“I just want you to know that my life has changed.”
When Karen Slusher first learned what her instinctive strengths could do for both her and her business, she cried.
Then, she took action.
Two years later, she found herself in front of a young man whose life would never be the same. Thanks to her, he had also discovered the power of his own strengths. And it meant everything.
Karen is the Chief Experience Officer at Azure Standard, a family owned and operated business that deliver bulk and natural foods across the country. Azure Standard was introduced to Kolbe back in 2013.
“Everybody took it,” Karen explained to Eric Herrera on the Powered by Instinct podcast. “You looked at it, you read it, and you stuck it in a drawer.”
Karen had done the same when she first joined Azure Standard and took her own Kolbe A™ Index.
“I took the Kolbe like everyone else,” she explained, “but I had no idea what it meant. I just read it and was like, okay. And then moved on.”
But in 2023, when she was put in charge of employee services, she took a closer look at what Kolbe could offer, starting with her own result.
That’s when she started crying.
“And then I got angry a bit because I’m like, wait…My whole life I’ve not been able to actually to be truly who I am.”
Karen didn’t want that feeling for the employees at Azure Standard, and so she started prioritizing a greater understanding of how each member of the team naturally operates, then incorporating it into how the entire business operates.
“So we’ve now taken it, we’ve embedded it into our hiring practices, our leadership development, our performance management, and really just in our culture itself,” she exclaimed.
“We really believe that that was the missing piece. It’s given us permission to stop asking people to be someone else as an organization. Now we have the whole person and not just two thirds of the person. And we’re intervening before people burn out, before they’re frustrated, before some conflict arises.”
And it’s working. Azure Standard, the biggest employer in their county, were battling employee turnover at levels that made it difficult to scale. Now, turnover in key roles is down 40% and employee engagement is up.
No wonder they apply Kolbe practices to those they partner with as well.
When Azure Standard brought in a contact center partner out of Mexico, they decided Kolbe needed to be a part of that collaboration as well.
“Every new team member that Azure Standard brings in, we give a Kolbe A to,” said Karen. “I go down quarterly and meet with the team for a few days. We spend about a half day just with all of those team members who are taking it for the first time. We dive in and we explain exactly what Kolbe is what it means to them, what it means in their work, and what it means in their lives.”
When Karen was down at one of the very first trainings we did with this partner, at the end of three weeks, a young man came up to her and asked if they could talk.
“I just want you to know that my life has changed.”
Prior to the training, things had gotten particularly rough for him. He had totally disassociated himself from his mom and his dad. He had gotten into a group of friends that were taking him down a negative path.
In fact, during that first week of training, he had decided to quit the job.
“But we started diving into Kolbe the second day I was there,” Karen exclaimed. “And tt stopped him. It just kind of refocused him, and he started thinking about his life.”
Right before Karen left, the young man told her that he would be meeting with his parents for the first time in years. He explained to her, “I really believe that the problem was not understanding who I am and not being free to be myself. That’s why we had this conflict.”
And so, he resolved to reinstate his relationship with his parents. He completely broke free from both friends who were troubling him and left that entire group that he was hanging out with. Kolbe helped him change his mindset, and he was going to create a new path for himself because of it.
“We look at skills, and we look at personality, and we look at values,” Karen concluded. “But we were just missing that one piece that gets neglected, which is people’s striving instincts. And if you do not have it, implement it in your business now. Run to it. It will change your business. It will change your personal life. It will make a major difference all around.”
