Carol Goldsmith’s Return on Experience (ROX)™ model is a peak performance coaching tool that is changing conventional wisdom on how to succeed.
Prior to the development of ROX, success experts saw “role modeling” as the quickest route to results. The old success formula said that if you want to succeed, find a role model, do what that person is doing, and you’ll get the same results. Nice theory, but it ain’t necessarily so. If you’ve ever followed a role model’s example and not achieved the same results, or found that the price of success wasn’t worth it, then you have discovered an inconvenient truth. The role model wasn’t you.
With the ROX model, you are.
ROX replaces traditional role-modeling others (which may not work) with the new paradigm of self-modeling your own direct experience — which has already works. Experience holds the clues to success. Through a series of questions, the ROX model helps people access “best experiences” that may have been forgotten or dismissed as flukes, and examine those successes for important clues. Suddenly, strengths, skills, and best practices that had gone unnoticed are recognized as parts of a success process that can be adapted and applied again.
When past performance informs present action, the result is a positive Return on Experience (ROX).
Return on Experience™
The ROX Model
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To achieve a positive Return on Experience, you need to know what kind of experience you want. Start by answering the most important coaching question: “What do I want?” Use The Intelligent Outcome™ model to define your desired result. Capture your outcome statement in 10-15 words. (The more focused the outcome, the more achievable it is.)
Once you have an Intelligent Outcome, proceed to the next question in the ROX model.
ROX 1: “What do I need?”
Identify the key internal resource you need to succeed. Internal resources include such things as confidence, courage, energy, dedication, patience, stamina, trust, wisdom. Your ability to access this key internal resource will help you acquire the external resources you need (capital, equipment, labor).
Your Return on Experience at level 1: Self-Awareness
ROX 2: “When have I experienced that?”
Trust the first experience that comes to mind. It could be a time when you accessed the internal resource you need to succeed, or achieved the outcome you want now. Relive that experience fully, as if it’s happening right now. See what you were seeing, hear what you were hearing, say what you were saying, think the same thoughts and feel the same sensations that you experienced then. Experience your personal power.
Return on Experience at level 2: Self-Empowerment
ROX 3: “How did I do that?”
Success leaves clues in your direct experience. Slowly replay your experience from ROX 2, paying close attention to the order in which everything happens. When you have finished, capture the sequence of events in 3-6 steps. (Example: First, I saw/heard/felt x... Second, I saw/heard/felt y… Third, I saw/heard/felt z.) These steps constitute the “success process” you unconsciously used to create your direct experience.
Return on Experience at level 3: Self-Knowledge
ROX 4: “How will I use that?”
Armed with this new Self-Knowledge, compare what you did that worked before, with what hasn’t been working lately. Compare your “then” and “now” experiences side by side. What are the crucial differences? Self-model your strengths, skills, and best practices, and write a new success strategy of 3-6 steps that you can put into action now. Commit to taking those steps.
Return on Experience at level 4: Self-Direction
ROX 5: “What results am I getting?
Put motion behind your notions of what to do next. Notice your results, and compare what you’re getting with what you want, and adjust course as needed. Just as success is not a straight line, neither is the ROX model. The zig-zag design encourages you to revisit any previous question to revise your outcome statement access another internal resource, identify a different best experience, or find additional clues to success. Keep taking action and learning from your experience until you succeed.
Return on Experience at level 5: Self-Appraisal
The ROX model is described in the Choice magazine article, and in Carol’s forthcoming book, Return on Experience: Capitalize on What You Don’t Think You Know.