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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday! My name is Emilee O’Leary, I name all my flash drives after characters in Harry Potter, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share the story about how my perspective of work was changed through taking the Kolbe Index Assessment.

Fun Fact

I like words. So my fun fact of the day is a word. Today’s word is SOMATICIZE. This psychiatry term is a verb, meaning to convert anxiety into physical symptoms. When you stress over something so deeply that you get a stomachache or a headache, or you are so scared about something you throw up…that is somaticizing. So the next time you hear someone say, “Writing this report is giving me a headache!” You can confidently know they are somaticizing, turning their anxiety into physical symptoms.

The Pivotal Point

I’m a big cheerleader of personality tests. And that might be attributed to the fact the results of my personality test will tell you that I enjoy things like personality tests! So when I came across the Kolbe Index I was fascinated by the implications it could have on a realm of my life that personality tests do not readily address. Before I get into specifics about the Kolbe, I want to tell you how the circumstances around my introduction to the assessment were primed and made me to eager to incorporate its concepts.

About 5 years ago I was blindsided by an annual performance review. I was working on the IT side of medical imaging at hospital here in Minnesota assisting radiologists and radiological technicians with any digital medical imaging related issues. My team was very technical and analytical, padded with intelligent and competent people who had been in the industry for a long time. Saying nothing of the team’s ability to do their jobs, it was a hard place to work because of the atmosphere the individuals on the team created. It was generally hostile and crass, and there was not much in the way of encouragement or intentional team building.

They say that nothing should come as a surprise in an annual performance review; from the praises awarded to the areas I need to improve upon should be addressed as they come up throughout the year. A performance review should be looking back on the year and summing everything up. But I was told a lot of things I didn’t know my co-workers were saying and thinking about me. They thought I was a bad communicator, they thought I was selfish and wanted all the credit for big projects, so I wouldn’t share information. It was a pretty big shock and I took it pretty hard, especially because I wasn’t given any examples of how or when I was doing the things they were criticizing me of.

If you don’t know me, or don’t know me very well, it should be stated up front that I take constructive criticism very well. I like to know when I’m not doing a job well, or if the way I’m doing something is inefficient. I like advancing in skill and I absorb knowledge. But in order for me to change anything, I need to know there is a problem. This performance review opened my eyes to the reality of the team and I finally saw a pattern of behavior in the organization that I wasn’t eager to continue on with, so I began looking for another job.

I got connected with a small data analytics company, also here in Minnesota, who needed a web developer. The interview process was quite lengthy; after a phone interview, followed by an in-person interview, I wrote an essay, recorded an audio clip talking about my strengths, compiled an extensive matrix of the strengths and attributes 12 other people in my life willingly supplied to me, and, finally, completed the Kolbe Assessment.

Not long after I’d completed all the steps, the company told me that they liked me and needed me, but they didn’t have the finances to hire me at the present time. It was disheartening, but it also made me see that a company existed, out there in the big world, who wanted to understand the person they were hiring and how they fit into the overall organization. I eventually was hired on by this data analytics company and learned very quickly how they utilized the Koble.

I was given the full results of the assessment and the first thing I read was this: “Your Kolbe A Index result shows you are excellent in situations that require strategic organization of information. You set priorities and put them into appropriate sequences.” The difference between the Kolbe Assessment and something like the Myer’s Briggs or DISC is that Kolbe measures your tendencies and instincts, not your personality or IQ.

The assessment is broken down into 4 Action Modes: Fact Finder, Follow Thru, Quick Start and Implementor. If you are interested in knowing more about these action modes, I will supply some links in this blog post for you to read more, but for the sake of time I’m going to briefly describe each and then move on to what I learned.

Kolbe doesn’t emphasize strengths or weaknesses, but describes a person’s intsincts. Each action mode is scored on a scale of 1 to 10, which acts as a continuum, where 1 is a tendency to prevent problems and a 10 is a tendency to initiate solutions.

Fact finder is how you gather and share information. I scored an 8 in fact finder, which indicates my best way of gathering or sharing information is to specify. I’ll research in depth, establish priorities, quantify particulars, create strategies, provide historical evidence and define objectives.

Follow Thru is how you arrange and design. The Kolbe explained that my tendency is to systematize, such as creating plans and bringing focus and closure.

Quick start is how you deal with risks and uncertainty. I scored a 1 in quick start, which indicates that I deal with risks and uncertainty by stabilizing. I’ll create undeviating standards, protect the status quo, create precedents, stick with what is familiar, clarify deadlines, reduce unexpected events, establish limits and conform to accredited concepts.

Finally, Implementor is how you handle space and tangibles. My tendency is to restore, by which I create simulations, fix moving parts or reproduce models.

I brought a lot of baggage from my job at the hospital, very aware of the conflicts I’d encountered with my co-workers and uncertain how to prevent those from happening at the new company. But the first couple weeks at my new job, my co-workers and I spent time in meetings discussing our results and learning about how each person operates. Each of them had taken the Kolbe and had participated in similar discussions during their onboarding period. So I not only learned about myself in this process, but about my co-workers as well and we took the time to talk through our individual approaches to situations.

The Kolbe didn’t necessarily teach me about who I am, it didn’t outline my weaknesses or what I needed to improve upon, it didn’t criticize the way I do what I do. And yet, I learned how to break through barriers to success by understanding how to resolve the perceived issues standing in my way. The Kolbe explained a lot about my style of communication that was likely getting in the way of being successful at my previous job,

Here’s what I learned.

By the nature of the way this world operates, working with other people is unavoidable. But it doesn’t have to be miserable. Understanding that what I do and how I do what I do isn’t wrong was the most profound moment in my professional career. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with my tendencies, but when put under stress and no assistance for resolving that stress, I can see the worst results come out of those scenarios. In taking time to understand my Kolbe results, I was able to identify what causes me stress and was given criteria for how to avoid or resolve stressors.

In knowing these things about myself, I can better communicate with managers or co-workers about why I need clarification or why a project causes me stress. I can identify situations with high stress potentials and stabilize uncertainties. I can ask the right questions in one-on-one meetings with managers, ask co-workers about my communication styles and watch for warning signs, and I can more confidently ask for feedback about my performance and filter it through my understanding of the way I work in order to find ways to improve.

Whether you’re in a tough situation in your career or are experiencing problems with co-workers, or even if you are loving your job, I hope to encourage you to seek out solutions that may not be directly associated with a current project. Learning to work with people by understanding yourself can make you an invaluable asset to any team, and acknowledging your stressors alongside the mental tools you can employ to resolve them can go a long way toward making you content in any situation.

Read More!

If you’d like to learn more about the Kolbe Assessment, or about the action modes I mentioned in the podcast, here are a couple resources you can check out:

• Kolbe: Four Action Modes
• An Unusual Tool In Hiring the Right Person (New York Times 1998)

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