Our leadership team is highly defensive during our quarterly planning sessions. How do we use the Kolbe A Index to help us understand our work styles and stop taking operational friction personally?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Defensiveness during planning sessions usually stems from conative differences, not personal animosity. Conation is how people naturally take action and solve problems. When you do not understand these natural drives, team members will misinterpret different working styles as deliberate obstruction or laziness.

By using the Kolbe A Index during your quarterly pulsing sessions, you can map your team's natural problem-solving strengths across four modes: Fact Finder, Follow Thru, Quick Start, and Implementor. For example, a leader with a high Fact Finder score needs data and detail before making a move. A leader with a high Quick Start score thrives on rapid change and wants to take action immediately.

Without this context, the high Quick Start leader sees the high Fact Finder as a bureaucratic bottleneck, while the Fact Finder sees the Quick Start as a reckless loose cannon. Drawing your team's Kolbe profiles on a whiteboard during your session allows everyone to see these differences objectively. It transforms personal frustration into strategic delegation, allowing you to assign tasks to the people naturally wired to execute them.