Coaching Model: GROW -

A Coaching Model Created by Alexandra Nery
(Expat Living and Transition Coach, DUBAI)

Expat Single Women on wanting to start a family, alongside their hopes and tribulations.

‘^[1]Using a frame model helps in several ways. It helps to provide a purpose to the session by defining an outcome at the beginning preventing it from becoming a ‘chat’ with no clear purpose. It can also be a prompt to ensure that the session stays ‘on track’. The skill of the coach is in knowing what your client needs at a particular moment, so being able to hold a toolkit of different models is always helpful to draw upon and use when needed. There is an array of coaching models, frameworks, and theories to choose from, however not all, are designed for one client as no client is the same. In this case, I have decided to focus my coaching model on the Wheel of life framework and the GROW model for expat single women clients.^[2]

G	Goal	The Goal is the endpoint, where the client wants to be. The goal has to be defined in such a way that it is very clear to the client when they have achieved it.
R	Reality	The current Reality is where the client is now. What are the issues, the challenges, how far are they away from their goal?
O	Obstacles	There will be Obstacles stopping the client from getting from where they are now to where they want to go. If there were no Obstacles the client would already have reached their goal.
O	Options	Once Obstacles have been identified, the client needs to find ways of dealing with them if they are to make progress. These are the Options.
W	Way Forward	The Options then need to be converted into action steps that will take the client to their goal. These are the Way Forward.

Being able to keep it simple is always a plus and I use this as my go-to reminder as no coach, client or session are the same. It is recommended that before the coach starts working with a client a discovery session is placed, this is to familiarize both parties with each other and see if they can indeed work together. Once the discovery session has been completed then the coaching agreement is put into place. This is to inform the client what is expected from them and what they can expect from the coach, removing any confusion from the start. Usually, in the session, a goal is set at the beginning by the client and put simply, explored to see what the end goal is. Open communication is paramount, as is trust between the client and coach. Naturally, vulnerability comes into play so without these virtues, both parties can become stagnated and veer off into meaningless banter and time being wasted. The number of sessions is dependent solely on the client, the coach is purely there to support the client reach their own conclusions, without being judgmental or pushing them into what they think the client should do. Again, the coach is solely there for the client to answer their own questions, to build the path towards their goals, to expose any blind spots the client may have through powerful questions, active listening, and aid them in using different tools to bring them the awareness they need towards moving forwards. In addition, removing what they do not want to see or what is stopping them in doing so and finding the way to how to overcome these.

In this essay, I have chosen the GROW Method to apply to a recurring topic that arises for many expat single women living in a fast-paced lifestyle: finding a partner and starting a family. Simply put, it’s challenging, as women are working so hard to achieve their individual career goals, they are putting their time literally into this leaving no time towards marriage and starting a family. When women do eventually try to find the time to nourish a relationship let this be a friendship or romantic one, most are started through work/ business networking. Socializing after hours with work colleagues or clients seems an easy choice so they do not find themselves home alone after work as it is common they have traveled abroad without their family members or friends which are usually ‘back home’.

Another area that is linked to the difficulties of starting a family is looking after their bodies. The basic elements such as doing enough exercise, eating a nutritious healthy balanced diet are far-fetched when working silly hours to maintain a good career is on the cards. It starts with fatty fast foods, quick late-night snacks of crisps/ doughnuts, and chocolate alongside the lack of sleep/ rest they have, The national sleep foundation recommends the following :

To add to this, the reason why women cannot sleep from a statistical and biological viewpoint as pointed out by Harvard Medical School are :

Most single career women that I have come across are reaching their pivotal career potential on either starting a family or continuing to strengthen their careers usually falls between the ages of 27 – 35 years. However, as you can see below the ^[4]British Society of fertility demonstrates the fertility peak and dip

With all of the above in mind, I have found that when I ask clients where they would like to focus on first: many topics are brought up as they themselves find that everything is a priority. At this point, I usually introduce the Wheel of life as it is an extremely helpful first step model. The wheel of life was invented by Paul J. Meherit is quite simple to do: a circle is drawn, divided into sections (depending on the number of topics spoken) then each pie/section is named with the topic and then numbered from 1 -10. 1 being very not particularly important and 10 being very important with this in place the wheel of life one pinpoints which area of one’s life is getting more attention or less, or which area should be focused on first or needs balancing out. This exercise can be followed up multiple times.

Once the client can see the bird’s eye point of view I usually follow up on the question is what is their goal and where they would like to start using the GROW Model (Goal, Reality, Options, and Will). An example is a client in which was a female single expat, with a particularly good job and was being promoted and at a fast pace within the company, yet she seemed anxious all the time, she slept well but woke up unrested and she felt bloated. Throughout the 6 sessions that we had, we covered that her goal was to start a family – when? she did not know and so the session progressed to the point in which she realized this topic was fueling her anxiety. She was not willing to put on hold her career or have the time to find and nourish a relationship, this had a domino effect in her life, the lack of rest and feeling bloated.

She reached a conclusion that her only option was to freeze her eggs to be able to continue within her career and in the future should she find a partner she could use these eggs and this would reduce her anxiety. She began her research and it was no walk in the park, but she was keeping control of her reproductive system and also was able to continue to work without feeling pressured or pushed on her age.

The research of freezing her eggs commenced, where this procedure was, the price and the location – talking about this alone reduced her anxiety and made her even happier and she began to sleep better, work-life improved and after a few weeks, my client followed through and had her eggs frozen.

Goal – to have children

Reality: did not have a partner, happy with work

Options: Freezing her eggs

Obstacle: did not want to compromise work or find time to nourish a relationship at the moment.

The way forward – researched and froze her eggs, anxiety was reduced, and eventually will find the time to nourish a relationship if she chose to.

To conclude, the Grow model and wheel of life were useful for the client to be able to reflect on themselves what they needed, how they wanted to attain this when they want to achieve this. To be able to listen to clients without being judgmental, not rush or put any pressure on them is challenging, however, the choices the client makes are theirs to make, and to be able to be on the same page with them, is a journey in itself.