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Marriage Startup Episode 32
[Intro music]
LESLIE
Welcome to the Marriage Startup Podcast, Episode 32 - “DISC Profiles for
Better Marriage Communication.” In this episode we take a look at our
DISC test results and talk about how adaptation is necessary for survival.
What? Really?
LAURA
[chuckles] You know, like evolution.
LESLIE
Uh-huh.
LAURA
Have you evolved in our marriage?
LESLIE
Yes. I feel like we're sidetracked already. Let's keep going [chuckles].
LAURA
No, I just really wish I'd had this information 12 years ago. It would've
saved me a lot of trouble figuring it out all on my own, because it's really
like a peek into your brain and how to communicate with you better, and
I've learned it by trial and error. But imagine if we had taken this test.
LESLIE
It would've been really good, that's true. Well, the important thing is we
can talk about it now. We're so far off script already [laughter] so let me
just get the last bit of scripting done. As always, we'll close the show with
what we're going to do with each other this week.
LAURA
I'm Laura, partner in Glimmering, founder of Wild Goose Guidance, and
currently adapting to the work-at-home mom status.
LESLIE
I'm Laura's co-host, Leslie Camacho. I'm also a founder in Glimmering and
I'm doing something really exciting I can't talk about yet but yeah, it's
awesome. I'm in full start-up mode as of last week, so there's that. Around
these parts, I'm also the Chief Espresso Officer.
ETHAN
Daddy!
LESLIE
[sighs].
LAURA
Do you want to talk about our setup here and why we're a little scattered?
LESLIE
Yes. Yes, we should do that, because this is two episodes in a row now
we've been a little bit scattered. It's for a good reason. We're sitting in
somebody else's house, crowded around a single microphone. We
brought the good microphone with us. We're doing a house swap in
Portland so we've been adventuring up here in Portland all week long so
far, and we've had a really good time. It's a really great house. Our friends
are staying at our place, and our kids are hopefully doing non-destructive
things [chuckles] in another room while we get this done.
ETHAN
[background noises as if to say, "Us? Of course, Father, we are being very
well behaved. Mama, why don't you come and see?"]
LESLIE
This is where you say other things.
LAURA
I hear the toddler in the hall looking for us, so I'm a little distracted
[chuckles]. So yeah, I don't know that we have any other news except a
couple of you noticed - well, probably all of you noticed but a couple of you
mentioned that you noticed we had new theme music last week. We want
to give a shout-out to our friend Lance Hamilton who is working on new
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theme music for us, and it's going to be different this week because it's a
work-in-progress.
LESLIE
That's right. So last week we had sort of a more laid back, relaxing version
of the theme, and this week we're testing out a more upbeat version. It's a
little Pink Floyd-ish at the end. I don't know, by the time the Pink Floyd
stuff comes around the volume's ducked, but maybe we'll play the whole
thing at the end. It's a minute and 24 seconds, so maybe at the end of the
show we'll let the whole thing play as well. But I think we're going to do
this one and maybe one more, but Lance is really into it so he's wanting to
get it just right. We've been happy with both versions so we're just having
a lot of fun with the whole creative thing. It's a really long way to say thank
you so much, Lance.
LAURA
Why, why, Leslie, why are we changing our theme song?
LESLIE
So the current theme song we're using is - it's a variation of Pachelbel's
Canon and it's a little bit of a grey area about whether we can actually use
it or not. I tried to look up the license. It's not licensed by any of the major
music houses but it is done by a contemporary artists, and they don't have
any licensing stuff but they sell it, so I assume that they want licensing
rights of some sort. This is not a commercial broadcast but it may one day
be a commercial broadcast, and even a non-commercial broadcast you still
have to secure some licensing rights.
I did email them about it but I never heard back from them. So long story
short, I feel really iffy about using our old theme music, as much as I liked
it. It's a really great track, but I didn't want to go too much further into the
podcast using something that we don't for sure have the license rights to.
LAURA
All right. That's for all our people who have a hard time with change
[laughter].
LESLIE
Yes. Yes, yes.
LAURA
All right. Let's dive into the main topic. What is the DISC Profile and why
is it so important for communication?
LESLIE
DISC Profile Test is something developed by a man named William
Marston, and you can find his theory in a book called The Emotions of
Normal People that was written way back in 1928. For those of you who
listen to the Haywire podcast, a little bit of this upfront intro is going to be a
little bit familiar because we talked about it there in a business context in
the Haywire podcast.
That's really what inspired us to talk about it here, because businesses use
the DISC Profile and other similar personality profiles to really figure out
how their teams can communicate better, and how they get culture fit,
personality fit, match people together. So we thought this would be a really
fun thing to do and talk about it in terms of a marriage context and
marriage communication, just by looking at our own two profiles here. We
will have download links to our profiles in the Show Notes.
DISC stands for Decisive Interactive Stability and Cautious - the first letter
of each one of those spells DISC. The basic premise is that these are the
four emotional traits that determine a person's behavior, or influence a
person's behavior. If you understand those four areas of a person then you
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can to some extent understand and predict how they might behave when
put with other people, or in particular situations. So that's the modern
version.
We used Tony Robbins' test again because it’s free and it's really
comprehensive. You also get something called a Values Profile but I think
for the most part in this podcast we're going to actually stick to the DISC
assessment portion of it. There are a lot of paid versions of this as well
that you can find out there, but we just found the Tony Robbins one to be a
really good starting point there. You will end up on his mailing list if you
take it but you can just unsubscribe, no big deal, or stay subscribed. He
actually has some pretty good stuff [chuckles], I've discovered along the
way.
You found some stuff about the history of the Profile, so why don't you give
us a little bit of background on what you discovered in your research.
LAURA
Okay. The DISC theory originated with William Marston in 1928, as you
said, with his book The Emotions of Normal People [chuckles], which is a
title which really would not fly nowadays. He was a psychologist and he
was married to a psychologist named Elizabeth Holloway, who I think was
probably way more fascinating and way smarter than he was. She actually
came up with most of his ideas. I was just doing a little research into her
and fell down a rabbit hole last night. She is fascinating. I need to find a
biography on her.
Anyway, the Marstons were credited - William is credited with inventing the
systolic blood pressure test and was on the team that created the
polygraph test. But it was Elizabeth who was working with him in the lab
and told him, "You know, I notice that my blood pressure goes up when I'm
feeling angry," and that was what gave him the idea to even start with the
systolic blood pressure test. Then he also, for those of you who might
recognize this name, is known as Charles Moulton. That's his nom de
plume as the writer and creator of Wonder Woman. Who was also his
wife's idea [chuckles].
His wife was incredibly well educated. She couldn't go to Harvard because
women were not allowed at Harvard, but she went to I think - oh shoot, I
don't remember (Boston University). She went to school nearby and pretty
much got all the same degrees that Charles did. She was quite the
feminist of her time. She was a career woman, they had another woman
that they kind of adopted into their family who raised their children while
she went and got her degrees. When her husband was considering this
new kind of superhero for DC Comics, he was talking about how it was
very important to have someone who conquered with love and she's like,
"Okay, that's fine, but you'd better make it a woman" [chuckles], thus
Wonder Woman was born.
Anyway, they sound like very interesting people, and I really like and
resonate with the DISC theory. I felt like taking the test, I didn't really get
what it was going for. The questions were difficult for me to figure out
which question felt more like me, but when I got my results it was clear that
- it really nailed the way I work. So I think it's definitely one that's worth
checking out.
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LESLIE
One more historical reference just for sake of completeness. The actual
personality part of this was developed by an industrial psychologist named
Vernon Clarke, based on William's theory.
LAURA
Yes. He did not come up with the test itself.
LESLIE
Right, so Marston developed the theory and Clarke developed the test.
Then the rest is history and here we are, recording a podcast based on it.
LAURA
That's awesome.
LESLIE
It's something like - you get something like a total 50 pages back and I
think that for this particular thing, we're just going to pull out the things that
stood out to us. It would be a very, very long podcast to go over that. I
know there's some questions you wanted to lead us through but let me just
start out with the thing that instantly stood out to me.
In the actual DISC assessment, in the natural style, you and I scored
exactly the same on the D and the S, on the -
LAURA
Decisive?
LESLIE
On the Dominance and Steadiness. We both exactly got a 35 in
Dominance, Decisiveness.
LAURA
Yeah. In Marston's DISC Theory, it's Dominance. In Tony Robbins' test it
is Decisiveness.
LESLIE
In S we both scored a 99.
LAURA
Yeah. Stability.
LESLIE
Which explains a lot, actually [laughter].
LAURA
What does it explain to you? What did you get out of that?
LESLIE
All right. The things that really stood out to me in terms of how our scores because we very significantly on the other two things, on the Influence and
Compliance - and again, I'm reading off my other notes because I - what
did we say that -
LAURA
Interactive and Cautious.
LESLIE
Yeah, in Interactive and Cautious we score fairly differently but in these
two, we're exactly the same. On both Decisiveness is really low and we
both highly, highly value Stability. When I was doing this with Haywire I
kept wondering, "How did I miss scoring 100? Maybe it's not
possible" [chuckles].
What it means is that we really value a stable home more so than any
other score. No other score comes close. My Cautious score is my only
one above 50. On a scale of 1 to 100, I have a 77 in there. So even there
I think my combination of really valuing stability and just my natural
approach of really trying to figure something out before I do anything rash most of the time - I don't really have a big need to have the final say, which
is very, very contrary to my family. So maybe that's my way of rebelling
against the Camacho style of being a man, is to just not need it.
I think a lot of that just comes from confidence in who I am now. It'd be
interesting to see where that D would be a while ago, because - so there
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are some people that have a very Decisive personality, and I'm not
speaking into them. I'm just speaking purely about my own stuff. I think if I
had scored a high D it would be because I was faking it, and I would like to
see if the me 10 years ago would've scored a high D just because I was
faking it for some other things.
LAURA
Right. What I think is interesting about your Decisive score is that it stays
the same in both your natural and your adaptive style, which to me says
that's truly your most authentic self coming out because it just simply
doesn't change. You're just who you are, regardless of the situation.
LESLIE
I had not noticed that before.
LAURA
Yeah.
LESLIE
To wrap it up in Decisiveness, I wonder that because I have two of my
really good friends at this point, Phil and Matt, they score high D's and
they're very authentic with that. I mean, you can just tell by interacting with
them that they're very decisive people. For me that's always been - when
I've decided something, it's decided, but the length of time it takes me to
make a decision is, I would say, outside the norm of most people
[laughter].
LAURA
Yes, which is I think why my adaptive style plummets to a score of 10,
because we both are very equitable in our decision-making together. We
both - I don't think that we really butt heads in this area, but I definitely
submit to that point where you're like, "This is the way." As long as it's still
in decision making time, it's a joint effort, but if you get to the point where
you know, I just back down [chuckles].
LESLIE
So yeah, those were the immediate things that stood out to me. One of the
questions I have for you is…Well, maybe we should back up here.
LAURA
Okay.
LESLIE
In the DISC test, the natural style is when you're on your own. If you have
100% say in how you behave and what the rules are, that's your natural
style. No one else or nothing else is putting a constriction on you.
LAURA
Yeah, not even your thinking, your social awareness.
LESLIE
Right, and so the adaptive style measures when there are constraints on
you, like when you have to work with people that are different from you in
some way, or even just another person who is relatively the same as you,
how those styles change. Mine drop across the board. All my scores drop,
some more significantly than others. On yours, your level of Caution goes
up.
LAURA
[chuckles].
LESLIE
All yours drop except the C, the cautious part. Your Caution actually
increases when you're working with other people.
LAURA
Yes.
LESLIE
What's that about?
LAURA
I think - well, I was looking at this in the context of our relationship, and I
think it's because your Caution score's so high. You have a 77 in Caution
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and you drop in your adaptive style to 53. My natural Caution is 46 and I
go up to 60. I just have to think that that's maybe meeting in the middle. In
order to get along with you and to flow better with your naturally more
cautious state, I have to get in line with a more cautious attitude and not
just [chuckles] LESLIE
So you think this is particularly reflective of who you are with me versus like when you're in a project with another person that's not me, do you
think that's still true of you? That your Caution level goes up?
LAURA
Well, yeah. I mean, think about in relationship with our kids. I have to be
more cautious than they are because they don't have the world experience
to know what's best for them. So yeah, I think that would go up. I've
definitely become a more cautious person as I've been a parent. I won't
take the same kind of physical risks that I wouldn't have thought twice of
when - before I was married, before I had kids.
LESLIE
The other thing I noticed about you is that my Decisiveness stays the same
but on yours, your Interactive stays the same. You're just as interactive on
your own - a steady 60 - as you are when you're in a group. I would
definitely say that's true about you.
LAURA
Oh yeah.
LESLIE
Your level of willingness to be a part of someone's mission or job is pretty
steady regardless.
LAURA
Yeah. That definitely was - that totally reflected me, I think. As we go
through where it really breaks stuff down in how to communicate with each
other and stuff later on in the discussion of the test, that's where my - the
Interactive score is where I think I am most accurately described, because
I am very much a people person. As much as I am an introvert, I love
people and I love collaboration.
I think that actually that's one of the places where we most started to
diverge, is because mine started higher but also remained the same, and
your Interactive score's 39 and it drops to 25, which I think is interesting.
When you are working with a team you become less interactive.
LESLIE
Yes.
LAURA
Why is that?
LESLIE
Most of the time because when I'm working with a team, I'm the one
creating the environment in which others succeed. My job as a team
leader has rarely been to do the actual work alongside people. Historically,
and still true for the most part right now, with the exception of the one-onone coaching that I do - but that's not really a team in the sense that I think
they're talking about it.
When I was part of a team, my role is to move obstacles for others so they
can do their best work, so a lot of my job becomes exploratory in the sense
that - like if you come to me and say, "Hey, I need this for Wild Goose
Guidance," my job isn't to challenge you necessarily. It's to ask a few
questions, make sure it's a legitimate need, then go do that and make sure
that obstacle gets removed.
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So a lot of my natural tendency is to get out of the way in terms of letting
people do the work that they need to do. I don't micromanage. I'm not a
person who cracks the whip. I'm a person that helps set goals and then
encourages, then provides resources and basically - I actually see myself
as a mini-team inside a team where I have a separate task. Even though
the team shares the same goal, I don't do the same job.
If I'm working with designers and developers and people who have very
specific tasks to do, even though I'm on their team I don't share those
tasks at all. My task just becomes making sure they have everything they
need to do their best work.
LAURA
That has really interesting implications for the marriage partnership.
LESLIE
It does.
LAURA
I may have to think that over a little bit. Do you have anything - any
observations on that?
LESLIE
I've always found this part of what I do difficult to verbalize. I know I tried it
once with you way back in November.
LAURA
[chuckles] You made me so mad.
LESLIE
You got really mad at me when you described how I do things. I've sworn
off using that phrase -
LAURA
Thank you.
LESLIE
- so I won't use that same phrase, but this score reflects that. When we
talked about it in November, you were kind of like, "Here's what I want to
do and I'm not sure." My response to you was, "I'm not sure exactly what
I'm going to do but we're going to create an environment in which you can
do that." So here we are in March and we've created an environment in
which you can do that.
LAURA
See, I'm already getting pissed off [chuckles]. It just feels like you take
credit for the work.
LESLIE
But I'm not taking credit for anything. I'm just saying that in order for you to
do the work that needed to be done, your environment needed to change.
The culture that you were in needed to change. The way that you were
interacting with me and my family and yourself needed to change. So
there's a lot of little stuff that goes into all of that and I see that as my job, is
to helping make shifts in all those auxiliary things that are going to allow
you to do your best work. So I take no credit for the work that you've done,
but I do take I think an equal share of credit in creating the environment
that allows you to do it, that empowers you to do it. Maybe "allow" is too
strong a word but that really enables you to be the best you can in the
environment that you're in.
That's always been my role. It's the same thing. When I'm working with a
team to create software, I never take credit for the software. But will I take
credit for creating a culture and environment that allowed them to do their
best work? Yeah. That's my gift, that's my role; to bring out the best in
people, to bring out the best in their environment. So I don't take any credit
for the work or any credit for the personal growth that you've done and the
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hard work you've done, but I do like to think I've made a very positive
impact in everything around you that has helped you do that.
LAURA
Yeah. I think where I get stuck is that it doesn't feel as collaborative as I
want it to, because you do take a very invisible role in those things,
because you aren't, like you said, the cracker of the whip. So the
collaboration that you do offer is not the same kind that I offer.
LESLIE
Yeah, but that's not true either. It's not invisible. I've done it out in the
open right in front of you. There's been no secretive things about it. But
I've made you a part of it to the point where you've taken ownership of it.
So you feel like - you legitimately feel it has been a lot of your own effort to
get you to this point too in creating this environment. That's why it's difficult
for me to describe it, because there is no secret hidden things that I've
done behind the scenes. It's all been out in the open.
But it doesn't feel like work and it doesn't feel like a shift, and so it ends up
feeling invisible to you and that's exactly how I want it to be, because I
don't want those auxiliary things to feel like effort. I want them to feel like
small wins, to feel like, "Yeah, of course that's the way we do things," or
"Yeah, that makes a lot of sense," and then it just leaves your mind and
instead of thinking about it, you just do it and it's just the new normal.
That's what I do, is I help create that and I try to do out in the open.
his goes back to the hard conversations I've had with my teams because it
jars people, just like it's jarring you, because that's exactly what I said I
would do in November and I told you upfront - "Here's what's going to
happen. We're going to create an environment, it's going to allow you to
thrive. I have no idea what's on the other side but something good for you
is going to come out of this, and for us as a whole, and it's going to look
like I've done nothing and everything at the same time," and that's exactly
what you're talking about right here.
LAURA
Yeah, and I still can't get my head around it. But thank you [chuckles].
LESLIE
It's okay. I'm not sure that I do either. But yeah, that's what's - it's hard for
me to describe but that's why the Interactive goes down, because it's we're building something together but my part - I've always seen my part is
to be an enabler versus doing your work for you. I think - because that's
something I can't do. I can't do the work for someone else. My coaching
clients is the same thing. I can create an environment that hopefully will
give them clarity, that will hopefully help them think better, that will
hopefully allow for better strategic decisions. I can make
recommendations and play some consulting in there too, but ultimately I
can't do that work for them and that's why I can't take credit for it.
Same thing for you. I can't take any credit for Wild Goose Guidance, for
the impact you've having on those lives, for the actual work that you're
doing. There's not a scenario where we could collaborate interactively that
would allow me to share in that work, because I don't have those same
gifts that you do. Same thing with programming. I can't roll up my sleeves
and get involved in the code, I don't have that talent. Same thing when I
work with designers, I can't roll up my sleeves and help with the design
because I don't have that.
But what I do have in spades is the ability to create environments, create
empathy, create connections, and help solve - not help solve but help
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people ask the right questions, and when you ask the right questions and
you provide a way to answer those questions that is a large majority - that
is a large part of the work, but it's not the work itself. So that's the role that
I play.
LAURA
Well, you're awesome [laughter].
LESLIE
Thank you.
LAURA
Do you have any more comments on these little bar charts or shall we
move to the discussion section?
LESLIE
No. I think that we should actually go into the communication portion. I
think that's what you're talking about?
LAURA
Yeah. The communication with others.
LESLIE
Page 18, for those of you following along in our DISC Profiles.
LAURA
Okay.
LESLIE
Yeah, actually page 18 and then I think 19 as well in there. This section of
the profile is actually one of the most useful because it goes into your
preferred training and learning style. It teaches you about yourself, about
how you prefer to learn and share knowledge, and then it also has a
section about how you should communicate and how others should
communicate with you. I think those are both fairly -
LAURA
It's gold [chuckles].
LESLIE
Not fairly. They're both very, very insightful and I think my test nailed me. I
found stuff about myself that is very true but I would not have
acknowledged its truthiness unless I'd seen it in writing and had the
opportunity to really think about it.
LAURA
Like what?
LESLIE
For me, in my preferred learning style I really want people to understand
the principles and concepts behind what I do. That's one of the things that
it wants - to provide participants the ability to understand principles and
concepts. I don't think I'd ever put it that way but that is so, so true of me.
I start with the big picture, I try to start with the underlying values, I try to
get to the concepts. Again, I think this is something that changed pretty
significantly for me early on in my career at EllisLab. I forget who showed
it to me but it's when I read the essay Hackers and Painters that really
changed everything about how I interact with creative professionals.
The basic premise in Hackers and Painters is that you want to create
empathy between the person experiencing the problem and the person
solving the problem. The way you do that is that you really help the person
who has the potential to create a solution understand the problem, and
generally you can't understand a problem unless you understand the
concepts behind the problems, the bigger picture behind it. So I have
spent a good majority of the last decade really doing research, study, and
professional growth in trying to figure out how to communicate things at a
very high level that also impacts emotionally, so that when people
experience it - so that when I explain something to them they really to
some effect start having that empathetic connection.
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I try to do that even with things that seem like empathy is a waste of time.
In the design world, we have this idea that you should never argue over
whether a button is green or blue. If your client starts making those sorts
of demands - "Make this blue button green because I say so" - what they're
really saying is, "I'm not making an emotional connection with this." I try to
avoid those questions by helping the designer understand that in their color
scheme or in the design stuff, the constrictions are going to be this or that.
But instead of describing those constrictions as concrete stuff - like "Don't
make it red" - I will instead do the inverse and say, "This client, and more
importantly this client's customers, really value openness," or, "They really
value family. Families are really important to their particular audience, and
it's a multicultural audience so you can't just assume American family
values. You have to go deeper and understand family at a more
multicultural, diverse state."
So we might go into that even though all we're trying to do is come up with
a color scheme for the site. If a designer understands that, when someone
- when the client says, "Make the button green," then we can take a stand
and say, "Well, green's not a good idea and here's why - because your
audience values this and the solution provides this, and we're trying to
make this connection." So you can make an argument based on empathy
and based on what your audience needs, and you're not just then
answering about a button but you're answering about the entirety of their
experience with every little portion of it.
So that one line sums up all that stuff I just said about me. Even in the
meeting I had with my team this morning that's where we started, was the
big picture. We've been talking about how to brand something and how to
develop a visual identity. The creative direction that I started with had
nothing to do with any sort of visuals; I just said, "Our brand is translating
the trust we have with each other into something visual and copy. So what
does our trust look like? What does it feel like?" We began describing the
relationships between us and how that looks, and that's the creative
direction. It wasn't, "I like blue. What do you like?" "I like red." "Why do
you like red?" "I like strength." That's a very low level discussion to have
when you're trying to make actual connections with people.
LAURA
Yeah.
LESLIE
Like right now, I'm trying to make myself understood [laughter] with the
concepts.
LAURA
Well, I think it's really funny that the way that you prefer to share
knowledge or teach is with helping people understand principles and
concepts, and things to avoid to effectively communicate with Laura is
avoid getting bogged down in facts, figures or abstractions [chuckles].
LESLIE
Yes, I've found that to be very true about you.
LAURA
I actually prefer to just be told what to do or the way things are so that I
have a starting point, and then I'm happy to totally disregard that or to
discuss it and come back around to it. But having to go from the top down
sometimes really, really just frustrates me and makes me want to stop
even talking, because I want to just get to the point first and then work it
out from there.
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LESLIE
Yeah, that is something I've had to learn and adapt to how you do things,
and that took me a while. The first time we tried to do something was
actually do a project together post-kids. We ran into that a lot early on.
This time we haven't because we just decided to do it and I increased my
decisiveness by saying, "Here's our starting point and you can edit if you
want, otherwise we're doing this," and that really helped.
LAURA
Oh yeah.
LESLIE
Because you have no problem being an editor and having - entering into
the discussion that way. You just don't want to necessarily share all the
insight and background stuff behind it as to the why. So if I take the lead
on the why then you kind of pick it apart editorial-style and you inevitably
make things better. You have a real gift for that, so that part hasn't been
challenging at all. It's not like - sometimes with a client, with a really bad
client [chuckles] - we did this when we worked together in a marketing firm,
is you try to pick the one that the client would never pick and enter it in
there, and it always backfires.
LAURA
Right.
LESLIE
I never have to do that with you. It's like, "This is the way it is, here's how it
is," and then you never have a problem really standing up for something
you want differently, but you like that starting point given to you.
LAURA
Yes, very much, because I have the confidence to say no. I won't back
down if I think it's a bad idea or if it's not going to work for me, but - yeah, I
don't mind being told what to do because I'm happy to disregard it
[laughter]. Is that - what was my S? I'm not very submissive in that? Well,
anyway.
What else about - let's go down to the Communication Insights. Were any
of those illuminating for you?
LESLIE
I had a problem in trying to come up with discussion points for this part of
the test because I felt like it both really nailed us, so I felt like it was - I
wasn't sure where to go with it, in terms of it. I think going into what you
were talking about - "Just tell me what to do and I'll disregard it or do it in
my own" - I think they're along the same ways, is that I found it really helps
to have a common area of interest with you. That's one of the things. It
says, "Find a common area of interest or involvement." I have found that
to be really, really worthwhile with you, to go outside of my comfort zone,
especially when it comes to anything food related. That is - well, I didn't
mean the pun quite this way but it's like low hanging fruit with you.
LAURA
[chuckles].
LESLIE
If I really want to make a connection and let you know that I'm trying and
value you, I will just eat whatever you make or whatever you want to try at
a restaurant, and be adventurous with you that way. It can be a challenge
for me because there's something about the Aagaard side of you where
you want me to try stuff you hate.
LAURA
[chuckles] Because it's the shared experience that matters the most.
LESLIE
Exactly. I can't remember how many times in our marriage, in our
relationship even prior to getting married, you'll say, "This is terrible! This
is one of the worst things I've ever eaten!" and you'll take a whole heaping
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forkful and shove it in my face. I'd be like, "Why would you - I don't
understand. You just said this is a terrible, terrible experience and yet
here's a big forkful of this nasty thing."
LAURA
Shared experience, baby [chuckles].
LESLIE
I have found that it is much more beneficial to our relationship to just eat
whatever's being offered [laughter] and share the terrible with you.
LAURA
That's hilarious. The thing that was - all of these I figured out over the
years and this is where I'm talking about the most - where it would've been
so helpful to have these before we married or right as we were getting
married, especially with the communications. "Prepare your case in
advance. Don't wing it using charm alone when talking with Leslie." It's so
true. Leslie does not process on the fly, whereas I process verbally and I
figure out my stance on things while talking it through. In a single
conversation I can change my idea about reality several times, and I think
that's really hard for you.
So if something's very important to me that you agree with me right away, I
have to work it out all by myself first and come with a very, very
straightforward, well thought out idea to talk to you about, and then we can
discuss it. But I cannot come in with a half-baked idea and try to figure it
out with you. It just stresses you out and you're more likely to just shut
down and not want to talk about it or work through it at all.
LESLIE
Well, there's a caveat there, and you said it. The amount of stress that
causes me is directly proportional to how quickly the decision needs to be
made.
LAURA
Yes [chuckles].
LESLIE
Because I love processing things verbally, I love talking things out, I just
don't love it if you need a decision in five minutes. That's antithetical to
how I think and operate, and in that case I either want you to just make the
decision or have me make the decision and then we act on it. But I'm not
interested in talking it out on such short notice. If that's the case, I put my
brain - I overclog my brain when that happens.
In a work situation, if someone came to me and said, "Oh, Les, man, did
we blow it. Here's the situation. So-and-so said this on Twitter," or there's
this bug, or there's this thing or whatever, "and it feels like we have to act
now." Maybe that feeling's true, maybe we do. At that point I either need
them to tell me a recommendation so I can say yes or no to that or I need
them to say, "Here's all the information that you need. Now I'm going to go
away. Please solve this in 10 minutes." Because I'm capable of that and
I'm actually really good at that, but I'm not interactive in that situation.
LAURA
No [chuckles]. No, you really don't naturally process interactively.
LESLIE
I turn my decision making from its normal 3 to 11, my brain goes 100 miles
an hour, and I go through what it feels like are hundreds of decision trees,
and I go through multiple, multiple scenarios extremely quickly in my brain
until what comes to what I think is the best thing. At that point I want to talk
about it quickly with someone so I might call them back or hit them up or
whatever and say, "Okay, here's where I'm at 10 minutes later. This, this,
this, this - yes/no?" I've tried to narrow the decision trees down from
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hundreds of options down to two or three, then we talk those out quickly
and we act on it. But for someone who wants a decision made in 15
minutes and wants to talk it out loud right there from a starting point of zero
to finish decision? No. I hate that.
LAURA
Yeah, and I learned that I value that strength that you have so much that I
don't want to overuse it. I don't want to say, "Where do you think we
should eat?" as we're on the road, hungry and looking for a place to eat. I
need to just make the decision because you will go through the same
process for where to go out to eat, and it's mentally draining. Then you're
kind of burnt out for any sort of conversation afterwards because your brain
has just been through this incredibly rigorous exercise.
LESLIE
Yeah, that's true. My brain does not distinguish by the importance of the
decision being asked. "Hey, Les, this might be a $1 million decision,"
versus where do you want to eat. It's the same process, same effort
[chuckles].
LAURA
Had I known that, just that one thing - "Laura, you need to prioritize what
you ask Leslie for his opinion for, because he does not know how to
prioritize in those ways. Instinctively his brain does not work that way" - oh
my, that would've saved so much frustration. And for me, I don't mind
making decisions and telling people how it's going to be, but there's - that
score that drops to 10, which one was that?
LESLIE
Decisiveness.
LAURA
Yeah. My Decisiveness drops to 10 when I'm in collaboration. That's the
point where I have actually needed to overcome because when I'm in
collaboration with you, in a lot of scenarios I need to be the decision maker
because most of them do not require your amazing brain to go through
hundreds of decision trees and find the perfect decision. We just need to
eat in 10 minutes. I'll just say, "I'm really craving Mexican. Unless you
think your body's going to rebel, let's go to this place," then it just gives you
the two-decision tree.
LESLIE
Yeah.
LAURA
I've bypassed all of the work for you so your brain doesn't have to go there.
ALANA
Mommy, oh Mommy! I need a wipe!!!
LESLIE
I don't know if you can hear in the background. Our daughter needs your
services, just briefly.
LAURA
She's trapped on the potty [chuckles].
LESLIE
So we're going to take a quick imperceptible break for a very humorous
interruption.
All right. We're ready to finish this up. As you can probably hear in the
background - maybe not, depending how much the mic is picking up - the
natives are getting restless at the Camacho household.
I just wanted to point out one more thing I saw about yours. It's the things
to effectively avoid or to - yeah, things to avoid when communicating with
you. The second one on your list is "Don't threaten with position or power.”
I would actually flip that to something I find really valuable about you, or
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really endearing is probably the better word. I think the better way to say it
is "Not threatened by position or power.”
LAURA
Yeah.
LESLIE
I can bring you into any situation, whether dealing with someone off the
streets or a high powered executive, and you're always going to be you.
You are not fazed by someone's position either - no matter where they are
on the social ladder, they always get your best self, and I love that about
you. It's been really important to me because it's something - to me, it's
put into a testable form, as it were, that my value to you isn't influenced by
the amount of position or power I have professionally. Doesn't matter if I'm
a solo consultant, it doesn't matter if I'm the CEO of a software company,
doesn't matter if I'm doing something completely different. It doesn't matter
if we're living in somebody's basement like we've done before, doesn't
matter if we're making a super amount of money. All those things matter,
just they don't matter to you in terms of how you value me or how you see
me, and I just cherish that. I really love that about you.
LAURA
Aww, thanks.
LESLIE
So that's where I wanted to end my commentary on this.
LAURA
I think we'd probably better wrap the whole show up because it's not going
to be long before everyone's banging on the door here.
LESLIE
The takeaway here is that we could talk for a long time about this stuff.
There's just a wealth of information, and so the invitation here is not to
download our profiles - you can certainly do that out of sheer curiosity - but
to rather go take the test yourself, learn about yourself, and show it to your
loved one, see what they think of it. Let yourself be vulnerable to their
input there and then ask them to take it, then you can also have a fun
discussion. Well, hopefully fun discussion [laughter].
LAURA
It's so illuminating. Just the section of how to effectively or not effectively
communicate. That alone is just incredibly valuable information because
99% of your relationship with someone is communication. You really want
to be able to communicate effectively. This was a really great, great test to
take, I really enjoyed it. I love personality tests, I've taken lots, but this has
been I think the most useful and really accurate.
LESLIE
Fun fact for listeners. Laura has a degree in psychology.
LAURA
Yes [chuckles].
LESLIE
Maybe not a fun fact for Laura.
LAURA
Well, no, I loved it but - yeah, I loved my psych classes and my professors.
LESLIE
All right. I think we should jump straight into what we're going to do for
each other this week
LAURA
No pause?
LESLIE
No pause. Are you ready?
LAURA
You go first.
LESLIE
[chuckles] So I feel bad saying this two weeks in a row. Still haven't had
the time to follow through on Marco's suggestion. But what I'd like to do for
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you this week is to make sure that our buffer time between driving back
from Portland and starting up again Monday is really meaningful, just
making sure I'm present. I know I'm going to have to do some work on
Sunday with the team I'm working with for the things that we're trying to do.
I just want to make a public commitment that that's my professional priority,
and above that is you and our family, and above that's my sanity, and
above that's God. I've tried really hard keeping those priorities and I've
seen the fruits of it - yesterday going to OMSI. We switched the schedule
around and basically tanked my day. I had to stay up late to do it, and then
even there I went to bed early, made sure, and I just - there was real
tension in my mind about all of that, but so far this year sticking to those
priorities has done a world of good for my own heart, for our family.
I just want to make that specific commitment for the buffer time.
Traditionally when we come back from a trip I go right into all the stuff I've
fallen behind on, check out and leave the buffer time for me to reset myself
professionally, and I leave the resetting of everything else to you. So this
time when we get back, I really want to make sure that I'm actively present
and involved in the family reset that we generally need after a trip.
LAURA
Wow, thank you. Can I just piggyback on that and say I'm with you? I
want to do that with you. It's a two-person job getting our kiddos settled
back in, so yeah, let's do that. That sounds wonderful.
LESLIE
That does sound wonderful. [brief moment of silence] Ah, a moment. We
haven't had one of those on the podcast.
LAURA
No. We almost kissed. We haven't shared - oh [smoochie sound]
[chuckles]. We just haven't shared a microphone for so long. There just
hasn't been the opportunity.
LESLIE
I know. It's the only downside of our setup there. Okay, that's going to do
it for the show today folks. Thank you, guys, so much for listening. As
always, the most important thing that you can do to help the show is let us
know where you're at. What are you struggling with? What are you really
happy with? Are there any resources that are working for you? Any things
you think we should avoid that you'd like to share with the rest of the
Marriage Startup community? Let us know.
You can do that by emailing us at hello@marriagestartup.com and as
always, anything you email us is considered private unless we have your
written permission to share that in some way. If you want to share publicly
just off the boat, you can leave a comment to this show specifically by
going to marriagestartup.com/32. That's the shortcut to comment on every
show on our website. Or you can leave us a message on Facebook at
facebook.com/marriagestartup. For you Twitter people, go find us on
Facebook [laughter] until we have a chance - we love you.
I guess we didn't really talk about it but we met some Marriage Startup
people up here in Portland yesterday. We didn't talk about them
specifically on the show, so we won't mention their names here, but I do
want to say a public thank you for the invitation and the hospitality, and for
just making it seem so normal. That's what I loved about our dinner last
night. We showed up, it felt like we were sitting down with old friends,
there wasn't any heavy expectation on either side, and we just shared a
meal with our families. It was great. Thank you, guys, so much for that.
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If you want to help promote the show, like help the show be successful and
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Again, like we said last week, if you'd like to sponsor the show financially in
some way and contribute, we would love that. There are real monthly
expenses to it every week, and every month, and we would love to be able
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If you're interested in doing that for us, please email us at
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Anything else?
LAURA
As always, be kind to each other.
LESLIE
Oh, and let us know what you think of the music this week. All right. We'll
see you guys next week.
[outro music]
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