In this episode I’m chatting with Life and Career Coach, Lisa Robles, the CEO of Lisa Robles Coaching. Lisa specializes in helping women lean in to their natural strengths, grow as leaders, and live their lives with ease, joy, and flow.
Listen to the Episode
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
About Lisa
Lisa is a Certified Life Coach, a Marine Corps veteran, a wife, a mother of 3, and a grandmother of 2. Her passion to help more women advance in their career and businesses while raising a family was born out of the struggles and difficulty she faced as she tried to balance work and home herself.
Along the way Lisa figured out two things:
1. You don’t need to work ‘like a man’ to advance in the business world (as an employee or an entrepreneur!)
2. The world, including the corporate workplace, is a better place when people lean into their own innate and personal communication styles.
She now uses the DISC assessment tool to help her clients tap in to what comes naturally to them to connect with everyone around them – including their coworkers, clients, team members, friends, and family.
Listen in as we talk about how learning the style that comes naturally to you can help you grow and connect with those around you with ease.
Connect with Lisa to get your own DISC assessment by sending her a message at Contact@lisaroblescoaching.com
Episode Transcript
Welcome, everyone. I am here with Lisa Robles, and she is the CEO of Lisa Robles Coaching.
She uses disk assessments to help her clients understand their strengths and weaknesses and then use those to their best advantage to begin to live their lives with ease, joy, and flow. Welcome, Lisa. Thank you.
So, Lisa, what I like to do first with all my guests is I like to get into your origin story or your backstory of how you became a career and life coach. Can you share with the audience how you got to this point? Yeah, so I started off in the Marine Corps and I really learned about leadership and really how to work with others in different capacities while I was in the Marine Corps. And then when I got out of the Marine Corps, I went straight into the corporate world.
And there I started leading teams myself. I also started to experience what performance reviews look like and how, you know, the corporate environment was set up and in a way that these are the rules in which you need to abide by and then you are graded upon that. And then it’s that’s how you get promoted.
That’s how you get new jobs. And I started to see the dynamic between people and what the organization wanted out of their people. For a long time, I thought that in order to move up in an organization, you had to do everything that they wanted you to do in the way that they wanted it.
You had to work really long hours and it really wasn’t conducive for you to have a family. If you did, you had to be a man who had somebody at home. Most of the senior leaders that you saw, whether they were male or female, either had a spouse that worked from home to take care of the children or they didn’t have any kids.
And so immediately I started to think, oh, well, then I guess I will never aspire to all of these higher levels. As I moved from one organization to another, I started to see things differently. I started to realize that you can absolutely grow in an organization with a family, not requiring you to work long, long hours or travel all the time.
I started to see how the organization told people how they showed up. You know, they told them you are aggressive or you are emotional or you don’t like change. You’re not resilient.
Let me teach you how to do all these things. And they created all of these programs and they had all these competencies, which is really competency is if you’re a leader in our organization, these are the things that we think are the most important and you need to become these things. And then we’re going to show you what that is and how to do it, except it was very one dimensional.
For example, resilience. Organizations often say we need our leaders to be resilient. And what resilience really means is that you bounce back off the difficulties.
But what they didn’t take into consideration is how people show up in resilience differently for an organization. What resilience actually means is you stayed calm, you calmed everybody else down and you complied. So it doesn’t leave room for other people to say, wait a minute, why are we doing this? What’s the value of this? What’s the point? Because now you’re considered a resistor.
Now you’re considered somebody who doesn’t want to go along with this change. You don’t have resilience. You’re stuck in your old ways.
And that’s not true. I started to see how organizations were continuously telling people there’s only one way to lead. There’s only one way to do it.
And if you’re not doing it that way, you’re doing it wrong. So I’ve taken all of the leadership development that I’ve learned over time, understanding how organizations actually work and then really starting to work with people to say, you are resilient. Look at your life, all of the things you’ve overcome that you’re resilient.
You don’t need anybody to tell you how to be resilient. This is what resilience looks like for you. You slow everybody down.
You ask the right questions. You get in there and get it done and you work with others. So when people are working with me, they really start to feel like, oh, I’m OK.
Oh, I’ve approached it the right way. It’s just not what an organization’s used to doing. So I really wanted to start working with people so that they understood their goodness and wholeness and how to actually navigate the corporate world in a way that’s authentic, not a way that you have to change who you are, but understand who you are.
And then what does that mean in a corporate environment? And I think that’s what’s missing in most of our corporate environments. I would 100 percent agree. I worked in corporate environments for, you know, 150 years before I started my own business.
And I thought that was really interesting what you said about resilience. And if you don’t if you don’t look resilient in the way that they decide it should look, you’re a resistor because I was 100 percent a resistor. I was the one asking a thousand questions.
Why are we doing this? I was I I was not popular at a lot of places because I just I was too mouthy. I mean, I think the word they used was abrasive, but I’m OK with that. I didn’t have a problem with it.
I wanted to know why we were doing things. We were doing them and they didn’t like to be questioned. I am now unemployable in because of this, I guess.
But that’s OK. It all worked out. Let me ask you, how does the disk assessment and this is the major tool that you the tool that you you use to help people identify their strengths and the things that make them uniquely them? How did you come to start using this tool? And what does that look like? So I was first introduced to the disk tool in corporate.
And so just to be clear, anybody that works for an organization works in corporate because sometimes when you depending on what you do, there’s headquarters or the corporate offices. And so when they say, oh, I don’t work for corporate, but you do if you work for an organization. So I just wanted that to be clear for people.
So while I was working a corporate job, that was a tool that the organization used right as a way to give you your self-awareness. What happened and the reason that I use it and love it so, so much is because what corporate ended up doing, what what ended up happening in the room where you had the assessment, the facilitator would say all of these styles, because there’s four different styles in disk. All these styles are good and all of them are necessary.
But then people started taking them very personally and started saying, oh, I’m a high D, so I drive for results. I’m goal oriented. You’re a low D. You’re not.
Then somebody who was a high blue. I’m very analytical. I am all about the numbers.
I am all about the data. You’re a low blue. You’re not.
And so it started to show people and tell them that these are gaps in their life as opposed to looking at what makes them unique and why they pull and move in the way that they do. And it’s valid. So I wanted to take the concept out of disk, take it away from the corporate environment and help people to see, look how powerful you are, look at all of the ways in which you show up.
For anybody who doesn’t know, can you go through disk and what it stands for and what the different types are and what they mean? Absolutely. So disk is how you, a person will approach people or problems, how they like processes and how they respond to rules set by other people. So that’s what it’s measuring.
How you deal with problems, how you deal with people, how you deal with procedures and how you deal with rules set by others. So then it is marked by the, the words for disk is D I S and C. So those people who are high Ds, they have it high and low. So you can, you’ll score anywhere between a 99 all the way to like a 10 on each area.
So when you’re higher in one area, what that signifies is where you land on that spectrum. So somebody who was a D they categorize that person more as like a pilot. They get in, they want to see results.
They want to take charge. They’re more like, let’s get this done. You’re on a high D. You’re much more inclined when there’s a problem.
Let’s just go get it done. I didn’t want to hear any questions. Those who are high I, those are the people who really are concerned about everybody around them.
Yeah, we can get it done, but what about everybody else? How do you think they feel? What do you think we need to do so that everybody feels good about it? They are the ones that connect more with people and they’re always worried about what everybody else thinks and feels. If you’re a high S, you really do like things to be stable and you like to have things put into a procedure so that we’re doing things in a sequential order. You don’t like chaos.
You like things to be planned and thought through those who are a high C. Those are the ones who really are looking at the proof, the data, why they need to do something. They are the people whom when they’re going to buy a TV, they will research TVs for a month before deciding. They really want to make sure that the quality of work is right and that everything is appropriate.
They will follow the rules. They follow them as they’re prescribed. So those are the different ways of how people can show up.
And there’s a combination and everyone is on every single one of those spectrums. You just kind of ebb and flow through the spectrum based on your preferences and styles. And so when you start to put them together, the D I S and C, it gives you a holistic view of yourself, how you show up and then how you communicate and interact with other people.
So I wanted to take the concept out of disc, take it away from the corporate environment and help people to see, look how powerful you are. Look at all of the ways in which you show up when you look at just the idea of change management. If you were to go get, you know, a degree in HR and business and many multitude of things, change management is a semester in and of itself.
People are consultants just for change management within organizations. And what was very interesting is they talk about people who are early adopters, those who sit on the fence and those that are resistors. And they literally call them the resistors who are going to question, who are going to say why, who are going to say, there’s no point in this.
There’s a difference between a body of people who are resisting a government and people in an organization who say, but why should we do this? But yet they use the same word and they become treated that way. So those people sit in this place and feel like, well, I guess I’m the black sheep. I guess I’m the one that, you know, why am I always the jerk? Why am I always the bad person? Because people look at it as, Oh, you’re against the change.
I want those people who, who sit there and ask the questions to know you’re not resisting change. Someone’s asking you to do something without giving you a really clear reason. Why? And I said, so is not a clear reason.
Why? These people are worried about how does this fit with everything? And is it making everyone’s life better or are you just piling on more stuff to make yourself feel better? So it has nothing to do with, I don’t like change. It has everything to do with, let’s talk about the reasons we need to do it.
What was wrong with that? What we did before, I’m not saying what we did before was fantastic, but what was wrong with it that we are doing this and how does this address that problem? Call it out so that if we realize like, well, that doesn’t really address it.
Okay. So that way it wasn’t working. Well, this doesn’t address it either.
Let’s figure out a way that addresses it, but nobody wants to hear that in a corporate environment. They’re like, we just need you to do it. Just go do it.
Sounds like you’re talking to my seven year old. Yes. Just do the thing I’m asking you to do.
Stop asking my, the jokes on me because my son is exactly like me. He needs the itemized itemized list of why are we doing this? Why is it important? What’s my role? What if we do something else? Here are my suggestions. And I’m like, this is not a chirocracy here, pal.
I’m really just looking for you to do, just put on your shoes. It’s all a mess. Can you just brush your teeth? It’s all you got to do.
And then we have to have a 20 minute, you know, conversation about my motivation behind this, this request. But yeah, the jokes on me cause I gave birth to it, a resistor. So yeah.
Right. And, and when you look at that though, you know it’s because you’re asking him to stop doing what he’s doing. You’re switching things on him and he’s like, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Why am I putting my shoes on? You’re like, okay, it is shoes. What are we doing here? Right. And, and that really is that idea of that high D it’s just shoes.
Just put them on. Who cares? We’ll figure it out as we go. So your high D’s are important because otherwise you’re not going to get out the door.
You sometimes you need to step in and say, just put them on. We’ll figure it out as we leave. And they’re like, this is, doesn’t make any sense.
And they’re putting on their shoes all in a mood. Right. But if sometimes you don’t have that high D nothing gets done because they sit there and say, well, what if, what do you mean? Right.
And then those high eyes like, okay, why are we fighting? Let’s just go ahead and do it. I love you. Putting on your shoes is hard.
I get it. I’m there with you. And you’re like, why are we talking about this? I don’t understand.
We don’t need to enforce love. You know, I love you. Put your shoes on.
We got to go. But it’s, it’s recognizing the whole totality of it to say, I get it. Like I asked him to stop in the middle of doing something because in my mind, I was already out the door and I realized he doesn’t have his shoes on.
For him, he was completely focused on what he was doing. And you just asked him to just rip it out and stop. And that was a little unnerving.
And so with disc, not only are you able to see yourself, but you’re able to see why others are doing what they do. And then you can then approach it differently. So if it’s something like put on your shoes, you’re like, I got it.
I understand you don’t like it. You got to put your shoes on. We got to go.
You’re not going to sit there and go through the whole rigmarmore, right? But if there’s a big change where somebody else is picking him up or we’re going to go do something very differently than we normally do, you’re going to take the time to help him through that because that’s going to be a huge change for him.
And you want him to feel good about it and comfortable with it, asking the questions, even if it’s going to be what we’re going to be. So you’re now able to communicate better.
You’re able to approach things differently and you don’t feel like you’re having to change into somebody else. It’s just, I now understand your motives. I trust that the reason you’re telling me I’m not doing this is because you don’t understand it and not because you’re just trying to be defiant.
You’re just trying to be a resistor. It’s, I don’t see the value. So the other part of working with disc is, okay, you know that, you know that you’re going to have all of these questions, but how do you convey it in a way where people don’t automatically feel like, Oh, you just want to fight with me.
It’s this person wants to get it done. They actually don’t have all of the steps prepared for you. So when you know that and they’re saying, we need you to do something and you already know, well, this person is a high D. They don’t have a lot of structure.
They don’t necessarily look at the data. It’s okay. Yes, we will do it.
Yes. I understand that this is how, this is what you want. Can we figure out a few of the steps first and then we can figure out the rest as we go on.
When you allow that person to know, I hear you, I’m with you. I’m going to do it. The green to do so, but you have a few questions that you would like answered first.
Now we have a space to have a good conversation instead of wait, what? You did an assessment for me and you pointed out some things that I didn’t even realize I’d done a disc assessment years and years ago, but I don’t know if they change over time. Maybe they do, but the way that I scored on the assessment that I did with you really showed me that the way I was approaching some issues in my business, it really gave me the lens to understand why I was doing the things that I was doing.
So when you do a disc assessment, and if we talk about it, you know, not just as an employee, like in a corporate environment, but also for business owners or people who work with other people, people who are coaches or consultants, how important is it to know what your own, where you land in this disc assessment and then how would, how that impacts how you work with other people, clients, collaboration partners and things like that? That’s a great question.
So this can also be looked at as keys. You have four different keys. So if you think about the keys you might have on your key chain, each key opens up a different room door.
It’s, it’s for something different. You can’t use your house key to start the car. You need something different.
The disc assessment shows you the key that you tend to use the most. And it shows you that you keep trying to use the house key to start the car. And it’s not working.
And you’re not sure why. Because it’s the, it’s your go-to style. That style is not wrong.
The style is correct, but it’s not going to unlock your car. So understanding yourself helps you not only to see, oh, I can still look at a perspective differently and approach it with who I am with the way that I use my keys, but in a way that’s much more effective. So even if you’re on the lower side, it’s not saying that you don’t have a key for the door that you need.
It’s just not one that unlocks it immediately. So how do you use that key in a way that’s effective? So as a coach, as a business owner, you’re going to approach people the same way every single time, unless you start to understand how do other people want to be spoken to? How do other people understand information? That’s your go-to style. Now let’s look at other people’s style.
So you can see, oh, you like facts and figures. It’s not for you to become someone who likes facts and figures. It’s to understand how do I convey this in a way that somebody who needs a fact and figure feels comfortable? So that’s how it can benefit you as a person.
It helps you to communicate and it helps you to, to be able to work well with anybody. And I would imagine, and I’ve experienced this personally, that as a business owner, you do encounter people who are all different, have all these different styles.
And it’s really important to know that, you know, if I’m talking to somebody who’s just like me, we’re going to probably really focus on the things that are important to us.
But when you’re dealing with people, like you said, who really want to know about the structure and they want to know, you know, facts and figures and proof, having all of those kind of things to be able to pull out and say, OK, this is important to you. Let’s talk about, you know, why why this program would be good for you, because OK, here’s some proof, here’s some testimonials. I’ve worked with people who are like you who have the same issue.
And this is what I’ve done for them. Or this is the process that we’re going to go through, if that’s important to them.
And we can walk through what it’s going to look like, step one, step two, step three, so that they feel comfortable and just being able to approach clients or other, you know, other collaboration partners or whoever it is that you’re going to work with to be able to communicate with them in the way that they, you know, that’s important to them, that they value.
Yeah, exactly. Definitely. So the assessment about how long does it take for you to to kind of work through the questions or for them to answer the questions and for you to provide them with an assessment of the results of their assessment? Yeah, so the assessment itself takes about 15 to 20 minutes.
And I always tell people, go with your gut instinct. There’s no right or wrong answer. There isn’t a better score than anything.
And once you get your scores, you’re not trying to improve any of them. You’re trying to understand them and how to work with what you have. So once somebody is done with the assessment, I do receive their results.
And then we set up a call so that I can go through what disk is all of the different styles and then what their scores were. So it’s a really great, you know, first initial consultation that I do with people that I and I don’t charge for it. They can take the assessment for free and I do the call with them for free so they can at least walk away with, oh, this is why I do what I do.
It gives you vocabulary for how you’re showing up. And you start to think about immediately other people. Oh, this person must be, you know, a high S or a high C because I see how they talk to me or or how they show up.
So you immediately start to see results of being able to identify things within yourself and then others. Once we have that call, then we start talking about, you know, packages that I have in which you can work with me. And so what we’re doing with the disk along with the program is what are the goals that you’re trying to achieve? How do you tend to approach them and then working through them using your style, not trying to force you into any other style and then really start working on what other people have told you before about who you are.
And you fully embrace and understanding who you are and then getting clarity on what your next steps are and how you really want to move your career, your business, maybe your family. How do you want that to really look? So we start building off of disk, your communication style, how you like to learn, how you approach things as well as understanding other people’s style so that you now have an easier way of doing it. I work with a lot of people on setting goals and, you know, creating action plans.
And I love that what you’re doing is taking advantage of what comes naturally for them to help them move forward to reach goals. Instead of creating this, you know, like, you know, here’s the goal. Here’s the plan.
Here’s what you’re going to do X, Y, Z. And this is what, you know, just go do it and come back. You know, tell me how it went. No, you’re really sitting down with them and saying, and you’re mapping it out and giving them action tasks or, you know, you’re mapping out this strategy that feels right for them.
And it takes advantage or it leverages their strengths so that they can focus on, you know, using the key that they like to use the most versus trying to force them to use, you know, their house key to, you know, get in the car. But really just leaning into how they already see and interact with others. And I like also that this can be not just for, you know, corporate or work-related or business-related.
It can also be personal goals, family goals, too. When you do these assessments, do you get a lot of like aha moments from people when they’re like, oh, my gosh, it’s like you’re reading my mind. Because I know that was that was the experience that I had that when you when we did the assessment, it was like you were reading my mail.
You were like, this is how this is what you how you like to operate. These are how you like to talk to people. These are the four.
And I was like, yep, yep, yep. Yeah. So because you’re it’s a self-assessment, you really are putting it out there.
You’re answering these questions in a way that it shows up. And then it’s easier for me to be able to say, so remember that problem you had? This is how you show up. And this is why you responded in that way.
This is why you feel the way that you do. It’s because of this. It’s the reason why.
And I think that’s what is so instrumental for people that they’re like, oh, my gosh, I get it. I often hear a lot of people laughing because whenever something so true for you, you start laughing, right? I hear a lot of people saying, oh, that makes sense. People tend to feel better.
They feel better about who they are. And, you know, one of the examples is when you have somebody who’s like a high D or even a high I, they often are told or they feel like, you know, I’m not really good at goals. I set a bunch of goals and I never get to them.
I never achieve them. I fall off and I just don’t have the discipline. And what I tell them is that, no, it’s not that you don’t have the discipline.
You 100 percent do. Those high eyes are just super optimistic. Who doesn’t want optimism in their life? And so they think of the possibilities of the future.
And that’s where they birth all of their goals. But if they’re a low on the S or the low on the C, they don’t put the structure together to be able to make it happen. So the only thing you’re really missing is the actual structure.
Now, that’s not something that is innate into that person. So I’m not going to all of a sudden say you’re going to get a journal. You’re going to write it down.
You write it down every day because a high eye is like, yes. And then tomorrow, no, we are not doing this in my life. So it’s being honest with yourself and finding those truths.
OK, yes, I have a lot. OK, can you really get them all done? And what does that look like? Like, what do you have to give up to make these five things happen? Where is it going to go? I’m just going to add it. Are you really? Where are you going to add it while I’m sleeping? Exactly.
So let’s talk this back. And so it allows them to dream and to say all of these things and feel good about it and then say, OK, but where are we going to put it? Doesn’t that it doesn’t feel good to keep adding to a ready full plate? So what can we take away? And where can we have room to breathe? And what does that look like for you? And so I work with the style that they have. Those who are very structured or looking for data tend to not necessarily meet their goals either because they start to think about, oh, gosh, I have this to do and this to do, and it becomes overwhelming.
So, OK, you like that structure. Let’s go ahead and put it in. What do you do all day? Like, what does this look like for you? And they like doing that and they will.
And they’re like, oh, gosh, there’s no room. Exactly. How do we start to move things away so that you have time to do these things? Is this really important for you or is this somebody else’s goal? Your high S’s and your high C’s, especially your high S’s, tend to do things for others.
They love to make other people’s dreams come true. So then my question becomes, is this your dream or their dream? Now, let’s focus on that. Now they’re like, oh, this actually wasn’t what I wanted to do.
I just really wanted to help the family. Or I really wanted to help my team. OK, so let’s take that down.
So not telling them that you have too much structure and you can’t think outside of it. It’s where are you going with this? Whose goal is it? It’s not that you have too many whimsical squirrel moments. It’s look how beautiful your mind works.
But we can still create beauty in just this one thing that we’re going to focus on. So it’s really working with the different styles. It’s like an objective reframe.
You’re taking a step back and saying, OK, let’s look at things that you want to do and say, how does this fit into your big picture? And are you actually connected to what it is that you’re trying to do? Right. And I know that the disc is more of a interaction style and it’s not a personality test, but people love personality tests as well because they love to learn about themselves because it almost unlocks the level when you’re like, oh, I understand now things about myself and how I approach anything life. And it’s like, oh, that’s why I do that.
There’s nothing wrong with me. That’s just my own style. And it’s got to be very it’s got to be validating for people who, you know, maybe aren’t Heidi’s in that workplace, you know, because I know that certain personality types and certain work styles are highly rewarded in those environments.
And then there are others that are, you know, not so much. And that can really start to feel oppressive. Yeah.
