Key takeaways
- Three rooms, and the client only stands in one at a time: Vision, Planning, Critic.
- The critic is never allowed in the visioning room. That single rule is the whole method.
- Criticism lands on the project, never on a person, which is why the room stays safe.
- Best used for big dreams and big goals. Takes 30 minutes, an hour, or a whole day with a group.
Every life coach and business coach should know the Disney process. It’s easy to learn, it’s powerful, and it works on big goals, projects, strategy, dreams and purpose. It’s one of the 50-plus coaching processes we teach in the Master Coach qualification.
It’s built on how Walt Disney actually worked with his team, and it has a twist most people miss.
Where it comes from
If you’re looking for a role model for coaching big goals, and there are several, Walt Disney has to be near the top.
Robert Dilts studied how Disney guaranteed maximum creativity in his team, and those observations became the coaching method now known as the Disney Strategy. During the planning of the films that made him famous, Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi and Fantasia, Disney moved his team physically between three rooms. Each room had one job.
The three rooms
Room 1: Visioning
Dreams are dreamed and ideas spun with no restrictions and no limits. The sky isn’t the limit either. Every idea, however outrageous, gets developed freely.
The critic is not allowed in this room.
Room 2: Planning
The dreams from Room 1 are given ground. They get coordinated and turned into a storyboard.
The storyboard, incidentally, was a Disney invention.
Room 3: Critic
Sometimes called the sweat box. A cramped room where the whole crew reviewed the plan critically.
It worked because the project was under scrutiny, never a person. Then the idea went back to Room 1 and the cycle began again.
“The cycle always involved the three rooms. The outcome was that either an idea did not survive Room 3 and was abandoned, or it met with silence in Room 3, which indicated it was ready for production.”
Keith V. Trickey
The genius of it
Two rules carry the whole method.
- Never let the critic interact directly with the visioning. Visioning stays free and unlimited.
- Solve whatever the critic raises through exact planning, not by shrinking the dream.
That’s why the dream survives. Most people collapse the three rooms into one conversation, which is why their good ideas die in the first five minutes. The critic isn’t the enemy here. It just has to wait its turn, and then be answered with planning rather than with surrender.
How to run it with a client
Offer the exercise, then explain the three stages to your client or the team before you begin. Naming the rooms up front is what gives you permission to say “we’re not in that room yet” later.
Work through all three, and go back to Vision whenever you need to. Then consolidate and close.
It takes 30 minutes at its shortest, an hour comfortably, or a full day with a group. Save it for the big dreams and the big goals. On a small goal it’s overkill, and the client will feel it.
This pairs well with good coaching questions, and with contracting the session properly first, which is covered in partnering without saying goal.
Go Disney
I have a dear friend named Stephen, who I’ve known since we were 13. I call him my Disney friend, because he has always inspired me to think bigger and to not let my inner critic stop the flow of creative dreaming.
If you take nothing else from this, take the inspiration to go Disney for yourself. To dream, and then to work to make a real difference in the world. That’s enough.
If you’d like more processes like this one, our free coaching courses are a good place to start, and the full toolbox is taught in the Level 2 (PCC) Master Coach certification.