Powered by Instinct

“The day I got my Kolbe profile back was one of the most liberating days of my life.” – Dan Sullivan, Co-Founder of Strategic Coach

In this special episode of Powered by Instinct, host David Kolbe sits down with renowned entrepreneur and coach, Dan Sullivan, to discuss the impact of Kolbe on personal and professional growth.

Dan shares his experiences with the transformative power of the Kolbe ATMIndex, highlighting its ability to identify an individual's innate strengths and guide them towards the right opportunities. He emphasizes the many benefits Kolbe has offered the entrepreneurs he helps, how it fosters a more collaborative and effective environment by aligning individuals with their areas of strength, and why Kolbe is the “anchor profile” for Strategic Coach.

Dan reflects on his coaching career and the importance of understanding clients' Kolbe profiles to tailor workshops and facilitate better communication. He shares how essential Kolbe is for hiring effectively, and how Kolbe has not only enhanced his coaching sessions but also transformed the lives of countless individuals by unlocking their true potential.

Host: David Kolbe (8-2-7-3)

Guest-at-a-Glance

💡 Name: Dan Sullivan (2-2-10-4)

💡What they do: Entrepreneur and Coach

💡Company: Strategic Coach

💡Noteworthy: Pioneered innovative coaching methodologies for entrepreneurs and business leaders.

💡 Where to find them: LinkedIn

The Significance of Kolbe A Index in Identifying Strengths and Best Fit. Dan discusses how the Kolbe A Index has transformed the way companies identify individual strengths and best-fit positions for their employees. He credits Kathy Kolbe for developing this unique profiling system that provides valuable insights into employees' natural working styles, allowing for better alignment with roles that capitalize on their strengths and ultimately lead to greater success and satisfaction.

Adapting Coaching Techniques to Different Kolbe Profiles. Dan shares his experience in coaching and how the Kolbe Wisdom has informed his approach to working with different clients. He explains that by understanding the Kolbe scores of his clients, he can tailor his coaching techniques to better suit their individual needs, resulting in more effective communication and understanding. This personalized approach enables Dan to better engage and support his clients in their personal and professional development.

Additional Quotes

1. [01:06:00] Dan Sullivan: "Kathy Kolbe went entrepreneur because it didn't answer a question and she created the thing that answers the question. Where's the strength of this person and where's the best place to fit in?"
2. [01:07:00] Dan Sullivan: "Podcasting falls directly in the center of where my Kolbe strengths are. I love it. Yes. As long as I don't have to prepare."
3. [01:09:00] Dan Sullivan: "The first thing I do when I walk in the room, I want to see their Kolbe, I want to see the Kolbe profiles. And there's a critical mass."

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Find the freedom to be yourself by taking the Kolbe ATM Index or The Student Aptitude Quiz for the youth in your life.

On the latest installment of the Powered by Instinct Podcast, Kolbe Corp CEO David Kolbe talked with Dana Anspach about what it means to trust your gut in the high-stakes world of finance. Dana is a Kolbe certifiedTM Consultant and the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a financial planning firm that regularly uses Kolbe theory to cater to their clients’ instinctive needs. Understanding those needs allows Dana and her team to present and share information in the best possible way for each client, while also better understanding and anticipating client questions and reactions.

David and Dana also discuss the impact Kolbe has had on her professional life, why Kolbe is the only assessment she uses with clients and with new and existing employees, and how taking the assessment helped her grow as a leader.

Host: David Kolbe (8273)
Guest-at-a-Glance

Name: Dana Anspach (6582)

What she does: Dana is the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, LLC.

Company: Sensible Money, LLC

Noteworthy: Dana is an influential thought leader in financial services and gives advice on financial planning and retirement. She is also a Kolbe Certified Consultant.

Where to find Dana: LinkedIn

Podcast Insights

🎙️Kolbe changed the way I see people. Dana was the type of person who, as she says, thought her way was the only way to do certain things. As a result, she didn't understand why others took different approaches and struggled with assignments while she finished quickly. But then, she took the Kolbe assessment, which was a life-changer. The results helped her understand herself and, most importantly, her coworkers. ''I used to be a lot more arrogant in thinking that my way of doing things was best. And I would think, 'This is easy for me; why can't you do it?' And then I started to see things so differently. This is easy for me because that's within my strengths, and that is easy for them because it's within their strengths.''

🎙️Kolbe is an essential part of our hiring and employee training. Moreover, Dana's company suggests clients take Kolbe A as it helps the team understand clients better, how they collect and process information, and determine their needs. As a result, Kolbe has become an integral part of the company culture. ''We train on it every year. We have a folder with everybody's Kolbe A indexes and a folder with their A to A with all their immediate team members. And they can request one with anyone on the team if they want to see it. And so, once a year, we ask everyone to go in — it's part of the training we have built into our process — to look at it, and we will ask them to share some things they learned from revisiting their Kolbe. We'll ask them to share some things they saw and insights they had in working with others.''

🎙️It takes maturity and something like Kolbe A for leaders to acknowledge that they are not perfect. When asked whether the Kolbe assessment had a more significant impact on her productivity or leadership skills, Dana said that it was the latter. ''Leadership starts at the top, and if you're not willing to look inside yourself and some of that shifts to the affective side of being able to say, 'I'm willing to look at myself and see what needs to change to be a more effective leader and that my way isn't always right.' I can see how leaders can fall into that trap of, 'I'm great. Look what I've accomplished.' But my favorite saying is: ‘What got me here won't get me there.’

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Find the freedom to be yourself by taking the Kolbe ATM Index or The Student Aptitude Quiz for the youth in your life.

Working with family is hard. The people you care about most also have the most power to get on your nerves, which means working together can be a LOT!

It doesn’t have to be.

With the right knowledge and understanding of each other’s instinctive strengths, you can work together with the most important people in your life without destroying your relationship — this episode’s guests (and the host) are proof!

In this episode of the Powered by Instinct podcast, our host David Kolbe welcomes Jerry Lujan and Kelley Lujan, a father-daughter duo now working together. Jerry is the CEO of Elevation 180, and Kelley is the Strategic Optimizer there, providing much-needed strengths to work in conjunction with her father. Jerry and Kelley talk with Kolbe CEO David Kolbe, himself no stranger to family businesses, about the benefits of knowing everyone’s MO, why open communication is critical, and how to help a strengths-based family business shine.

It’s possible to strengthen your family business and your family bond at the same time. Take a listen to learn how.
Host: David Kolbe (8273)
Guests-at-a-Glance

💡 Name: Jerry Lujan (6572) and Kelley Lujan (9722)

💡 What they do: Jerry is the CEO of Elevation 180, and Kelley is the Strategic Optimizer at Elevation180.

💡 Company: Elevation180

💡 Noteworthy: Jerry and Kelley are a dynamic father-daughter duo running a family business together.

💡 Where to find them: Jerry's LinkedIn | Kelley's LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡Kolbe is beneficial for business relationships. Knowing your Kolbe Index helps you understand other people and lean into your instincts. Jerry says, "It fits my lifelong dream of bringing Kelley into the business with me and working together. And I'd have to say that it saved our business relationship. Obviously, it didn't have any impact on our personal relationship, but knowing each other so well was key to being able to talk about getting in the right lane or getting in the right position to be able to have the energy to play at the highest level."

⚡ Establish clear boundaries. Setting boundaries is vital for making a family business work. Kelley says, "We initiated some guidelines off the bat that in front of clients and at work, he's Jerry, and at home, he's still Dad. And we try and separate those two. But I would say, within the first month of working with each other, we were in Florida with a client. When we left, I was asking him for some advice, and we're talking back and forth, and he answered me very directly and how a boss would answer a new employee. I broke down because I was speaking from past experience and wanting him to mentor me as a dad. And we completely crossed paths when that happened. And I don't think he realized at first why I was breaking down, and I didn't have the words to explain. [...] And since we had that conversation, it hasn't happened again, and we've moved forward so strong, knowing each other really well, and having these tools like Kolbe to balance off."

⚡ Self-awareness is key. Developing self-awareness allows you to play to your strengths and build a healthy work relationship. Kelley says, "I think having that self-awareness is driving him so much further because I'm also involved in other companies that have high entrepreneurs — with high quick starts as well — and it's not the same. I think that self-awareness goes so incredibly far when you really take it and not just pre

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Find the freedom to be yourself by taking the Kolbe ATM Index or The Student Aptitude Quiz for the youth in your life.

When you’re allowed to be yourself and play to your natural strengths, the difference you feel is astounding. This is true even for those who have found success otherwise. Take Hutton Henry for example.

He didn’t feel comfortable in school. He didn’t fit in the corporate world. That didn’t mean he didn’t meet benchmarks or find himself achieving, it just meant he couldn’t be everything he wanted to be.

Now, Hutton is the CEO and Founder of his own business, Beyond M&A, and the author of two books: People First and Diversity of Action. He is finally thriving, and he’s using the knowledge he gained from his personal journey to empower others.

Hutton uses a practice called technology due diligence. The goal is to place the people who build tech solutions first and show investors the value behind such teams. Kolbe is part of the process, and in this episode, Hutton shares how taking the Kolbe assessment changed his and his clients’ business perspective and how he helps others use their strengths to reach their full potential.

Host: David Kolbe (8273)

Guest-at-a-Glance

Name: Hutton Henry (2295)

What he does: Hutton is the CEO and founder of Beyond M&A.

Company: Beyond M&A

Noteworthy: Hutton works with VC, private equity, and corporate investors, assessing tech teams on their behalf. The practice is called technology due diligence.

Where to find Hutton: LinkedIn

🎙️You may still be on the path to discovering your strengths, and Kolbe can help guide you toward your true self by understanding why you acted a certain way in the past and determining your natural way of engaging in professional and personal interactions. ''I always thought I wasn't doing well at school because I'd had a weird upbringing, and no one was watching. So I was being quite delinquent at school. But what I got from the Kobe result is that I don't need that type of very structured academia. So it changed my story from somebody who could not do something because of a disadvantage in education to this quite suited me; I just didn't realize that. So you could have given me the best school in the world, and I still would've done the same,'' shares Hutton.

🎙️ People Over Technology and How Kolbe Helps Teams Embrace Individual Strengths

''The technology is the tangible output, and that's the thing that you can track and measure. But if we don't look after the teams, you will find that they start to worry. And there are so many things that can happen in an M&A transaction.

Our investors are people-focused, and they want to look after. So, it's a relationship in the first place to agree to be invested in or acquired. And so, both parties want to relate with each other.

So we have a pre-deal position and help companies after the deal has been completed. We will run Kolbe assessments before a deal for certain investors who are open to this and where it's appropriate to the deal. So everyone will look at the sensitivity of what's going to happen and say, ‘Well, you know what? It would be interesting to know what that is.’

I'm looking for a couple of factors. Number one is innovation. That's what investors are looking for. They tend to buy something that's working well and want to scale. The other piece is systemization. So that's the Follow Thru aspect.

So if we can look at an entire team and say to them with data, ‘You're strong at this, and that's how we can create extra value,’ it's a wo

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Find the freedom to be yourself by taking the Kolbe ATM Index or The Student Aptitude Quiz for the youth in your life.

There is no shortage of assessments on the market, and for good reason. Team leaders know how vital understanding their people is to boosting engagement and retention. But it’s not enough to use assessments; you need to use the right ones for your company’s needs.

You’ve heard of assessments like the Kolbe Index, DiSC, Predictive Index, and Clifton Strengths. But, do you have a true appreciation for how they can help your team and what other issues may still be in play afterwards? Fear not, because we’re here to make sense of it all and help set your team up for sustained success.

In this episode of Powered by Instinct, host Eric Herrera welcomes Stephanie Clergé, the VP of Training and Consulting at Kolbe Corp. The two discuss the three parts of the mind and the various assessments used for each. They also touch upon The Kolbe SystemTM and what differentiates it from other programs. Finally, they explain how organizations can use these assessments to reduce stress, improve collaboration, and increase productivity.
Host: Eric Herrera (5392)

Guest-at-a-Glance

Name: Stephanie Clergé (8363)

What she does: Stephanie is the VP of Training and Consulting at Kolbe Corp.

Company: Kolbe Corp

Noteworthy: Stephanie's areas of ease, energy and excellence: Speaking, Training, Executive and Leadership Coaching, Instructional Design, Manager and New Manager Coaching, Career Coaching, Outplacement Coaching, Leadership, and Team Training and Consulting, etc.

Where to find Stephanie: LinkedIn

Podcast Insights

🎙️Assessments are a valuable addition to hiring and onboarding. Various psychometric assessments, including Kolbe Indexes, help companies get to know their new and existing employees faster and better, especially now that remote work has become the norm. ''Assessments have been important because they are reducing the time, especially if you've got a new person, it takes to get going. But also in today's environment, when we've got distributed teams, people are no longer in the same office together; there's a lot more remote work and a lot more hybrid work and those kinds of things. I think it's also a great way for individuals to get to know each other, set expectations clearly, and help employees when they're struggling with their work.''

🎙️The Kolbe assessment is for the Conative part of the mind . As we discuss the human mind, we can't miss mentioning three parts: Cognitive, Affective, and Conative. There are different assessments for each part of the mind. The Kolbe Index, for instance, specializes in the mind's Conative part. ''Kolbe is in a class all by itself. [...] It tells us about how we naturally gather and share information; how we naturally organize and arrange and how much structure we put into things; how we deal with risk and uncertainty; how we deal with the tangible or physical things around us; and how we solve problems.''

🎙️Each assessment has its unique purpose. Finding an assessment type is not a problem, but choosing the right one may be challenging. ''Make sure that the assessment you're looking at is measuring what it says it's going to measure. Don't take the latest 'What Disney princess are you?' quiz and expect it to yield results that are valid and reliable. Know what you're getting; know if this assessment can and should be used for hiring versus other uses that you might have for it.''

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Find the freedom to be yourself by taking the Kolbe ATM Index or The Student Aptitude Quiz for the youth in your life.