Beyond the GROW Model: Why Transformational Leadership Requires Depth

Every week, I meet successful CEOs who've tried executive coaching. They've set goals, measured progress, and ticked boxes. Yet something fundamental remains unchanged.

They're still making the same decisions. Still caught in the same conflicts. Still wondering why, despite all their effort and achievement, something essential feels missing.

The problem isn't their commitment or capability. The problem is that most coaching operates at the wrong level.

The Limits of Surface-Level Coaching

The GROW model has become the default framework for executive coaching: Goals, Reality, Options, Way forward. It's clean, logical, and reassuringly simple.

It's also fundamentally incomplete.

When we only work at the level of conscious goals and visible behaviours, we miss the forces that actually drive leadership: the unconscious patterns formed decades ago, the unexamined values we inherited rather than chose, the relationship dynamics we can't see because we're inside them.

I know this because I've lived on both sides of it.

From the Boardroom to the Depths

During my 30 years in business—from FTSE  boardrooms to raising over £500 million across 13 management buy-ins—I achieved what looked like success. But I also noticed something troubling: the same patterns repeated across different organisations. Talented leaders making predictable mistakes. Brilliant strategies undermined by invisible relationship dynamics. Cultures that resisted change for reasons no one could articulate.

The conventional tools weren't reaching the real issues.

This realisation led me to leave the executive world 15 years ago to train as a psychotherapist. Not because business didn't matter, but because I wanted to understand what actually creates sustainable transformation.

What Really Drives Leadership

Through working with over 100 CEOs since then—and completing my doctorate in the phenomenology of relationships—I've discovered that transformational coaching must work at multiple levels simultaneously:

The Conscious Level: Yes, we work on goals and strategies. But these emerge from deeper understanding, not arbitrary targets.

The Unconscious Level: We explore the patterns formed in your early years that still shape how you lead, how you handle conflict, what you avoid, and what you compulsively repeat.

The Relational Level: We examine the critical relationships in your organisation—not as abstract "stakeholder management" but as living systems that create your culture and determine your success.

The Values Level: We distinguish between the values you think you should have and the ones that genuinely drive you. This distinction changes everything.

The Vision Level: We articulate what will actually fulfil you—not what impresses others or follows conventional definitions of success, but what makes your life meaningful.

Relationships Create Culture. Culture Creates Success.

This isn't abstract theory. Through my research and practice, I've developed frameworks that make these invisible dynamics visible:

The Relationship Paradigm maps the six essential dimensions that determine whether relationships in organisations thrive or fracture: Communication, Connection, Commitment, Fun, Growth, and Trust.

When you can see these patterns clearly—in your leadership team, your board relationships, your partnership dynamics—you can finally change them.

The Real Question

Most coaching asks: "How can you achieve your goals more efficiently?"

Transformational coaching asks: "Who are you becoming, and is that who you want to be?"

The first question optimises the path you're on. The second question examines whether it's the right path at all.

After three decades in business and 15 years working therapeutically with leaders, I've learned this: the CEOs who create genuinely sustainable success—in their organisations and their lives—are the ones willing to look deeper. To question not just their strategies but their assumptions. To examine not just their goals but their unconscious patterns. To transform not just their operations but their relationships.

This work isn't comfortable. It requires honesty, curiosity, and patience. It means acknowledging that some of your most persistent challenges aren't "out there" in the market or the organisation—they're in patterns you're unconsciously perpetuating.

But for those ready to do this work, the transformation is profound. Because when you truly understand yourself, your values, your patterns, and your relationships, everything changes. Your leadership becomes authentic rather than performative. Your decisions align with your actual values. Your culture reflects intention rather than accident.

What Comes Next?

If you're leading an organisation and sensing that conventional coaching isn't enough—that the real barriers to your success lie deeper than quarterly targets or operational efficiency—perhaps it's time for a different conversation.

Not about what you should achieve next, but about who you're becoming and whether that aligns with the life you actually want to live.

Because ultimately, your leadership isn't separate from who you are. And who you are isn't separate from the relationships and patterns that have shaped you.

The question is: are you ready to understand all of it?

Dr Neil Wilkie works with CEOs and senior leaders through Relationships in Business, combining 30 years of executive experience with psychotherapeutic training and doctoral research in relationships. His approach integrates business acumen with psychological depth to create transformation that extends beyond metrics.