Google’s GROW model sharpens manager coaching in one-on-ones

Why GROW matters in a fast-moving SaaS company

The fastest way to weaken a one-on-one is for the manager to arrive with a fix before the employee has finished explaining the problem. Google’s coaching guidance pushes against that instinct, and it is a good fit for monday.com managers who are leading product, engineering, and sales teams that need judgment, not just direction.

Google’s re:Work guidance says effective coaching starts with regular one-on-ones where the manager is fully present, uses active listening, asks open-ended questions, and gives specific, timely feedback. The company also says higher-scoring managers are more likely to hold frequent 1:1 meetings, in part because those conversations help identify issues early and create a forum for feedback and guidance. The underlying mindset shift is simple but easy to miss in a busy company: listen to learn, not listen to fix.

That distinction matters at monday.com because the work is cross-functional and the pressure is real. The company says it serves more than 225,000 customers and runs as a multi-product work platform across product, sales, marketing, IT, HR, and operations. It also went public on Nasdaq on June 10, 2021, which adds another layer of discipline to how managers lead. In that kind of environment, a manager who talks too much can accidentally train a team to wait for answers instead of building ownership.

What the GROW model actually gives you

GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options, and Will. Google describes it as a four-step conversation that helps the employee define a goal, examine the current reality, explore options, and decide on a course of action. The appeal is that it creates structure without turning the meeting into a script.

The model is especially useful when a team member brings the manager a messy situation rather than a clean request. A product manager may be stuck between competing stakeholder demands. An engineer may be blocked on a technical decision. A sales rep may be unsure how to approach a difficult customer or territory shift. GROW keeps the manager from rushing to a solution and instead pushes both people toward clearer thinking.

Harvard Business Review has argued that managers can’t be expected to have all the answers and that command-and-control leadership is no longer viable. That is exactly where GROW earns its keep. It gives managers a way to coach without pretending they know more than the person closest to the problem.

Start with the goal, not the rescue plan

The first move in a GROW conversation is to clarify the goal. That sounds obvious, but in real one-on-ones the stated problem is often not the actual goal. A rep may say they want help with a stalled deal, when the real issue is deciding whether to rework the account plan or cut losses. An engineer may say they are behind on delivery, when the deeper goal is to regain focus after too many interrupting requests.

A good manager asks open-ended questions that make the employee name the outcome in concrete terms. What does success look like by next week, next sprint, or next quarter? What needs to be true for this to feel resolved? In a monday.com context, this helps managers connect day-to-day execution with ownership, rather than reducing the conversation to task updates.

Reality is where coaching gets honest

Once the goal is clear, the conversation moves to reality. This is the part where many managers get tempted to jump in with advice, but Google’s guidance is to stay present and listen carefully. The point is to understand what is actually happening, not what should be happening.

Reality questions can expose the gap between a plan and the facts on the ground. What has already been tried? Where is the friction coming from? What data, feedback, or customer response is changing the picture? For a product leader, the reality might be that a feature launch is delayed by dependencies outside the team. For a sales manager, it might be that a territory is not underperforming because of effort, but because the team is leading with the wrong value proposition.

That is why Google emphasizes specific and timely feedback. Vague praise or vague criticism does not help the employee build better judgment. Clear feedback tied to a real situation does.

Options is where ownership starts to grow

The options stage is where the manager has to resist becoming the smartest voice in the room. Google’s coaching guidance and the broader management case for coaching both point to the same idea: the manager’s job is to help the employee think more clearly, not to solve the problem for them. In a company like monday.com, that is especially useful in product and engineering, where the best answer often comes from weighing tradeoffs instead of obeying a single directive.

Good option-building is collaborative and practical. What else could work? What would happen if the team tried a smaller release, a different customer sequence, or a narrower scope? Which option creates the fastest learning loop? The employee should leave this stage with more than one viable path, because the real goal is judgment, not compliance.

This is also where the model helps sales managers. A rep who is wrestling with objections or pipeline strategy does not just need encouragement. They need space to compare approaches, test assumptions, and decide which next move has the best odds. GROW makes that possible without turning the manager into a deal-closer by proxy.

Will turns the conversation into a commitment

The final step is Will, sometimes framed as what the employee will do next. This is where the conversation stops being reflective and becomes operational. The employee chooses a course of action, names the next step, and ideally leaves with a deadline or follow-up point attached.

At monday.com, that matters because the company’s culture and product environment reward ownership. A good one-on-one should end with a decision that the employee can carry forward, not with the manager promising to think about it later. If the goal was to improve a launch plan, the employee should leave knowing what will change before the next milestone. If the goal was to improve a customer conversation, the next call should already be mapped.

This is also where frequent one-on-ones pay off. Google says strong managers use them to catch issues early and keep feedback flowing. GROW works best inside that cadence, not as a one-off intervention.

Why an older framework still works

The GROW model is not a fad. Mindtools says it was developed in the 1980s by Sir John Whitmore, Alan Fine, and Graham Alexander, and it has lasted because it can be used for coaching, mentoring, and self-coaching. That longevity matters in a company like monday.com, where managers need tools that scale across teams and do not collapse under the pace of a software business.

The real strength of GROW is that it gives monday.com managers a way to coach with discipline instead of improvising every conversation. In a public company with more than 225,000 customers, the managers who can ask better questions, listen longer, and hand back ownership will do more than improve one-on-ones. They will build teams that think for themselves.