My three interesting things this month…
1. The coaching questions that create real progress
A lot of finance leaders know the GROW model. It’s one of the most common coaching frameworks, and for good reason.
It can be used in both development and problem-solving conversations, where someone is stuck and needs help thinking through the way forward.
The model has four stages:
- Goal: What do you want to achieve?
- Reality: What’s happening now?
- Options: What could you do?
- Will (or Way Forward): What will you commit to doing?
That structure is helpful, but the real value of GROW isn’t just moving through the four steps. The quality of the conversation depends on the questions you ask.
Here are three I find especially useful.
1) Why is that important to you?
This question comes in the Goal stage.
People often start with what they want to do, rather than why it matters. They might want to speak up more in meetings, build a stronger stakeholder relationship, take on a bigger project or become more strategic.
All useful goals. But the motivation underneath is often where the real coaching starts.
Asking, “Why is that important to you?” helps you understand what’s really driving the person.
Do they feel weak in that area? Are they preparing for promotion? Are they frustrated they’re not having enough impact?
Recently I had a client whose goal was to make the step up to CFO. When I asked, “Why is becoming a CFO important to you?”, they paused for 20 seconds, and eventually said: “It isn’t! It’s important to everyone else around me, telling me I should do it.”
Once you understand the reason behind the goal, the rest of the conversation becomes much more useful. You’ll also uncover what the real motivation is, and if there is real motivation!
2) What else?
This comes in the Options stage.
Once someone has one sensible option, it’s easy to move on. But stopping at the first option can keep the thinking too narrow.
Asking “What else could you do?” encourages the other person to go beyond the obvious answer. It helps them explore different routes, test their assumptions and build their own judgement before you step in with advice.
Keep asking until there’s a real pause, even if the silence feels awkward. People usually ask this 2-3 fewer than they should – it’s hard! But it’s where the lightbulb moments happen.
3) How will I know you’ve been successful?
This question comes in the Will stage, when the person is deciding what they’ll actually do next.
Coaching conversations can lose momentum if there is no real accountability. For example: “I’ll be more proactive”, “I’ll work on my communication”, or “I’ll take more ownership”.
Asking “How will I know you’ve been successful?” turns the statement into commitment through accountability.
The magic is now in the successful part – it’s in “How will I know”
For example, “I’ll take more ownership” might become, “I will email you when I make the next 3 decisions on this project”. This gives clear accountability and maximises the chances of progress.
Good coaching builds ownership
GROW works because it helps people slow down, think clearly and take ownership. But the model only really comes alive when the questions are strong enough to make someone think.
So next time you’re coaching someone in your team, don’t just move through the acronym. Ask why the goal matters, ask what else they could do, and ask how you’ll both know they’ve been successful.
2. A simple structure for difficult feedback
When someone moves from team member to team leader, the hardest adjustment isn’t usually the day-to-day delivery. It’s the people skills required to lead a high-performing finance team.
More specifically, it’s the ability to have difficult conversations.
Finance professionals are often promoted because of their technical expertise, but that doesn’t always come with much formal training on how to give feedback, challenge performance or hold people to a higher standard.
Why feedback can feel so difficult
Very few people enjoy walking into a conversation that might create tension. A lot of the concern comes down to how the other person might react and how the relationship will feel afterwards.
This can be especially challenging in finance, where we’re often more comfortable challenging a number, a forecast or an assumption than naming a behaviour or performance gap clearly.
When someone feels criticised or under threat, the brain can quickly move into a defensive state. You might have heard this described as a fight-or-flight response. Research shows that IQ can drop by 20+ points in this “red zone”, which makes it much harder to process feedback calmly.
This is why the way feedback is framed matters so much. The aim is to reduce unnecessary defensiveness, so the other person has the best chance of actually hearing it and doing something useful with it.
Start by lowering the defensiveness
If you know the feedback might be difficult to hear, it can help to frame the conversation before you get into the details.
For example: “I want to talk about something that might be difficult to hear. I’m raising it because I believe you can do this well, and I want to help you get there.”
That kind of opening makes your intention clear. You’re trying to help them improve, not catch them out or prove a point.
A simple structure for better feedback
The best way to reduce defensiveness is to make feedback specific, factual and clearly linked to the standard expected. Here’s a four part structure I like:
1. Start with the observation
Begin with what you actually noticed. Keep it factual and specific.
Instead of saying, “You weren’t prepared,” you might say, “In yesterday’s forecast review, the revenue bridge didn’t tie back to the latest plan, and we had to pause the discussion to rebuild the numbers.”
That difference ties the conversation to something tangible.
2. Explain the impact
Next, explain why it matters. This helps the person understand the consequences, rather than feeling like they’re being criticised for the sake of it.
For example: “The impact was that the commercial team lost confidence in the numbers, and we didn’t get to the pricing decision we needed from the meeting.”
By connecting the feedback to the work, the stakeholder and the business outcome, it stops the conversation feeling like a personal criticism or a matter of preference.
3. Invite their perspective
Before jumping into advice, ask for their view. For example: “What’s your perspective on what happened?”
This helps feedback feel more like a conversation than a telling off. It gives the other person a chance to respond, explain what they saw and share any context you may not have.
By asking the right questions, you might reveal something bigger around capability, confidence, workload or clarity, which gives you a much better starting point for what needs to change.
Either way, you’ll learn more by asking than by assuming.
4. Reset the standard
Finally, be clear about expectations going forward.
For example: “What we need in future is a forecast pack that has been fully reconciled before the meeting, with any risks flagged in advance so we can focus the discussion on decisions rather than corrections.”
In finance we often miss this part.. We explain the problem, but don’t always define what good needs to look like next time.
Strong feedback should leave the other person knowing what happened, why it mattered, what they need to do differently and what standard they are working towards.
Avoiding feedback might feel kind in the short term, but clear and thoughtful feedback is what helps people grow.
3. Performance reviews and the problem with a 7/10
Finance leaders are used to reviewing performance. We look at revenue, margin, forecast accuracy, cost, cash, working capital and dozens of other measures. But when it comes to people performance, that same level of clarity can disappear.
Annual reviews can drift into the vague middle of “good enough”. If someone isn’t causing concern, but also not obviously exceptional, phrases like “meets expectations” or “performs well in role” can become the default.
They might even be accurate. But they can still hide the more useful question: what level are they actually operating at?
The problem with “good enough”
If you haven’t had the time or visibility to assess someone’s performance properly, “good enough” can seem like a safe answer.
But it’s not a harmless one.
For leaders, it doesn’t give you a clear view of how your team is performing. This makes it harder to decide who is ready to progress, who can lead the next project and who needs more support.
For high-performing team members, “good enough” colleagues can hold them back if they are left picking up the gaps.
And for the people being rated this way, it doesn’t give them a clear picture of what needs to improve.
The issue for the team is opportunity cost: in a world of increasingly finite resource and more demand on productivity – underperforming team members hold everyone else back.
The “no 7s” rule
If you ask a leader to rate someone out of 10, 7 is often the safest answer. It sounds positive enough to avoid concern, but not so strong that it requires much explanation.
The problem is that 7 can become a hiding place.
So take it away.
Are they closer to a 6 or an 8? Are they performing strongly enough that you would actively want more people like them in the team? Or is there a meaningful gap that needs to be addressed?
Another useful question is: Would you be genuinely excited to rehire this person tomorrow, knowing what you know now?
That one question cuts through a lot of noise. Not whether they’re a nice person, whether they have been in the team a long time, or whether it would be awkward if they left. But whether, for this role and this level, you would actively choose them again.
Clarity helps everyone
Being clear about performance isn’t about being harsh, it’s about being fair.
It helps the business understand capability and risk, helps individuals know where they stand, and helps you make better decisions about development, stretch, support and standards.
You don’t need to turn people into numbers on a spreadsheet, but you do need to be honest about what you’re seeing.
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