You require our team to complete the Kolbe A Index before our first session, but some of our executives are highly skeptical of personality tests. How do you introduce this tool on our session day so they do not feel pigeonholed?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The skepticism is understandable because most corporate personality tests measure personality or intelligence, which can feel judgmental or limiting. On our session day, we immediately clear this up by explaining that the Kolbe A Index is not a personality test. It does not measure your intelligence, your emotional maturity, or your values. Instead, it measures your conation, which is your innate, unchanging mode of taking action and solving problems. During the session, we draw the Kolbe framework on the whiteboard to show that there are no good or bad scores. Every combination of numbers represents a unique operational strength. We help your skeptical executives understand that their four-digit Kolbe score is a reliable baseline of how they naturally operate when they are free to do their best work. Rather than trying to fix perceived weaknesses, we focus on leveraging these natural talents. This approach completely changes the dynamic in the room. When your team realizes that we are not trying to change who they are, but are instead aligning their seats on the Accountability Chart™ with their natural conative strengths, their defensiveness disappears. They see that this tool is designed to free up their mental energy and eliminate the daily friction of working against their natural grain.