Embrace Curiosity!

Whitmore's GROW model drives coaching toward goals and action, and for good reason. But Bernhard Kerres argues it leaves out something essential: curiosity, which recent research links as closely to the human drive as hunger. Sometimes the sharper question is not "what will you do?" but "what will you explore?" First published in Coach Magazine Global, Issue 6, 2024.

Published 2024-01-01 by Bernhard Kerres

Toward the end of a coaching session, I ask my clients what they are taking away from our conversation. That usually turns the rest of the session toward a concrete action plan. I round it off by asking how committed they are on a scale from one to ten, then what they would need to move that number two points higher. Coaching, after all, is about looking forward, taking responsibility, and putting the first steps in place.

This follows Whitmore's well-known GROW model: Goal (what do you want?), Reality (where are you now?), Options (what could you do?), and Will (what will you do?). It is a sound model, anchored in the belief that people want to and can develop and change. I agree with that.

What GROW leaves out

And yet something about it has started to feel incomplete to me. Write this at the start of a new year, when social media fills with resolutions and action plans, and the gap becomes obvious. GROW is relentlessly forward-driving. It misses one of the most human features we have: curiosity.

Recent neurological research has linked curiosity closely to hunger (Lau et al., 2020). You could call it being hungry to learn and explore. And like creativity, curiosity needs space and time. It does not like boundaries; it enjoys going past them. It grows precisely when the path and the outcome are still unclear. We are far more interested in what sits behind a closed door than an open one. Show us a straight road for hundreds of miles and we lose interest. Put a bend in it and exploring becomes fascinating again.

From "what will you do?" to "what will you explore?"

Here is the tension. As coaches, we can limit a client's natural curiosity by driving too fast toward concrete actions. Instead of asking only "what will you do?", we might ask "what will you explore?" or "what are you curious about?"

The two questions lead to different places. Curiosity is not aimed at a goal; it takes in the world around it. When clients uncover connections and patterns rather than rushing to the next to-do list, the actions that follow tend to be more meaningful and more emotionally anchored. And the relationship shifts: less coach directing client, more a shared learning journey between equals.

I love being surprised by clients who arrive at approaches I would never have thought of. That surprise is often curiosity's reward.

The full article sets out both stages of Whitmore's "Will" step, the accountability and the learning, and makes the case for when to hold back on the action plan and let curiosity lead instead.