T-GROW in Ember Console: adding the Topic box in front of Goal, Reality, Options and Will

The T-GROW coaching model is GROW with one stage in front of it: Topic. Two published coaching pages credit that variant to Myles Downey and his book Effective Coaching (personal-coaching-information.com, TPC Coaching Academy). In Ember Console, in closed beta, Topic becomes a box with a prompt and a test, and the test is the harder half to write.

What are the four steps of the GROW model, and what does T-GROW add?

Goal, Reality, Options and Will are the four. T-GROW sets Topic in front of them, and TPC Coaching Academy lists the result as five stages.

The GROW half is already written up: the questions sit in GROW coaching model questions as box prompts, and the fillable page in the GROW worksheet.

Each box gets a prompt and a test its filled-in text has to pass.

Box	Prompt	Test
Topic	Name the subject the client brought, in the client’s own words.	Names a single topic, and only one the client raised.
Goal	State what the client wants by the end of the work.	A goal, and not the topic restated.
Reality	Set down what the client said is true now.	Only what was said in session.
Options	List the routes the client named.	More than one, all of them the client’s.
Will	Record what the client committed to.	A commitment with an owner.

What are the criticisms of the GROW model?

The criticism the Topic box answers is that GROW starts at the goal, before anyone has said what the session is about. I read that off the variant, not off a survey of critics: T-GROW exists because somebody wanted the subject named first.

Without the test, the Topic box fills with three subjects at once, or with something the coach raised and the client never did.

Ember calls the prompt-and-test pair a box system. Fix a Topic box in the editor and the fix is meant to reach the next report. The landing’s third numbered item says: “Refine the report directly in Ember’s editor, and your next report will be created with those past edits and preferences already in mind.”

So write the test loosely, then tighten it over the first few write-ups, because a test only shows its gaps against real sessions. One r/lifecoaching poster asked how to run GROW with coachees aged 18 to 28; the test column is where one coach’s answer to that stops being improvised.

What is not stated yet?

Whether a GROW or T-GROW starter template ships, or whether a coach types every box in, the facts I have do not say.

They also do not say whether box order can be changed once a template is in use, and topic-first is exactly the case that needs it.

The box-system fact sheet is still blank on four questions: what a box is, how many a default template has, what a test checks, and what happens when a box fails one.

Until those are answered, the table above is a template you type yourself. Write the test column first, because the prompt is the half you can fix later in the editor.

Questions people ask next?

What is the GROW coaching model?

Goal, Reality, Options and Will: four questions asked in that order through a coaching session. The fillable version, one question per stage and a note on where the answers go afterwards, is in the GROW worksheet post.

Is the GROW model still relevant?

Coaches were still asking how to run it on r/lifecoaching, and the Niagara Institute still publishes a beginner’s guide built on it. Whether putting Topic first changes what a session produces is unknown. I have no trial that compares the two orders.