The Three-Column Test That Changes Every Difficult Conversation
- Mar 31
- 2 min read
A senior leader sat across from me, furious. She was convinced that a peer was systematically undermining her — taking over shared responsibilities, communicating with their VP without including her, getting invited to meetings she was excluded from.
She had evidence. She’d been tracking it for weeks. The case was airtight.
I asked her: how much of what you just told me is fact, and how much is a story you’ve built around the facts?
That pause. That’s where the work begins.
Here’s the exercise I use with nearly every leader I coach. Take any situation that feels charged — a conflict, a frustration, a decision that feels unfair. Draw three columns on a page.
Column one: facts. Only what’s observable. Things a camera would record. She communicated with the VP without copying me. She was in a meeting I wasn’t invited to. She took on two responsibilities that were previously shared. No interpretation. No inference.
Column two: assumptions. What you’re interpreting about intent, motivation, or meaning. She’s trying to be the only one with access to the VP. She’s territorial. She’s playing politics.
Column three: emotions. What you’re actually feeling. Angry. Threatened. Disrespected.
This client’s facts were three items. Her assumptions filled a page. And she was about to launch a political campaign based on the page, not the three items.
The dangerous thing about our narratives is that the false ones feel exactly as true as the real ones. There’s no internal alarm that says “this is an assumption, not a fact.” They all feel like facts. Which is why you need a process to separate them.
I’ve used this with hundreds of leaders. The pattern is remarkably consistent: the assumptions column is almost always three times longer than the facts column. That ratio is where bad decisions, damaged relationships, and wasted energy live.
Five minutes. Three columns. Before any conversation where you feel emotional. It won’t change the situation. But it will change what you do about it. And that changes everything.
If your worst assumption about someone turned out to be completely wrong, what would you do differently tomorrow?
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