Assessments:  So Many Choices

by Cindy Stradling

When I meet with clients and they are interested in conducting an assessment for their organizations I am very careful to find out why they want to conduct and assessment and what information they intend to obtain.  There are so many choices, I could write blogs for the next six months and still not have explored all of them.  For the month of April I am going to share with you my experience of four of the assessments that I have personally taken. 

Week Three – Kolbe

The Kolbe wisdom is based on the concept that creative instincts are the source of mental energy that drives people to take specific actions.  This mental drive is separate and distinct from feelings and thoughts.  Creative instincts are manifested in an innate pattern (modus operandi or MO) that determines each person’s best efforts.  A person’s MO is quantifiable and observable, yet functions at the subconscious level.  MOs vary across the general population with no gender, age or racial bias.

An individual’s  MO governs actions, reactions and interactions.  The MO also determines a person’s use of time and his or her natural form of communication.  Exercising control over this mental resource gives people the freedom to be their authentic selves.

Any interference with the use of this energy reduces a person’s effectiveness and the joy of accomplishment.  Stress inevitably results from the prolonged disruption of the flow of this energy.  Others can nurture this nature ability, but block it by attempting to alter it.

The Kolbe assessment does many things (too many to mention in this short blog) and there are things it is does not do (again too many for this short blog).  I have listed five of the things Kolbe does and five that it does not.

Kolbe Does

• Identifies instinct based or natural abilities
• De-bunks performance related stereotypes, which have been based on gender, age, race and ethnicity, physical, intellectual and social attributes
• Provides language for describing innate talents as Natural Advantages
• Quantifies the stress a person will suffer if not given the freedom to operate according to individual needs
• Assesses the obstacles to freedom of operation, which may be imposed by the self and others

Kolbe Does Not

• Identify weaknesses
• Suggest to people that there is something wrong within them that should be changed
• Remove personal responsibility for actions
• Rate individual talents on scales of better or worse, more or less important or any other value system
• Suggest that one person is more likely to succeed than another.

As you can see Kolbe takes a very different approach.  What I personally liked most was that I could understand better what activities gave me energy and what did not.  I still had to perform the activities that actually drained my energy but after doing Kolbe I learned to manage them at times of the day when my energy was high and to perform these activities in shorter chunks of time, this was a big help for me to not procrastinate on my least favourite things.

The Kolbe Impact Factors are the 12 ways we approach problem solving determined by our MOs.  Although we can solve problems using any of the 12 methods, each of us has four – one in each Action Mode that allows us to do our best, most efficient and creative work.  We instinctively begin the creative problem solving process using our most insistent mode of initiation.

The Four Action Modes are Fact Finder, Follow Thru, Quick Start and Implementor.  My  index results show  that my natural advantage is that I am an innovator: meaning my conative creativity is intuitive, visionary, and highly original.  I have a knack for finding alternatives and discovering unique ways to get things done.

There is a lot more information available from the Kolbe assessment should you wish to have it done.

Next week: My results from taking the True Colors Assessment.