CLEAR model (Hawkins)

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.

How to use it

• Contract. Agree what the coaching is for, what success would look like, who the relevant stakeholders are and how coach and coachee will work together. Clarify frequency, duration, roles, confidentiality and its limits, record-keeping and how a sponsor may be involved. The contract can be conversational, but it must be explicit and revisited when the purpose changes.
• Listen. Give sustained attention to the coachee’s account and intended focus. Check understanding, summarise, notice emotion and contradiction, and attend to what is absent as well as spoken. Ask questions that deepen the coachee’s own awareness rather than demonstrating the coach’s expertise.
• Explore. Examine how the situation affects the coachee, what patterns and assumptions maintain it and how other people or systems contribute. Then generate possible responses and consequences. Stay here long enough to understand the issue beneath its first description; premature action often solves the wrong problem.
• Act. Select a next step from the options explored. Specify what the coachee will do, by when and how progress will be recognised. Identify barriers, support, stakeholders and any experiment needed to reduce uncertainty. The action belongs to the coachee, even when the coach helps sharpen it.
• Review. Ask what was useful, what was missed and how the coaching could improve. Distinguish this process review from later evaluation of progress on the underlying issue. End by restating commitments and deciding what should carry into the next session.

Final analysis.

CLEAR offers a complete structure for the coaching relationship as well as the individual session. Its explicit Contract stage is a valuable complement to the more action-oriented GROW model, especially where the coaching is sponsored by an organisation or confidentiality could be misunderstood.

The acronym should not dominate the interaction. Skilled coaching may loop from exploration back to listening or reopen the contract when a new issue emerges. The test is whether the stages improve insight, agency and responsible action.

Top practical tip

Contract at two levels: agree the purpose and boundaries of the relationship, then recontract briefly at the start of each session around the outcome that matters today.

Top pitfall

Do not rush from listening to action. Advice offered before the issue and its impact have been explored can solve the coach’s version of the problem rather than the coachee’s.

Further reading

Hawkins, P. and Smith, N. (2013) Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy: Supervision, skills and development. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.