Leveraging Decision-Making Frameworks to Grow Your Business

Learning to manage your team effectively is crucial to your success as a business owner. Successfully overseeing team operations helps ensure that your company provides outstanding service to your clients and happy clients often translate into business longevity. Learning how to manage your staff effectively may include implementing different practices, from establishing beneficial communication strategies to regularly checking in on your team to address problems or concerns before they become larger issues. Either way, becoming an excellent manager will allow you to retain your top talent whose work will lead to a bigger bottom line.

At Summit Virtual CFO, our management team does not shy away from reading literature that helps us grow professionally as leaders within our company. The information we consume and apply to our business practices includes the application of frameworks. The GROW framework, in particular, is one that we’ve learned about recently and are excited to use. It is designed to help managers and employees solve their most pressing challenges. In a podcast with Dan White, author of The Soft Skills Book, we discussed this framework and how it can support the growth of your business below.

The “GROW” Framework

According to Dan, GROW is an acronym for goal, reality, options, and will do. Each term in the acronym points to questions a manager can ask their team members, guiding them from whatever challenge they’re experiencing to a solution.

• Goal - What are you trying to achieve?

Most people’s goals are vague and not fully formed. This part of the framework helps clarify what the team member is trying to achieve. By helping them to identify their goal, you’re putting your employee on a path toward finding their solution. Having the staffer clearly articulate what they want to achieve will help them get a definitive understanding of their goal.

• Reality - What is the current reality?

Once they have stated their goal, ask them to articulate their current situation. This step involves the person naming where they currently are in relation to where they need to be to achieve their goal. Identifying their proximity to their goal will get them thinking about what they need to do to get there.

• Options - What can you do?

After the person has a clear understanding of their current situation, have them identify what steps they can take to achieve their goal. We encourage you to have them name these options out loud so they can talk through the pros and cons of each one and get your feedback on the choices they list.

• Will do - What will you do?

Asking this question will guide the employee into selecting an option they believe will help them achieve their goal. This process may include having them narrow their list of options down to one, two, or a few with a clear idea of what they need to do to move forward. For example, the team member may have two options in mind but state that they have to talk to a peer who will play a role in one of those options to see what’s feasible. Either way, you’ve gotten them to a place where they have potential solutions to the challenge preventing them from accomplishing their now well-defined goal.

Using the GROW framework will help you better support your team members who are experiencing a challenge and searching for a solution. This support will help you build a stronger relationship with your team and ultimately bolster employee retention. Retaining your top talent gives you an even better chance at successfully growing your company and achieving your financial goals.

If you'd like to learn about other strategies we use to help our clients grow their businesses, schedule a free virtual CFO consultation today.