CLEAR COACHING MODEL: BUILDING STRONGER COACHING RELATIONSHIPS
T-GROW provides a clear and effective structure for coaching conversations, moving from Topic through Goal, Reality, Options and Will. The CLEAR model follows this same essential journey, placing more emphasis on the relationship, the coaching agreement and continuity between sessions.
This guide sets out the five stages of CLEAR, where it adds value beyond T-GROW, and how the two work together, as part of TPC Coaching Academy's wider guide to coaching models and frameworks.
What CLEAR adds to a coaching relationship
Peter Hawkins developed CLEAR in the early 1980s, ahead of GROW, with a deliberate emphasis on the quality of the coaching relationship and the clarity of the agreement surrounding it.1 Its five stages, Contract, Listen, Explore, Action and Review, follow the same broad arc as T-GROW, but sit at the level of the whole engagement rather than a single conversation.
CLEAR earns its place when trust, stakeholder expectations, and continuity across many sessions matter as much as what happens inside any one of them.
The five stages of CLEAR
Contract supports T-GROW's Topic and Goal stages by settling purpose before either is defined. Listen deepens Reality. Explore develops insight and opens Options. Action and Review sit closest to Will, with Review adding a continuity T-GROW does not build in on its own.
CLEAR in practice
An executive begins a six-month coaching programme after feedback about their impact on the senior team. Contract establishes what stays confidential, how the organisation will see progress, and where ownership for change sits. Listen surfaces a pattern the executive had not named, a habit of entering senior meetings ready to defend their position rather than to hear the room. Explore helps recognise the effect this has on the colleagues they most wants to influence.
Action moves this into a specific commitment: preparing three open questions before the next leadership meeting and inviting other views before offering their own. Review, at the following session, looks at how colleagues responded, what they noticed about themself in the room, and what this means for the next Topic and Goal inside the T-GROW structure of the session itself.
When CLEAR adds the most value
CLEAR suits longer coaching programmes, new coaching relationships, and organisational assignments with several stakeholders in view. It works well wherever leadership identity, values, and organisational dynamics are part of the brief, and wherever clarity about roles and confidentiality builds the trust the rest of the work depends on.
TPC Coaching Academy's Coach Practitioner programme develops contracting and relationship skills alongside T-GROW and the wider model set, working toward ICF and EMCC accreditation.