No amount of training, consulting, or well-meaning advice can identify and break through performance issues as quickly as direct experience.
This has been demonstrated through hundreds of coaching hours with clients on four continents. Many of those successes are recounted in Carol Goldsmith’s forthcoming Return on Experience book.

Following are just a few of the success stories in Carol’s book that show how quickly the ROX model works.

Speaking with Confidence

If a telephone could ring with fear, then Ashley’s was having a meltdown. A six-figure executive in a high-tech firm, Ashley had just been asked to speak in her boss’s stead at their industry’s annual convention. Trouble is, she told her coach, “I’m terrified of speaking in public. Carol, you’ve got to help me.”

Fifteen minutes later, Ashley broke through a 20-year fear of public speaking, and went on to address the convention with powerful ease. Now she regularly seeks out speaking engagements. “It’s as if that problem never existed,” she says.

What allowed Ashley to break through her fear so fast? The power of direct experience.

Carol started the coaching session with an unexpected question: “Have you ever before spoken in public with confidence and ease?” she asked.
“Yes, one time.” Ashley answered. ”But it was way back in high school. Does that even count?”
“Every experience counts,” Carol said. While most people would have listened to Ashley’s story, Carol knew that stories keep people stuck. So instead of asking what happened, Carol asked Ashley to relive the experience in her mind. “Then I’ll ask you some interview questions,” she said.

Ashley’s answers revealed an embedded “success process” that had been hidden away since high school. In comparing how she had created confidence back then, with how she was now creating fear, Ashley learned to self-model her own success.

Self-Leadership

Chuck considered himself to be an extremely effective leader who gets excellent results from his staff. “There’s just this one guy,” he complained, who never solves his own problems. It was obviously the employee’s fault since, as Chuck put it, “I treat all of my employees exactly the same way.”
That’s what he thought, anyway, until the ROX model helped Chuck make a startling self-discovery.

Carol asked Chuck to mentally replay meetings with two different employees: first, with one of his many successful staffers, and then with “this one guy” who doesn’t solve his own problems.

Chuck chose a meeting with a recent hire who had come by to discuss an issue. As Chuck replayed the experience, he leaned back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head and a slight smile on his face. “I asked her questions and helped her reach her own solution,” he said.

In the meeting with the problem employee, Chuck was leaning forward in his chair and scowling at the imaginary person in the hot seat.

“This guy has been on staff for three years,” Chuck complained. “I get pretty disgusted hearing the same old problems and excuses over and over. I always end up telling him what to do.”

Chuck could barely believe his ears. Turns out, he wasn’t treating his employees exactly the same way. The first behavior he needed to change was his own.

Temper, Temper

The appropriately nicknamed “Rowdy” was on probation for punching a co-worker in the gut—the latest in a series of incidents.

“It happens so fast,” said Rowdy. “I don’t know how to control my temper.”

The ROX model proved otherwise.

“Rowdy, I’d like you to play a slow-motion movie of you punching your co-worker,” Carol said. “Then describe the experience scene-by-scene.”

Rowdy answered quickly. “I got angry. Then I punched him.”

Carol wrote down his two-step process.

“Now,” she continued, “remember a time when you stopped yourself from punching someone who made you angry, and briefly describe that experience.”

Rowdy related he that had been coaching his son’s Little League team when an angry father marched across the field and started shouting right in his face. “I wanted to punch him, but I didn’t,” Rowdy explained. Why not?

“Because I wanted to set a good example for my son.”
Inserting a split-second of thought between the emotion (anger) and the action (punch) changed Rowdy’s experience for the good.

“So you wanted to set a good example for your son,” Carol said. “I can’t help wondering what kind of example you to set at work.”
Rowdy became quiet. He had something new to think about now.

Breaking the Ice

Ravi bought into the stereotype that accountants are naturally quiet and shy. “I don’t know how to talk to people I don’t know,” he said. “I’m thinking of taking an assertiveness training class.”

It ended up being a very short class—with Ravi serving as both student and trainer.

Carol asked Ravi to remember the last time he had talked to a stranger. Just a month earlier, he had struck up a conversation at an out-of-town conference with someone sitting two chairs away.

“How did you do that?” Carol asked.

Ravi said that he simply asked how the other person was enjoying the conference.

“So you asked a question,” Carol observed. Ravi nodded yes. “Then you do know how to talk to strangers,” she said. Both of them laughed.

Ravi’s self-work assignment was to practice using his proven ice-breaking tool. At the following coaching session, he reported feeling quite at ease talking to strangers. “It’s coming back to me now,” he admitted. A previously unrecognized skill had returned.

To be notified when the Return on Experience book is released, click here.

Since its codification, the ROX model has helped hundreds of people break through self-limiting beliefs and behaviors in record time, including:

• Leaders who dictate instead of inspire

• Sales people who habitually miss the mark

• Coaches and consultants with difficult clients

• Trainers and teachers with difficult students

• Micro-managers & time
mis-managers

• Procrastinators

• Ineffective communicators

• People with relationship issues

• People who lack direction or purpose

• Pushovers

• Perpetual victims

• Control freaks

• People who talk and don’t listen

• People who don’t speak up for themselves

• Short-tempered people

• Over-achievers

• Under-performers

• Couch potatoes

• Clutterbugs

• Yes Men and Women

• Naysayers

• Doubting Thomases

• Know-It-Alls

Each broke through a self-limiting belief or behavior through the power of direct experience—theirs.