Today on the blog, we’re talking THE KOLBE METHOD – about teams, the team dynamic, and how companies can employ a very interesting way to not only build teams, but to empower each team member by actually letting them focus on their strengths.
While you might not end up with superheroes – you WILL end up building crazy-complimentary teams! 🔥💥🔥
Well, since you’re asking!
It’s no secret that “like attracts like” – but building a team of people identical to yourself is not the best move for long-term business success. And THAT is the beauty of Kolbe.
We talked to two Kolbe experts on this week’s 4 AM Report – Laural Carr, founder and CEO of Toronto-based marketing firm Impagination and a Kolbe certified consultant, and Meredith Malloch, VP of Marketing and Communications at Investment Planning Council (and a huge Kolbe fan!). In the episode, they:
✅ Break down what the system is…
✅ Describe how it helps identify your intrinsic action modes…
✅ And talk out how to use it to hire and structure high functioning teams!
Kolbe’s been around a long time. It’s an online assessment, with 36 questions. Each question requires two answers.
And within the assessment, it self-checks so there’s consistency, so when the actual result which becomes your Kolbe index is revealed, that it has been verified through consistency within the assessment questions and answers.
Kathy Kolbe created the Kolbe assessment 45 years ago and it has used it in a lot of different ways. But, 20 years ago, they tested to see if people’s assessments had changed over 20 years – and they did not! There may have been very minor shifts, but not outside the zones of operation. Basically, your zone of genius is your zone of genius – for life!
Here’s a bit of what we explored!
The Kolbe Assessment
“The Kolbe assessment assesses four different action modes. The red, which is Fact Finder how much information and detail and specificity somebody needs. And I like to equate it to making a decision, because making a decision is an action. Someone who has a lot of energy in red, has a lot of Fact Finder, is going to give a lot of energy to research, a lot of detail. The second mode of action is called follow through – how somebody will structure and organize and see patterns in either detail or information or in the way something is operating. The third action mode is called Quick Start – and that is how much risk and how tolerant to uncertainty someone may be. The fourth action style is implementer. So how someone will express themselves using actual physical, tactile, tangible things – either sketches, designs, models, PowerPoint presentations, all of that. Within your Kolbe score, you’re going to get one number between one and 10 in each of those four action modes – so, in the Fact Finder, Follow Through, Quickstart, and Implementer – within those modes, there are zones of operation.”
Kolbe for Couples
‘A lot of people who are introduced to Kolbe are very skeptical, like, ‘Is it some kind of psychological profiling? Is it going to tell you something I don’t know about myself already?’ What I love about Kolbe is that it tells you the truth about yourself forever. It’s like opening up the reality check on what really is the right way for you to be in action, in all aspects of your life.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I was offering Colby consultations for couples, because here, suddenly, people who, you know, would normally spend eight or 10 hours away from each other every day are now in this kind of pandemic jail – being isolated together. And maybe their action styles at work are very different than how they operate at home. And they’re suddenly like, ‘Who is this?’
Kolbe for Teams
“Kolbe is sort of like your modus operandi, like, like, how do you operate? And where is your natural comfort zone in the way that you do your work, process, learn, understand, build, innovate all of those, like, how do you operate? And again, it’s not that you can’t move and adjust and pivot. But it’s really where your comfort zone is, how you accomplish your tasks, and how you accomplish your projects. We’ve probably been doing Kolbe for about seven or eight years now. And it was just really a really interesting exercise that we continue to do with all of our employees – how do they like to work? And how do they like to work with others? What gaps do they fill? You know, who do you want to partner together to make a killer project team, we use it, I would say honestly, day in and day out in regards to trying to produce great teams – great teams that accomplish great things.”
There’s much more about Kolbe in the full episode – have a listen!
If you’d like to chat more about your marketing concerns, please give us a shout at C+P Digital – we would love to help!
Plus, if you’re losing sleep over a particular marketing/business related problem during this Covid-19 economic uncertainty, or if you have a guest idea on the topic, let us know.
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And as always, sweet dreams…well, hopefully!
