Unstructured coaching conversations tend to drift: a promising opening question leads somewhere interesting, but the conversation ends without a clear sense of what was accomplished. Structure solves this without turning coaching into a rigid script, provided it's used as scaffolding rather than a substitute for genuine listening.
The GROW model, as a widely-used example
Goal: what the person actually wants from this conversation, made explicit rather than assumed. Skipping this is common and costly.
Reality: the current situation, explored honestly rather than through the comfortable version. This is where a coach's questions do real work.
Options: genuinely exploring possibilities, without the coach's own preferred solution silently steering the conversation.
Will (or Way Forward): converting the conversation into a genuine commitment, not just a pleasant discussion that ends without a next step.
Why structure helps even experienced coaches
Structure is useful for noticing, in the moment, when a conversation has drifted: recognising "we've spent fifteen minutes in Reality and haven't touched Options yet" is a form of real-time self-monitoring much harder to maintain without an explicit structure to check against.
Where structure becomes a problem
Rigidly following a structure regardless of what a conversation actually needs turns useful scaffolding into a script that fights against the conversation's genuine needs. The skill is holding the structure loosely.
The practical takeaway
A structure like GROW gives a coach a reliable way to keep conversations purposeful without relying purely on in-the-moment improvisation, useful for less experienced coaches building the habit, and still useful for experienced coaches as a periodic self-check.