You’re at a dinner party, the music is louder than it should be, you know a handful of people and make your way around the room with a lot of small talk. After 45-minutes of chatter, you land in a really great conversation with someone who has interesting things to say. That’s Christine.
She cuts through the minutiae and digs into who you are. So many people work from home these days, and without the corporate office, the elevator commute and the water cooler banter, it is so rare to connect with someone with similar professional focus and drive.
When you have someone like Christine as part of your mentor circle, you sit them down and ask them a bunch of questions. Then you put it in your blog and share it.
With that intro, Mind Your Biz Presents…Mindset Impacts Outcome, an interview with Christine Roberts. Here’s what Christine had to say during our recent discussion on work, life, coaching and the impact of people’s mindset on their own personal success:
Q/A
Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you want people to know about you?
I’m a mother, wife, business woman and I love people. I consider myself a student of personal growth and student of myself and of human behavior. I’ve always been curious about why I feel certain ways, and have always strived to be intentional about my life and helping others do the same.
I currently work for the Disney Institute, partnering with companies to apply ‘the Disney Magic’ to their organization. I’m also an author, writer, and speaker and those are the other parts of me that fill my spirit.
What do you find are the benefits or drawbacks of working from home?
I appreciate the flexibility working from home allows in my life. I do like structure too and have a similar schedule for each day. I’ve set up systems and processes to create efficiencies to be effective. I’d have to say time management is the biggest key to successfully working from home. It allows me to get involved in the community, pick my kids up, get my house in order and I constantly repeat my mantra ‘I am present and my life runs at the perfect pace.’
Digging In
Throughout your professional and personal career paths, who has been your biggest influences?
One of the biggest influences in my life, during middle and beginning of high school, was actually a teacher who lived up the street from me named Kay Baier. I grew up in an abusive environment, but Kay respected me, and she helped me to believe that what I said mattered. She impacted my life in that important way. Also, a former boss of mine, John Bihr, that demonstrated strong leadership. There’s also Tony Robbins, Dennis Weightly, John Maxwell and Brian Tracy, as well as lots of other leaders in the personal growth space.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
I think it was when I was told, “you have to slow down to speed up.” Meaning, when life feels out of control, you must slow down to assess what’s happening, what needs to change, and what systems need to be put into place. Another piece of advice I’ve received was to “be authentic to who you are.” When you’re comfortable in your own skin and know your values, that provides a filter for all decisions, eg. who you surround yourself with, what you say yes to and how you prioritize the various components of your life. Again, it’s about being a student of yourself and understanding why you do what you do, which, hopefully, inspires awareness and intentionality.
Coaching
As a fellow coach, I’m curious to know why you feel coaching is valuable?
From a Life Coaching perspective, It’s helping people see their own potential. Most people don’t realize how great they are. Coaching helps people sort out their thinking, and helping them realize they can do more than they thought possible. Sometimes it takes someone asking the right questions in order to see the bigger picture. Then you can sort out, prioritize, and create accountability with a road map of where you need to go.
From a Business Coaching perspective, I would say that providing a mirror for leaders to be introspective about how they are experienced by others. Again, it boils down to self awareness, leveraging strengths while minimizing weaknesses and recognizing blindspots. Our strengths in overdrive become our blindspots which can be detrimental to a leader whether in business or your personal life.
Coaching clients want to know about the outcome of coaching. What are some measurable results you’ve seen based on your experience?
I typically begin a Life Coaching interaction with a “life wheel” to evaluate all facets of a person’s life. That allows the client and me to assess the different categories and determine areas of focus. Sometimes a person has a perception that everything is awful, although identifying areas where things are going well and areas of growth potential takes the blinders off and helps create direction. My objective is to help get people unstuck. The client and I assess their situation at the beginning and document milestones they’re working toward. At the end of the process we review so they can see how far they’ve come.
Another tool with regards to Business Coaching is a 360 assessment which provides insight to how that leader is experienced by those he/she influences. This provides a benchmark of what areas to work on, at the end of the coaching engagement, the assessment is completed again to provide quantifiable measures of progress.
Action Required
What are some of the commonalities you’ve discovered among coaching clients?
I find the biggest common denominator is that people are most willing to change out of fear/pain or desire. As a life coach, my experience is that the people I interact with are in pain before they’ll move to a place of openness to coaching. I also find that 10% of people are just always in a funk, 10% are in personal growth mode, and about 80% are just going through life.
We all know that coaching is not a fix-all. What is an example of where coaching can fall short?
When you have people who say they want to change, but they aren’t willing to take action. It’s hard to inspire those people who struggle with a lack of personal accountability. I can’t force a person to change their behavior, there has to be an intrinsic “why” so there have been times when it requires some tough love, so to speak.
Mindset
You often talk about changing your mindset to change your behavior. How do you believe that mindset impacts outcome?
Everything comes down to how we perceive things. There’s a Bible verse that I always quote when I’m discussing this, Phil. 4:8 which says, “…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
Everything that happens is an event and how we experience that event depends on our perception of how we see it. Belief tends to drive behavior and if you focus on goodness and pure and noble things that input will drive your experience. I think we live in a time when we’re inundated with negativity and ugliness and people become desensitized to it all, but it impacts people and behaviors more than anyone realizes.
Life can be great and we have to do our best not to get caught up in our cultural current. If you’re not happy, there are things you can change, and there are always trade offs, it’s a matter of determining your priorities and if it’s worth it. You can sell your house, pop into an RV, and drive across the country for a year to change your perspective if you need to. That’s what I did! (check out the “Rolling with the Roberts” blog . I’ll admit, it’s not for everyone, but it is an example of how you can step aside and take control and make changes to make it possible.
Takeaway
For more on Christine, check her out online. We’re lucky to have her in our circle. We are firm believers that you’re only as good as the people you surround yourself with. Choose people who test your thinking, provoke you to reach your potential, and challenge your status quo.