Originally published 22 March 2016. Fully revised August 2026.
What changed. We added a gate at the front, because the most common coaching mistake is not asking bad questions. It is coaching a problem that was never a coaching problem. We have also been straighter about the evidence behind 70:20:10, credited the sources properly, and added a version of GROW that fits in the five minutes you actually have.
Looking to hold the performance conversation rather than the coaching one? Start with Holding Performance Conversations: It's Not Personal, Business is a Team Sport. This article is about growing people who want to grow. That one is about what you do when they do not.
Someone on your team is not delivering. Crossed arms, short answers, paperwork sitting untouched.
You have read enough leadership material to know what to do next. Ask good questions. Do not tell them the answer. Get curious.
Wait.
Three completely different problems produce that exact behaviour, and only one of them is a coaching problem. Coach the other two and you will make both of them worse. So before any of the good questions, there is a gate.
First, the gate. What is actually going on?
Three problems turn up in your week and from the outside they look identical. They are not the same problem, and they do not take the same conversation.
Can't do it yet. A capability gap. They have never been shown, or they were shown once, badly, by someone already halfway out the door. This is your coaching conversation. Everything below applies.
Won't do it. A will and behaviour gap. They know how. They have decided not to. Coach this one and your questions land as negotiation, because you are inviting someone to explore options when the standard was never optional. This is a performance conversation. Name the behaviour, name the impact, restate the standard. If the whole team has started working around it, you may be dealing with a porcupine.
Can't right now. Running on empty. This is the one that catches good leaders out, because it usually turns up in your strongest performer. Capability and will are both intact, there is just nothing left to run them on.
Sometimes what drained the tank is outside work. Sometimes it is not. Ask a second question before you assume: has this person spent two months, or two years, pushing initiative at a wall and watching nothing move? Culture drains people just as thoroughly as anything happening at home, and it does it quietly, because nobody files a complaint about a good idea that went nowhere. A person who has stopped bringing you their best thinking has usually learned that bringing it costs more than it returns.
Do not set goals on an empty tank. Check the load, and check the wall. If it is the load, adjust it, then point them to your EAP or a qualified coach. If it is the wall, that is not their development problem to solve. It is yours.
The split between capability and will is not new. Hersey and Blanchard built Situational Leadership on it in the 1970s. The third gate is the one most models leave out, and it is the one your people need you to see.
Get the gate right and everything below does its job. Get it wrong and the best questions in the world make things worse.
70:20:10, held loosely
You have heard the numbers. Roughly 70 per cent of development happens on the job, 20 per cent through other people, 10 per cent through structured learning.
Worth knowing where they came from. Lombardo and Eichinger (1996) published them in The Career Architect Development Planner, drawing on work associated with the Center for Creative Leadership. The figures came from a survey of around two hundred executives, asked to recall how they believed they had learned. That is a self-report from a small sample, not a research finding, and it has been challenged fairly hard since.
So do not defend the ratio. Keep the point, which is solid. Most of the growth happens in the work, not in the training room. Which means your week is already stacked with opportunities you are walking past. The job that went sideways. The handover that got missed. The team briefing that fell flat.
Action + Learning = Change
1. Dance in this moment. The phrase is one of the four cornerstones of the Co-Active coaching model, and it says most of what needs saying. Follow the conversation rather than your agenda. Listen to tone and pace and what they steer around, not just the words. If you are rehearsing your next question while they are still talking, you are not coaching. You are waiting.
2. Ask, do not tell. Great coaches ask. They see themselves as the catalyst for someone else's self-awareness, not the source of the answer. When you are demonstrating or training, the spotlight is yours. When you are coaching, it is not. For a person to change, they have to want to. Nobody has ever been questioned into wanting something, but plenty of people have been questioned into realising they already did.
3. Agree the game plan together. Your job is not to hand over answers. It is to help them explore options they can actually implement, then get out of the way. Use your knowledge to guide and shape. Leave ownership where it belongs. Once there is a plan, give them what they need to run it, and agree how often you will touch base. Write it SMART, and tell them plainly that you are on the sideline and you want them to win.
4. Be proactive and positive. The journey changes shape as it goes. Once they are moving, your role shifts from question-asker to obstacle-remover. New work throws up variables nobody predicted. That is when you step back in, not to take over, but to help them see what information is missing and what is actually within their control. Acknowledge the frustration, then aim them at the gap.
5. Build accountability. Both sides deliver. If you committed to a Thursday check-in, be there Thursday. Nothing kills a coaching relationship faster than a leader asking for commitments they do not match.
Using GROW as the framework
GROW emerged in the UK in the 1980s from the work of Graham Alexander, Alan Fine and Sir John Whitmore, and it is still the cleanest structure going for a development conversation.
G. Goal. What do you want? Be specific about the behaviour that changes. "Better at handovers" is not a goal. "Runs the full handover unsupervised by the end of October" is.
R. Current Reality. What is happening now? You cannot solve a problem you have not properly explored. Ask what they have already tried. Ask what is genuinely in the way. Then wait. This is the stage most leaders rush, and it is the stage that does the work.
O. Options. What could you do? Go wide before you narrow. "Give me five options" is the single most useful sentence in coaching, because option one is always the obvious one and option four is usually the good one.
W. Will. What will you do? Nail the action, the date and the support. Then borrow the confidence ruler from motivational interviewing. On a scale of one to ten, how committed are you? Whatever number comes back, ask what would make it one higher. That answer is the real conversation.
The bit everyone skips.
Whitmore was blunt about this. GROW is a sequence, not a method. Run it without awareness and responsibility underneath and you have a tidy list of questions and no change. The structure is the easy part. Believing the person in front of you is capable of finding their own answer is the hard part.
GROW in five minutes
Nobody on a shift roster is booking a meeting room for a coaching session. So compress it. This works walking back from the floor.
- "What are you trying to get sorted?" (G)
- "What have you tried so far?" (R)
- "What else could you do?" (O)
- "What will you do before you finish tomorrow?" (W)
Four questions. Ninety seconds. Do that twice a week with each of your people and you will outperform any development plan sitting in a drawer.
Where coaching stops
One honest limitation, because it matters. Coaching is not counselling. If the conversation moves into grief, health, money, or what is happening at home, you have crossed a line that goodwill will not cover. You are not qualified there, and trying to be helps nobody.
You do not have to fix it. You have to notice it, say something human, adjust what you reasonably can, and point them to your EAP or a qualified professional. That is the leadership response. It is not a cop-out.
So, back to the person with the crossed arms
Before you ask them a single good question, run the gate. Can't, won't, or can't right now. Ten seconds, and it decides which of three conversations you are about to have.
Then ask more than you tell, agree the plan, and honour your half of it.
The growth and development of your people is the highest calling of leadership. Getting the gate right is what makes the rest of it work.
Lead well.
TEAM ENGAGEMENT SOLUTIONS
Most leaders can run the meeting. Fewer can run the conversation.
If your leaders are technically brilliant and conversationally stuck, that is a skill gap and it is fixable. Every solution is built around the team it is for, and people leave able to hold the conversation, not just describe it.
Enquire Now opens an email with a few questions already in it. If nothing happens when you click, your device has no mail app set up. Use See all solutions instead.
Keep reading
- Holding Performance Conversations. When the gate says won't rather than can't.
- Why do we tolerate porcupines in the workplace? When the behaviour has become the standard everyone works around.
- Coach, Mentor, or Personal Board of Directors? The same diagnosis, applied to your own development rather than your team's.
- The Value of Time. Why the ten minutes this takes is the highest yield thing on your calendar.
References
Doran, G.T. (1981) 'There's a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management's goals and objectives', Management Review, 70(11), pp. 35-36. Origin of the acronym. Doran's original wording was specific, measurable, assignable, realistic and time-related; the version in common use today has evolved.
Kimsey-House, H., Kimsey-House, K., Sandhal, P. and Whitworth, L. (2018) Co-Active Coaching: The Proven Framework for Transformative Conversations at Work and in Life. 4th edn. London: Nicholas Brealey. Source of the Dance in This Moment cornerstone.
Lombardo, M.M. and Eichinger, R.W. (1996) The Career Architect Development Planner. Minneapolis: Lominger. Source of the 70:20:10 figures, developed with Morgan McCall from work associated with the Center for Creative Leadership.
Whitmore, J. and Performance Consultants International (2017) Coaching for Performance: The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership. 5th edn. London: Nicholas Brealey. Source of the GROW model, developed by Whitmore with Graham Alexander and Alan Fine, and of the awareness and responsibility caveat.
Also drawn on. Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Leadership, for the split between ability and willingness. Miller and Rollnick's Motivational Interviewing, for the confidence ruler. Both are used for their substance rather than quoted, and neither edition has been verified against a copy.
Cite this article
Satterthwaite, M-J. (2016) 'The Keys to Holding Great Coaching Conversations', Scope Blog, 22 March. Revised August 2026. Available at: https://scopevision.com.au/blog/performanceconversations (Accessed: [insert date]).
In text: (Satterthwaite, 2016).
The gate takes ten seconds to run.
So does this.
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