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CLEAR model (Hawkins)
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Contents
Peter Hawkins, Professor of Leadership at the Henley Business School, UK, developed the CLEAR model in the 1980s as a structure for coaching, which focuses not only on the...
Peter Hawkins’s CLEAR model structures a coaching conversation around Contracting, Listening, Exploring, Action and Review. Unlike frameworks that begin immediately with the coachee’s goal, CLEAR makes the working relationship and its boundaries explicit, then closes by examining the quality of the coaching process itself.
When to use it
- Use CLEAR to structure a one-to-one coaching session or an ongoing coaching relationship.
- Apply it where confidentiality, roles or stakeholder expectations require explicit contracting.
- Use it when a coach needs to protect enough listening and exploration before moving to advice or action.
Origins
Leadership and coaching scholar Peter Hawkins developed CLEAR in the early 1980s. The model was later described and refined in his work with Nick Smith on coaching, mentoring and organisational consultancy. Its systemic orientation treats coaching as a relationship embedded in a wider organisation, which explains the emphasis on contracting, stakeholders and review as well as the coachee’s immediate objective.
What it is
CLEAR is a five-stage arc.
- Contracting
- defines purpose and the way coach and coachee will work;
- Listening
- develops a rich understanding of present reality;
- Exploring
- examines meaning, patterns, impact and options;
- Action
- converts insight into a specific commitment; and
- Review
- evaluates the usefulness of the session and relationship. The sequence provides discipline without requiring a mechanical progression in every conversation.
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