Proposed for removal
Proposed removals
Share experience, not advice
In sensitive conversations, people speak about what happened to them rather than telling others what to do.
Borrowed from the meeting format of Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step recovery groups. Read the original source.
Ongoing habit · Minutes to start · Anyone on the team can start it
Try this first
Have people begin with in my experience, or what worked for me was.
Use it when
Feedback keeps landing as prescription and triggering defensiveness.
Skip it when
It suits personal or emotionally loaded topics. It is not the rule for a technical review or a decision that needs a direct recommendation.
How to introduce it
Set the rule that when a conversation turns personal, people speak from their own experience. Here is what happened to me and how I handled it is welcome. You should is not.
How to show up
When someone slips into you should, ask them to say it as their own experience instead. Keep people speaking for themselves.
How long it takes
About two minutes to explain. Then it holds for the length of the conversation.
What makes it hard
People give advice because they want to help, so frame the rule as a better way to help rather than a restriction. The you-should habit runs deep, so expect to redirect it several times.
What it looks like when it's working
People tell specific stories from their own lives and the listener opens up instead of pushing back. A room full of you-should, and someone going quiet, means the rule is not holding.
How long until it sticks
It becomes easier over a handful of conversations, as people feel the difference between being advised and being accompanied.
How you know it stuck
Someone rephrases their own you-should into what worked for me.
The idea behind it
People take in a story more easily than an instruction. Your experience leaves them free to draw their own conclusion. Advice puts them on the defensive.
Where it comes from
Twelve-step recovery groups. An experience-not-advice norm for feedback. "I" statements about what happened to you, not "you should."