(From Clear Leadership by Gervase Bushe)
The experience cube can be a helpful tool to plan and manage your difficult conversations. Using the four elements of the experience cube: Observations, Thoughts, Feelings and Wants helps you to separate your experience with the situation from your potential judgements about the situation. This approach removes blame and minimizes defensiveness, facilitating a positive discussion.
Observations: Sensory data (information you take in through your senses), primarily what you see and hear. What a video camera would record.
Thoughts: The meaning you add to your observations (i.e., the way you make sense of them, including your beliefs, expectations, assumptions, judgments, values and principles). We call this the “story you make up”.
Feelings: Your emotional or physiological response to the thoughts and observations. Feelings words such as sad, mad, glad, scared, or a description of what is happening in your body.
Wants: Clear description of the outcome you seek. Wants go deeper than a simple request for action. Once you clearly state what you want, there may be different ways to achieve it.
Walking the cube does not need to be a linear process, you can start anywhere in the Cube and intersperse questions and check-in points. Ensure that you own your story find your own words. Use “I” statements:
- I observe: “I’ve noticed…”, “I saw that…”, “I heard you say…”
- I think: “I believe that was…”, “I think it is…”, “My story is…”
- I feel: “I’m really pleased….”, “It concerned me when….”, “I appreciate your commitment to….”, “It troubled me ….”
- I want: “I want to…”; “I need…”; “I wish…”, “I hope…”
Here’s an example:
“The bulk of my work so far is in the tissue culture room and my desk is not in the main lab. I don’t like being isolated from the rest of the lab and I believe this isolation is contributing to making the right progress with the project. I want to know that my project is heading in the right direction and to feel like I’m part of a team. What can we change?”