Here's a tool that may help your new employees fit with your old ones.
You can't talk to a client of Dan Sullivan's
Strategic Coach program (www.strategiccoach.com) without getting her
Kolbe "label"-something like "5/6/6/3."I know this because one of my
business partners is a Sullivan devotee and a Kolbe fan and, at his
urging, I went online (www.kolbe.com) and took my own Kolbe A
Index/Instinct Test for $49.95. That's me-I'm a 5/6/6/3 (each of four
scores on a scale of one to ten).
What's all this got to do with team-building? Once
you understand the information you get about a person from his or her
Kolbe A Index, you can use it to match that person with other personnel
for more effective team performance. But there are some basics to
understand first.
To begin with, the Kolbe A Index is not just another
personality or IQ test. It would be easy to confuse it with those other
tests, though. Its results are reported in a manner similar to that of
the widely used Myers-Briggs personality test, i.e., four sets of
characteristics each illustrated by a corresponding spectrum of
possibilities. (For example, one Myers-Briggs spectrum is the degree to
which an individual is an introvert or extrovert). And the Kolbe Index
is "related" to the world of IQ testing in that its founder, Kathy
Kolbe, is the daughter of Eldon Wonderlic, developer of the Wonderlic
Personnel Test, a short-form IQ test used since 1937 to describe the
level at which an individual learns, understands instructions and
solves problems.
By contrast, the Kolbe A Index measures one's
natural instincts. As David Kolbe , Kathy Kolbe's son and CEO of the
Kolbe Corp., explained to me, "IQ tests tell you what you can do.
Personality tests tell you what you want to do. The Kolbe A Index
measures what you will or won't do. "With this knowledge, one can
maximize his potential and, with a knowledge of an entire team's set of
Kolbe A scores, a manager could theoretically maximize the entire
team's potential.
To help me understand what the different parts of
the Kolbe Index mean, David Kolbe took me on a "tour" of my own test
scores.
"A '5' score for the first attribute, Fact Finder,
means you won't over-research something," he says. "If you were a '9,'
you'd research the heck out of subjects, getting information you didn't
even need. If you were a '1,' you'd write with a broad brush, giving
the reader an impression but not all the minutiae. As a '5,' you'll
roll with the punches; if you're assigned the occasional story
requiring in-depth treatment, you can handle it."
Kolbe went on to the second attribute, Follow Thru:
"This describes how you deal with systems and structures, or order. If
someone has a lower score, we say he's 'preventive' and, if a higher
score, 'initiating.' Preventive Follow Thrus need to have the freedom
to do things differently, and can put together things where there is no
structure. Initiating Follow Thrus need to put things into a system or
structure. If you were an initiating writer, you might have a template
for stories that you tend to follow. As a '6,' you're what we call
'accommodating.' You won't necessarily go out of your way to create a
structure but, if an editor said, 'Write to this style-it's what
readers expect,' you could do it."
Then, as a "6" Quick Start, I'd also be
"accommodating?" "That's right," says Kolbe. "Quick Start describes how
you deal with risk and innovation. A preventive will tend to stabilize
things, keeping them from chaos. They want to be sure everything
they're supposed to do gets done. They don't shoot from the hip or
freelance. On the other hand, an initiating Quick Start will do things
differently just to do them differently, which may be good or bad. For
example, you don't want a commercial airline pilot to be initiating. As
a '6' writer, you tend slightly toward the initiating end of the
spectrum, meaning you will approach a story more as the story dictates
rather than forcing your own viewpoint on the story. Very high Quick
Start writers would tend to dabble in different styles and genres and
probably tackle very different subjects every time they write; one time
academic, another time humorous."
My one decisively "initiating" or "preventive" score
is my "3" as an "Implementor." "That explains how you deal with
tactile, three-dimensional problem solving, or tools and implements,"
says Kolbe. "As a preventive implementor, you envision things rather
than having to physically manipulate things. You don't need to build
things with your hands. Your talent is that you can create things on a
piece of paper. The downside is when it comes to doing stuff around the
house." Kolbe's right-I'm not too fond of fixing broken toilets.
To reiterate, these Kolbe scores talk about what
people will do, not what they can or can't do. It should be apparent
that this is critical to team-building. Sure, intelligence is important
and knowing how people will interact personality-wise is notable, as
well, but the Kolbe Index can tell you if you've placed someone in a
position for which they're ill-suited.
Alice Bryan, a principal with North Star Financial
Consulting in Indianapolis, knows her own Kolbe A Index as well as that
of her son and daughter. Not only has this knowledge helped Bryan
evaluate work partners, it even confirmed her need to change
professions. "Knowing my Kolbe score helped me understand that selling
products was not innately how I best operated," says this former
broker-dealer rep. "I was working against the grain," she adds. Bryan
is now a Garrett Planning Network advisor working primarily with
middle-market clients, a role she loves.
But she's also used Kolbe to assess the success
she'll have partnering with another individual with whom she's
discussed working. "This other person took the Kolbe test and we seem
to be an ideal fit," says Bryan. "She's initiating where I'm
preventive, and visa versa. For example, I'm an 8 on Follow Thru and a
3 Quick Start. That's how I knew the Garrett network would be great for
me, since I'm not good at starting things. This other person
complements me with her scores since she's a 9 Quick Start and a 2
Follow Thru."
But how does Kolbe work in a larger setting? That's
where Kolbe parts B and C come in. "Part A is the analysis of one's
conative talents," explains David Kolbe. "B is your analysis of what
your job demands and C is very similar, except it's your direct
supervisor answering the questions used in B." If B and C are
different, that tells you there's a need to get the worker and
supervisor together and have a conversation about why their assessments
are different."
Kolbe gives the example of a mid-level planner who's
not responsible for client generation but for serving existing clients.
"That job would typically have someone with a high Fact Finder score,
someone obtaining information from or for clients. Clients might call
that person with questions that require him to do research." But what
happens, asks Kolbe, if his supervisor is thinking that to move up in
the organization, this person should really start selling products and
services rather than explaining to clients the changes in 401(k)
regulations? If these two perceptions are different, they must be
reconciled for the benefit of the team.
Suppose there are ten people in your advisory firm,
including three principals. The three critical questions, says Kolbe,
are 1) How do they fit? 2) Are they in the right roles (which is still
a look at the individual)? and 3) Do you have the right mix of people?
"What we've found is we can't always tell if a team is going to be
successful, but we almost always know if it will fail," he says, which
gets to the third question. Even if the ten employees are smart and
motivated, if they're not the right mix, it will become apparent within
six months, says Kolbe.
Around four years ago, when he joined the firm of
LVM Capital Management Ltd. in Wheaton, Ill., Robert O'Dell persuaded
his partners that everyone should take the Kolbe A Index. "We hired
Kolbe to go over the results and explain each person's instincts. I was
the odd one out with a high [initiating] Quick Start score. A few
changes were made within the firm in terms of who should be working
with whom, but for us, this exercise mostly confirmed some things we
were already doing well."
Perhaps the greatest benefit, says O'Dell, was the
"AUR" that it brought-accept, understand, respect. "When I'm working
with a high Fact Finder and Follow Thru partner, I no longer expect a
quick decision from that person," adds O'Dell. He says the firm will
also have new hires do the Kolbe A Index to make sure they satisfy the
firm's need for the right fit and the right mix.
To better facilitate these kinds of team
assessments, Kolbe has developed a software product it calls Warewithal
(www.warewithal.com), containing two modules. The first module, Team
Tactix, helps with team building; the second, RightFit, helps with
employee selection and retention. The objective of Team Tactix is to
determine the likelihood that a particular team will succeed even
before it starts working together. "Team Tactix doesn't guarantee
success," says Kolbe, "but outside studies have been done that show the
higher the score a team gets, the more likely it is to succeed."
RightFit is used in hiring situations. It looks at
existing team members' Kolbe A scores in conjunction with team
supervisors' Kolbe C results to determine which job candidate is most
likely to add to the team's synergy.
"In general, the ideal team mix," says Kolbe, "is to
have half of a team's talent in the accommodating, or mid-score, mode,
and the other half evenly split between low and high, or preventive and
initiating, modes. That's the 'top-line' analysis. Then you look for
the right mix in each of your four action modes. This is what
Warewithal does for you, so Kolbe clients don't have to be experts in
how all this works."
It seems to me this is pretty powerful stuff that
more advisory firms should be using. And if you're just a sole
practitioner, it may very well explain the areas where you really
should get some help.
David J. Drucker, M.B.A., CFP, a
financial advisor since 1981, now writes, speaks and consults with
other advisors as president of Drucker Knowledge Systems. Learn more
about his services at www.daviddrucker.com.