This “Experience Cube” technique can help you start strengthening your weak muscles — without even really trying
All leaders — every last freaking one of them — have strengths and weaknesses. Effective leaders and teammates aren’t good at everything; they don’t pretend to be the Übermensch. They just develop good self-awareness about what their strengths and weaknesses are, and then commit to strengthening their weak muscles over time.
Doing that is often uncomfortable. It always kinda sucks at first. Stretching a new muscle often feels awkward or embarrassing. That’s why the best first step in the process is often just to get better at noting and getting curious; don’t “try” to strengthen the new muscle just yet — whether it’s getting better at giving clear feedback to teammates, not shying away from conflict, avoiding getting pulled into micro-management or distraction, or whatever particular skill you’re working on. Just start by creating a mental inventory or “thought record” of what happening for you when you put that muscle into a stretch position.
The “Experience Cube” technique, developed by Gervase Bushe, can help you do this well. When you find yourself in that stretch zone — “Hey, I’m getting sucked into saying yes to something that I don’t want to do again” or: “Hey, I’m avoiding having a difficult conversation with this person again” — try to slow down and just untangle that experience for yourself. What’s coming up? What thoughts or words or voices are bubbling up in your head? What body sensations or emotions do you notice? What do you secretly want, or wish could happen in that moment?
Experience Cube can help you get better at noting and exploring these moments. If you’re a born self-critic, like me, it can also help you avoid the rush to judgment (“why do I suck at this so bad?!!!”) and instead get curious about what’s going on, and just note what’s happening in your senses, brain and body. This is often a surprisingly helpful first step towards growth; just getting better at noting what’s going on when you’re in your stretch zone. And if you’re working with a coach, it will also help you give them much more useful and specific information.
As Bushe puts it: “To get clear, you need to be able to tell the difference between what you think, feel, want, and observe…. People who can’t tell the difference between what they observe and what they think cannot learn from experience. Instead, they get lost in their own interpretations and judgments, seeing what they expect to see and missing what is actually happening.”
Using Experience Cube for noting or journaling
Running through the four layers of the Experience Cube can be helpful in creating a “thought record” or personal inventory of what’s going on for you in a stretch moment. Here’s an example:
Growth Area: being clearer about deadlines and expectations with my colleagues.
Growth Moment: on Tuesday, Greg told me he was going to be late with his TPS report. Again.
Observations: Greg told me he was going to be late. He told me he was sorry, and acknowledged that he had already missed the deadline several times. Then he got really quiet and stared at his feet. I noticed that I instinctively started doing the same thing, and I had hard a time looking him in the eye for the rest of the conversation.
Thoughts: I think Greg keeps missing the deadline because he’s consistently taking on too many projects at once. I’ve talked to him about this before, but it doesn’t seem to be working. I think maybe I need to take a new approach. And I think maybe I’m avoiding that because I don’t want to have a difficult and potentially awkward conversation with him.
Feelings: I’m frustrated that he’s creating a lose-lose for both of us. He’s drowning himself in work, and screwing up our team’s deadlines at the same time. I’m worried that maybe this means I’m a lousy manager. I also noticed that when I talked to him about it, my chest felt kind of tight and my voice sounded kind of weird.
Wants: I want Greg to take our quarterly objectives seriously when he’s prioritizing his work, instead of just consistently being late and apologizing. I want him to really listen to me when I’m explaining this, instead of just nodding his head and then doing the same thing over again. I want to get better at communicating clearly up front, at the start of the project, so that I don’t feel this pressure to cave in and accept his apology at the end. And I need Greg to demonstrate that he has understood the feedback I’ve given him and that he is taking it seriously.
Why is this helpful?
How does creating a step-by-step record like this help you strengthen a muscle or level up as a leader? It helps you to:
- Slow down. Avoid the thought jumble; use little speed bumps to slow. The fuck. Down.
- Get curious. Think like an anthropologist inside your own brain. Get curious about what’s happening. Don’t rush to judgment.
- Identify the feeling. Name it. If it’s not on this list, it’s not a feeling. (Men in particular often suck at this.) There’s tons of evidence that just identifying and naming the emotion really helps. (Mr. Rogers was right.)
- Be clear. With yourself, first and foremost. Most of don’t actually know what we’re feeling or what we want. Getting clearer about this is the only way to avoid being reactive.
- Communicate more clearly. One layer at a time. Especially: what do you want or need going forward?
Slow the f**k down
When you’re trying to learn a new skill, adopt or drop a habit, or re-wire your brain, you’d be amazed by the power of doing one thing: slowing down your mental process. Going through an inventory of observations, thoughts, feelings and wants is a good way to do this — it creates little speed bumps to slow down at each step.
This sounds banal, but it’s powerful because a) it’s doable (you don’t need to change the habit overnight, just start by trying to slow down your thought process a little), and b) it helps you avoid rushing ahead straight into a swamp. For many of us, that swamp is a mental habit we’ve spent years of our lives building.
So much of our behavior is automatic and habitual. Slowing down helps you spot new possibilities and open up space for change.
Experience Cube Template
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