In this empowering episode, Dr. Robin Buckley shares how you can apply business strategies to strengthen your marriage. If you’re struggling to balance work and relationships, or if you feel overwhelmed by marital challenges, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What 180 thinking does to control negative thoughts and improve communication
– Why business skills like strategy can enhance your marriage across all stages
– How to create a mission statement to align your relationship goals
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast, where here with us today is yet another high demand coach in the one and only, Dr Robin Buckley, who earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Hofstra University with specialized training in cognitive behavioral methodology and executive coaching. Multiple media multiple media platforms featured her work, including entrepreneur, Chief authority magazine, Nike and even the TED stage. As an international speaker, Robin focuses on applying cognitive behavioral strategies to mental wellness in the workplace and women’s equity and empowerment. And as a coach, Robin applies cognitive behavioral tactics to help organizations, couples and individuals, create strategic plans for personal and professional success. And she’s got a very, very cool book that we’re going to talk about here today called Marriage Inc, building a or build a thriving relationship with a business mindset, very excited to dive in. Well, first off, Dr Robin, thanks so much for being on the show. I’m excited to have you here for this conversation today, talking about the founder’s guide to marriage. I think that’s where we’re going with this. And you argue in the book that marriage isn’t hard work, but requires diligence, attention, nurturement, dedication and strategy. Five things that, if we’re honest, founders are generally pretty good, at at least, most of them in business. So why is it that so many founders struggle to apply these same skills to their marriages?
Dr. Robin Buckley
Yeah, it’s really simple, Scott. I think that we have been raised in society that business and our personal relationships are different, that they’re different worlds, that we should keep those boundaries. We’re taught, you know, to make sure they have those boundaries, to keep those areas of our lives healthy. But I argue that while the boundaries are sometimes good in terms of designated time and focusing, that why reinvent the wheel if we’re good at things in our professional life, particularly as founders. Why couldn’t those same skills and strategies be applied to our relationships? For the same level of success, we don’t have to become a different person or try different things, the things that we do well or that we really apply successfully at work, can do the same thing in our relationships. So it’s breaking down just that that societal construct that work and in a home life or relationships are essentially different because they’re actually not.
Scott Ritzheimer
So practically speaking, what dive right in with this? Start at the very beginning. You know, oftentimes, when you’re figuring out what you want your business to be all about, you start with a mission statement and a vision statement. And so how, can crafting these in their company? How can they take that skill and apply it to a marriage? And what’s the benefit or the result that you tend to see in folks who do?
Dr. Robin Buckley
Right, founders can tell me clearly why mission and vision statements are important for a business. There are no successful businesses out there that don’t have both of those in place, and the same benefits happen when you apply it to your relationship. Although I would say about 99% of the clients I work with don’t have a relationship, mission and or vision statement, but it offers the same direction unity, focus on shared values, focus on the ultimate goal. And so when we build in this practice of not only creating these statements in our relationships, but then posting them and revisiting them as dynamic tools as our relationship evolves, just like we would in a business. And maybe it doesn’t happen for 1015, years, because the current mission and vision statement worked, but when it needs some tweaking, then we can do it, but it creates that, that unified direction for the couple, so that there isn’t any kind of miscommunication or completely different ideas of where the relationship is going.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, you have this really cool model that you depict in the book. It’s very, very simple. And if I remember correctly, it’s why, how? What is that right, right? And so just, if you’re like, What is a mission statement for a marriage? Well, first off, get the book, because there’s all kinds of detail in there about it. But just simply ask, like, why, right? How, how, like, how are we going to behave? How are we going to engage with each other, and what’s that look like? What are we going to do and do it together? So, why? How? Yeah, why? How? What I love that it was just so simple, it jumped right off the page at me?
Dr. Robin Buckley
Yeah. And that’s a kind of joke that’s been around because Simon Sinek created it. It’s his golden circle approach. And I’ve always appreciated it because it simplifies it, and it keeps people focusing on three questions, one word questions that they can apply in their professional life, but also in their personal life.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, you’ve also got this great concept in the book and moving toward identifying pain points as opposed to problems. Great, great language there. It’s funny how little semantics can make such a big difference. So. What’s the difference between a pain point and a problem? And for those who are very used to solving problems at work, how can they translate this into helping relieve pain points at home?
Dr. Robin Buckley
Right. So you’re right. Semantics are important. They’re not just words. It’s how our brain hears it and interprets it when we talk about problems, there is typically an emotional reaction just to that word, and we see it as something really negative pain points. Creates a little more objectivity, and it allows us to think about, okay, how is this a challenge that we can work around, that we’re going to come up with some solutions for? It is not as as intimidating as a problem, because problems might ask and not be fixable, but a pain point is and we know this in business. So when we talk about, when the couples I work with, we talk about, okay, what are the pain points? They can talk about pain points in much more objective terms than problems. Typically, when we talk about problems, then a lot of times, it disintegrates into resentment and bitterness and blame, whereas pain points are okay. What is we? What are we dealing with as an organization? And when I talk about an organization, it’s the couple. What are we as the organization of our partnership? What are we dealing with that we want to overcome so we continue to flourish?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. I love that. So a lot of particularly successful founders tend to become pros at controlling chaos, right? It’s just that they’re professional business plate spinners, but you make the argument, I think, very well in the book, that we also need to control our brains, and particularly in relationship and so coming from your back down background, your PhD, this really cool mix of cognitive behavioral world and executive coaching, right? Not a whole lot of folks who have both of those expertise. What? Maybe you could boil that down to, one, what does that mean? And two, what’s a simple strategy that we could take and run with as early as today?
Dr. Robin Buckley
Right. So what I always tell people, Scott, is that the cognitive behavioral strategies seem like either too easy or a little bit fluffy, and so I always help clients understand what is the neuroscience behind them. How are you actually, literally changing your brain when you use these strategies? So when I talk about making your brain your ally instead of your adversary, for your relationship, is knowing how your brain works, and then, even more importantly, how the specific cognitive behavioral strategies work on your brain. What most of us do is we let our brains run us like a toddler on caffeine, and we just let it run rampant, and that’s what undermines our successful handling of any situation in our life, whether it’s work or family or relationship. So the strategies that I work with clients on involve understanding first, what parts of the brain the strategies are going to target, whether prefrontal cortex or the amygdala, and then actually practicing because the strategies aren’t hard, it’s developing the habits to use the strategies that are the challenge for a lot of people. And one of the easiest, I think it’s one of the easiest, is when you catch your brain asking the the really negative or horrible, what ifs so? What if my spouse leaves me? What if my spouse is cheating on me? What if we can’t get past this pain point, most of us ruminate on those what ifs, and they just spin. And that’s what wakes us up at night, and that’s what creates discontent between me and my partner. So the simple strategy is called 180 thinking, and in those moments when you have those really negative what ifs, you get to ask the exact opposite, the 180 of that. What if, so? What if my partner is cheating? What if I’m not seeing the signs correctly, or what if it’s just a miscommunication? What if we can’t get past this pain point? What if we can and our relationships gets relationship builds and gets better. You ask the opposite not to convince your brain, because your brain is a good BI good BS tool. It’ll know when you’re trying to force an idea into it and just want you to accept it, you know on no fact, but you’re allowing the brain to say, Well, if the worst case scenario is possible and hasn’t happened yet, then that means the best case scenario, or something in the middle, is possible because it hasn’t happened yet. So you engage your logical part of your brain, your strategic part of your brain, you invite it into the conversation. So it’s not just the worries that are dominating your thinking which will then dominate your behavior and likely undermine the relationship, rather than being able to have effective communication and strategic plan in the relationship.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, it’s so simple, but remarkably powerful, and they stack right when you get one or two of these, yeah, there’s all read the chapter. It’s amazing. You won’t regret it. I do want to kind of push forward, though, because there’s a lot to cover here, and the next thing that I want to dive into is this idea of delineating roles and titles, which could get real weird real quick, right? You go home and call your husband or wife, your COO or your executive assistant, that might not work super well, but what? How can we take the clarity that comes from roles and titles, and create that same kind of clarity in what we do and how we behave at home?
Dr. Robin Buckley
Right. So any of your listeners can think about this when they’ve been in a relationship and things aren’t clear as to who’s going to take care of what, or who’s in charge of, really the oversight of something. It gets really cumbersome. Things don’t happen, or we make assumptions that someone else is going to take care of it. We would never do this at work. We would never say, Hey, we’ve got this project. Let’s get it done. We would assign roles and tasks and have timelines. We don’t do this very often in our relationships, but as soon as we do, it streamlines the relationship, which means there’s more cognitive energy to devote to enhancing the relationship. And I use the example in my book. You probably remember Scott, that in my relationship, my husband is the CFO. He loves playing with numbers. He’s really good at it. I can do it. It’s just not as exciting to me. So when we merged our families, we made the decision we were both trying to pay bills at the same time. It was getting just the overlap was getting difficult. So finally, we decided, okay, who’s going to be the one to have oversight on this? And he jumped right in, because that’s his thing. Now, what it doesn’t mean is that whoever has oversight takes care of everything and doesn’t involve the other person that is a problem. That’s why there’s no real CEOs in relationships, because that would be the final stop. But he gets to come back in our monthly meetings to say, here’s where our finances are, here’s some of our investments. What do you think about these options? Do you have any other options? You have any questions? You know? What are your thoughts? So we do collaborate, but he is the one to make sure all the he brings in all the information into our meeting. I’m the COO. I like organizing our family, culture, our schedules, anything related to our health. I am, I am fully on board with over overseeing, really, the rest of our life. And I do the same in our meetings. I give them like, here’s the birthdays coming up. Here’s what we’re doing socially. Here’s the important things we need to remember in terms of medical stuff and whatever. And it works, because he doesn’t have to worry about that stuff until I bring it to his attention. I don’t have to worry about the finance till we have our monthly catch ups, unless he calls an emergency meeting. And we do that in everything in our life, so that it’s very clear who has the oversight of each area of our life, and then that person brings the other one in to make decisions.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I I spend a lot of time working with the companies that I help, helping them build the right cadence of the right meetings, right we spend a lot of time on that, getting an organization to work together efficiently, because you can have too many, you can have too few. You can have, you know, right the right amount, but talk about the wrong things. And I was listening to another podcast, I think of Jordan Peterson, was talking about he and his wife have like, a 90 minute meeting, I think, every week, something like that. And he said, from his opinion, as a psychologist, that marriages happen whenever you don’t have 10,000 fights, right? And so when, when should we meet? How often should we meet, and what should we talk about?
Dr. Robin Buckley
Right. I usually suggest with couples, I love the idea of a weekly meeting, but I work with a lot of busy couples that would be very challenging. So I say at minimum once a month. Once a month you designate, and I also say 60 minutes, because most meetings after 60 minutes, people are tired, and that’s when emotions can come in. And we don’t want a lot of emotional reactions in these meetings. So once a month, you put it on your calendar and you adhere to it like any other meeting. You don’t say, oh, yeah, we’ll just we’ll do that tomorrow. It’s a meeting that you two have designated as important, and then creating an agenda, which I know sounds a little bit too structured for a relationship, but again, why do we have a meet? Why do we have agendas in our work meetings? Is to make sure we cover everything. There’s a flow, there’s documentation as to what we’ve talked about. Why would that be any less important in one of the most important parts of our life, which are our relationships. So I tell couples that what can really be beneficial is either to create a Google Doc or a shared notes on their phones, and they add to their agenda throughout the month. So as things pop up, they put it on on the agenda for conversation, and this is every. Rethink, Scott from, you know, the operational day to day stuff like scheduling and finances, all the way to intimacy and physical connection, everything that impacts their relationship is discussed in these meetings, and what it does. And I love how you reference the 10,000 little fights, is instead of walking through the kitchen and saying, Oh yeah, by the way, you know, there was this investment that came up, and you know, we’ll have to talk about that over lunch, which might interrupt someone’s line of thinking they’re heading off to a meeting, you know, and that disrupts everything. Or, you know, that really irritated me when you did that. And again, it sets the whole tone for the day. Now you have a designated place to store this information so it doesn’t get lost, and then ideally an objective place to have a conversation. Say, you know, a couple weeks ago when you said that, that really bothered me, and I’ve been thinking about that some more, and I want to address that so we come up with some SOPs so we can avoid that. It also creates that distance between the incident that sets someone off and time to actually now have a strategic conversation about it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, there was a tool, I think you could call it, for lack of a better term, that I loved, not just for relationship, but also for work that I think a lot of founders failed to implement. It was called the no other zone. And so I’m wondering if you could share, what is the no other zone, and how can it serve us, both at work and at home? Yeah. Naz,
Dr. Robin Buckley
I love that too. No other zone. No other zone, is essentially at minimum 10 minutes a day that a couple sits and connects. Because what we you know, you probably have done this too, and your relationship. Scott, you know you you walk by or you come home from working, like, how was your day Good? How was your day good? And that’s it. Or, how do you think we’re doing? Oh, hey, we’re good. That is not an in depth analysis of We’re, of the state of state of the relationship, but 10 minutes a day where you can actually sit down and talk to your partner, or not talk to your partner, you’re just physically together. And for the couples that travel a lot, it’s 10 minutes where they’re they’re doing something virtually together. But I used to joke with our own kids, unless someone is bleeding or dismembered, you do not interrupt us in those 10 minutes. And I’ve had couples have the most unique places to have their meetings. They’ve met in bathrooms for 10 minutes and just sat in the bathroom together. They’ve hidden in their cars in the garage because they they know it’s important not to be interrupted. And our external, internal stakeholders, which is also in the book, can be consistent sources of interruption, which then puts the relationship far down on the list. And the relationship is what started everything. So if it’s really low on the list, what is the viability of everything else that is impacted in the couple’s life?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so true. So true. It’s great for your one on one meetings at work, just that, that dedicated, focused attention, you get so much more out of it. It’s fantastic. So I’d be remiss to not ask this question, because it’s probably sitting in the back of someone’s mind. But does, does everything apply? Or there are some business practices that should be left at work and shouldn’t come into how we manage our relationships or our marriage? Yeah,
Dr. Robin Buckley
I briefly mentioned it before. I don’t, I don’t see a place for a CEO in a relationship. CEOs, you know, typically have final assignment or not. They have to, you know, run it by their board, but that’s not typically how it runs. And actually, you referenced one Scott that I hadn’t thought of the executive assistant. I don’t know if I would use that term as much in a relationship, but again, I always remind couples, they’re the experts in their relationship. I might be the expert in terms of how to structure it and strategies and what works well based on research and based on my experiences with couples, but they know their relationship. So I’ve had some couples challenge the CEO aspect, mostly around cultural issues and the ways that a couple wants their relationship to be. And it’s not for me to say you can’t do that or you shouldn’t do that. It’s let’s make sure that all the parameters are in place so that actually does work, and it doesn’t build into a sense of resentment over time. That’s pro those are probably the best examples I have. What doesn’t belong any toxicity or ineffective leadership, of course, doesn’t belong. It also doesn’t belong in business. The things that don’t work in business should certainly stay out of your relationship, and a lot of couples don’t see that.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow, I’ve got one more question before I let you go here, we’ll make sure folks know that you can get a copy of the book. But what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Dr. Robin Buckley
Well, it’s probably not a surprise. What am I going to say? Relationships are about strategy, and it doesn’t take away the bells and whistles. And I always consider love and sexual attraction are the bells and whistles when you have strategy in your relationship. Relationship that creates the strong foundation for your bells and whistles to get better and better and withstand the test of time. So instead of looking at your relationship with hopes and prayers and wishes, actually create a strategy and a business plan for your relationship, and then it will be as successful as you make it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. It’s so true. Dr Robin Buckley, just fantastic. Really, really loved every bit of this. There are some folks listening. First they want to get a copy of the book, tell us how we can do that. And then they may want to know more about the work that you do and the coaching that you offer. Where can they find more out about that as well?
Dr. Robin Buckley
All in one place, my website is. DrRobinBuckley, all one word, no punctuation .com, and they can do pre sales for the book. They can also learn a lot more about my executive coaching for individuals as well as my speaking. I do a lot of corporate trainings and wellness or in the corporate environment. So I’m happy to have a conversation on how I can make your professional and personal life better.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic, fantastic. Such a privilege and honor having you here. Loved this conversation, loved the book. Can’t wait for it to be out and available to the public. For those of you watching and listening, you know that your time and attention mean the world to us as well. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time, take care.
Contact Dr. Robin Buckley
Dr. Robin Buckley earned her PhD in clinical psychology from Hofstra University, with specialized training in cognitive behavioral methodology and executive coaching. Multiple media platforms featured her work, including Entrepreneur, Chief, Authority Magazine, Nike, and the TED stage. As an international speaker, Robin focuses on applying cognitive behavioral strategies to mental wellness in the workplace and women’s equity and empowerment. As a coach, Robin applies cognitive behavioral tactics to help organizations, couples, and individuals create strategic plans for professional and personal success.
Want to learn more about Dr. Robin Buckley’s work at Insights Group? Check out her website at https://drrobinbuckley.com/, her company website at https://igcoaching.net/, and her book, Marriage Inc Build a Thriving Relationship with a Business Mindset
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