The Truth About Assessments — The Difference Between Kolbe, CliftonStrengths, DiSC and More

06/23/22 • 23 min

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.''

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

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

Where to find Stephanie: LinkedIn

Podcast Insights

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

Previous Episode

Four Parts of an Engaged Workforce: The Kolbe System™ in Practice

Companies want productive and engaged employees. But not many know when and how to work on employee engagement. First, it is critical to understand that employee engagement depends on their day-to-day role. After all, those who connect with their job are more motivated to work toward the company's goals.

In this episode of Powered by Instinct, Amy Bruske, the President of the Kolbe Corp, joins host Stephanie Clergé to consider what makes for an engaged culture. The two discuss why it is critical to identify employees' strengths and align them with roles within your organization and why employee engagement starts with the hiring process.
Host: Stephanie Clergé (8363)

Guest-at-a-Glance

Name: Amy Bruske (3583)

What she does: Amy is the President of Kolbe Corp.

Company: Kolbe Corp

Noteworthy: Amy is one of the company's three Senior Master Consultants. She is also in demand for executive coaching and team building by a wide range of businesses worldwide.

Where to find Amy: LinkedIn

Podcast Insights

🎙️ To build an engaged culture, you must first identify your employees' strengths. As a business leader, you may have people with similar skills and experience, but that doesn’t mean that they function in the same way. Therefore, it is important to know and value your employees’ unique talents and strengths if you want to engage them. ''You have to start thinking about people's strengths. People loving their jobs means that they've got to be in the zone every day. So, I'm looking at individual strengths and how we can capitalize on those.''

🎙️ Identifying employees' strengths helps you create productive teams. Just because someone can complete certain tasks, it doesn't mean that it's something they want to dedicate their career to. Identifying their strengths helps you put the right people in the proper position and pair them with employees with whom they can collaborate successfully. "Optimizing strengths is about strategically collaborating and combining them. Just a little bit of information makes a huge difference in identifying where the team will get stuck. Why do meetings go on too long? Why are we missing goals? It's not just because people don't have the time or don't care. Oftentimes, we've got the wrong people collaborating and working together."

🎙️ Alignment between strengths and job descriptions prevents burnout. People who are "in the zone daily," as Amy describes it, are more likely to stay with an employer for an extended period, work on a shared goal with enjoyment, and experience success in their professional life. Otherwise, they risk facing lots of stress. "All of our research shows that if someone is working against what is natural for them, it increases stress levels. And if left unmanaged, that's when someone's going to burn out — that's when they're going to quit your organization. They don't always know why the stress is there, but the more aligned people are to the role and what their needs are, we find that those are the most engaged employees."

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

Next Episode

The People Part of Your Growing Business with Mark O’Donnell, CEO and Visionary of EOS Worldwide

EOS Worldwide helps entrepreneurs live their ideal life. One of the ways EOS ImplementersTM and companies running on EOS accomplish this is through the use of Kolbe assessments and solutions. Likewise, Kolbe Corp proudly runs on EOS to help others use their instinctive strengths to accomplish what they care about most.

So, why not get two visionaries together to help provide more insight for everyone about the people part of business?

In this episode of the Powered by Instinct podcast, Kolbe Corp CEO and Visionary David Kolbe welcomes Mark O'Donnell, the CEO of and Visionary at EOS Worldwide. They talk about how the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) prepares you for tough times, why culture beats strategy, how EOS utilizes Kolbe and vice-versa, and why fun-loving teams are more productive.

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

Guest-at-a-Glance

💡 Name: Mark O'Donnell (2-2-10-3)

💡 What he does: He's the CEO and Visionary at EOS Worldwide.

💡 Company: EOS Worldwide

💡 Noteworthy: Before becoming the Visionary at EOS Worldwide and an Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS) ImplementerTM, Mark was a self-described serial entrepreneur. Now, he's living his ideal life and is passionate about helping other entrepreneurs get there too.

💡 Where to find Mark: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡ EOS is a tailor-made system that prepares you for tough times. Every business goes through some rough patches. That's just how the world works. So, how do you prepare your business for those tough and unpredictable times? You put rock-solid systems in place. Mark talks about how EOS helps companies prepare for the unpredictable. "It was challenging, exciting, and most of all, fulfilling to see that these companies running on EOS were performing better. They were withstanding the storm in ways that other companies couldn’t. Are you familiar with 'Getting Things Done’ by David Allen? He talks about setting up a system that you can execute when you're sick and in bed with the flu. And EOS, as a system, is the equivalent of that — it is a really simple system, and you can execute on that system in any environment. And so, when you're under pressure, you don't rise to the occasion; you sink to the lowest level of your training and preparation. And EOS was just tailor-made for that."

⚡ Cohesive and fun-loving teams are more productive. While execution is vital, some things are far more critical to a company's success, especially if we look at the long haul. According to Mark, culture can make all the difference. He explains, "I would argue that cohesive and fun-loving teams can achieve high levels of execution and productivity over the long haul over a team that is just really good at executing, but they hate each other. So, it's a little bit about longevity, and a little bit of it is more of a human approach to it because we got one life to live here. And why would you spend time working with people you don't like, doing things you don't like, even though you might be good at it?"

KEY QUOTE FROM MARK O'DONNELL:
"Kolbe is the tool that our Implementers teach at a very high level, and we've always been an organization that believes in simplicity and getting the most done in the least amount of time. And Kolbe is that one tool that can make a huge difference in an organization. It creates a common language amongst the leadership team — and hopefully the entire organization — where you are making a big leap in team health in less th

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