building the decision-making muscles and leadership capabilities of your people.  Go slow now, to go faster later.

In summary, whenever someone comes at you with a problem or opportunity asking, “What do you think I should do?” avoid getting sucked into “reverse delegation”.  Take control of the bone and throw it back to them to fetch. Coach the person to present their thinking using the GROW framework until it becomes their new default behavior. 

Using the GROW framework makes your job easier in the long run. You become a leader who is growing a team of leaders. 

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Until next time…
Stephen