On Powered by Instinct, we talk to a wide variety of incredible professionals about how your fundamental nature drives performance. This includes industry experts, CEOs and business owners, and Kolbe Certified™ Consultants.
Those consultants bring a ton of insight to the table, so we figured it would be helpful to gather some of the lessons we’ve learned from their vast knowledge and experience and apply them to your situation.
For this blog, we’d like to focus on those Kolbe Consultants and the amazing insights they have brought to the table. So, please enjoy 10 key lessons we’ve learned from their vast knowledge and experience. There’s a great chance you’ll be able to apply most if not all of them to your business and/or your life!
Phil Dyer (5393)
Transcript:
“We had one lady a while back. She was so mad that she was an Initiating Fact Finder and not an Initiating Quick Start. She insisted that she was not an Initiating Fact Finder. And so she went and did basically a mini dissertation and put together like a 30-page report on why she was not an Initiating Fact Finder and then was presenting like statistic after statistic.
Toward the end of the presentation, you could see her kind of slow down, and she’s like, “oh my gosh, I am a Fact Finder, aren’t I?” And we’re like, yeah, you, like you are. That’s fantastic and that’s awesome, and we want you to embrace it and leverage the heck out of it.”
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Kari Gillenwater (6482)
Transcript:
“That’s one of the biggest things that I would tell any business leader or team leader is that the more you can share about why this is important, and how it impacts people, and why this decision or this project is important, it really fuels that passion to get it done. It’s not just here’s a task, do it. It’s here, this actually helps our clients live better lives, or we can save somebody money here and that would mean a lot to their family and their legacy, or whatever it is in whatever market that we do. But just understanding the big why, I think that’s an overarching need.”
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Clare Willson (9234)
Transcript:
“There’s a lot of unlearning that I’ve had to do and continue to do around feeling bad that I’m simply not structured or as organized as you’re supposed to be. But what I think might surprise some people is that if you were to look in my closet, or my fridge, you would say, this is a very organized person, because I know where everything is. But the systems that I use are so simple.
I try to have a real sense of humor about it and say, okay, the system for us is the thing that we are actually going to do. And so we’re going to start with something and we’re going to just keep flexing it, keep taking away the steps until we’re getting the result that we want in a way that’s really easy for us.”
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Jessica Colston (7823)
Transcript:
“We actually went to the home of the owner of the firm. And so I think that environment alone, right, being around literally someone’s kitchen table, created this really safe space just to be yourself and to kind of feel like family. And the fact that we recognize that there are differences and that the whole team knew and was aware of some differences. We have one main advisor and then two advisors coming into the picture that were very different. And so I was like, let’s celebrate this. This is a huge opportunity for you to specialize here and you to specialize there and to kind of shine a light on it in a different way and say there’s a middle road that we have to take, especially in an industry that’s so focused on compliance and doing things a certain way. It’s just logical to do that. But really giving them the opportunity to see that hey, this is truly an opportunity for you each to do more of what you enjoy most.”
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Libby Paul (8623)
Transcript:
“I think one of the things that I love using Kolbe for is overall team insight and development. So, being able to use TeamSuccess® and put together reports that give insight to the entire team on how their synergy is as a team conatively; to understand, are we missing any of these 12 Kolbe Strengths™ in our team, and do we need to intentionally go outside of our team right now to bring that strength in? We have all of our advisors and employees listed by name with their modes of operation next to them. So, you can almost go shopping through your list and say, ‘Well, I’ve memorized my team of four. We really are missing a Simplifier on our team.’ Let me go through the list of the entire company and see who has that skill and that strength, and I will reach out to them and pull them in on this conversation, this meeting, this project, to be able to use that strength for us in that moment.”
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Audrey Cannata (6734)
Transcript:
“I will always remember this workshop because it gave me such a sense of like clarity and confidence in the decision to change careers. I already had my Kolbe done before this workshop, but we dug so much deeper here, and we talked a lot about my resistance in Quick Start. I started to see that a lot of these things that I perceived as weaknesses were actually strengths. But it wasn’t until we dug into the idea of energy and draining energy and kind of talking about different scenarios.
That’s when the light bulb went off and I thought, oh my gosh. My Kolbe score, you know, my resistant Quick Start is the reason I was so drained as a teacher every single day. Like it made perfect sense to me, and it made me feel validated that I was on the right path.”
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Mari Martin (4294)
Transcript:
“My husband was diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer in 2013. We had days that were very challenging. There was a day when I was at a Rotary meeting and I get a text that said, ‘Come home, there’s blood everywhere.’
…Can I share one thing that Chris’s ENT says? He says, ‘I have no other patient that is alive this long from that same diagnosis. I have no other patient.’ Now, I’m not saying that Kolbe is the answer, but what I am saying is that we have to interface with our environment and understand how our natural instincts play out in that environment.”
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Elizabeth Cook (8633)
Transcript:
“I have three daughters who are all adults now. Two have said one is the favorite child.
…Well, I had them all take it and we’ve taken lots of different assessments and on the Kolbe it was so clear why the two thought the third was the favorite. My husband and I are almost conative twins and the quote, “favorite child” is almost exactly like us, and the other two initiate in Quick Start. They’re 7s and 8s. So naturally, in terms of parenting, when they’re like making decisions and trying to solve problems and two of them are jumping in and figuring it out as they go, and not making the plan, and my husband and I are getting all of the details and making the plan and removing the uncertainties along with the quote, “favorite child”. I suppose we were biased towards her approach because that just made sense to us.”
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Samir Wagle (6582)
Transcript:
“One of the first things we do with our clients is we send everyone on the leadership team a Kolbe A™ because we want to understand what is going on and how do they play together? Then we talk to the leadership team. We fly down to wherever they are, we’ll spend about two days with them. We have bespoke interviews based on what we got from the Kolbe and other information that we request from them. And having this kind of customized tailored approach allows us to go back to the leader and go, you told us this was a gap, as we take a 360 view of it, this is what we’re really seeing. Does this feel true? Would this make your team a higher performing team? And often, they’re amazed.
…I’ve done probably 25 interviews in the past week and a half. Honestly, 20 of the executives I’ve talked to have said, I feel like I was truly seen. And if I don’t get this job, it’ll be because I trust that this wasn’t the right job for me. And that’s gratifying.”
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Jessica Mogill (8733)
Transcript:
“Someone interviewed once for us, for a marketing assistant position. And through the process, a couple things she kept saying, they were kind of sales. She took the Kolbe and I was like, “This is our Kolbe for sales at this company.’ And she’d never done sales before. We talk to her and talk to her and she’s like, ‘Are you sure about this?’ She accepts a job in a sales position, and she went on to sell over $1 million at our company.
People don’t know what they don’t know about themselves, and they will answer questions by human nature, the way that you probably want them to answer it. But I have learned time and time again through iteration of this Kolbe, it is really not going to be a smooth and easy ride in this position and so I know that going in. And again, it’s not to disqualify and that’s one thing I really, really want to reiterate. It is to put someone in another position that’s going to align with them, again, if they’re a cultural fit and everything else fits.”
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