“Conation is the executive function of brain, where you manage your actions and allocate your mental energy. Take charge!”
–Kathy Kolbe
As most of you know, I’m a student and practitioner of leading high-performance teams at NASA. Any time I get the opportunity to add a new tool to my leadership repertoire, I take advantage of it. Not long ago I encountered a new perspective on how individuals and teams get things done, culminating in an insightful experience. Here, I’m talking about conation, the Kolbe model, and insights provided by Kathy Kolbe and Joan Koerber-Walker on building and leading high-performance teams.
I first encountered Kathy through an interview as part of Joan’s series on “People Making a Difference”. I was intrigued by the insights offered by Kathy’s views of conation (the “doing” part of the brain) and how it relates to the cognitive (“thinking”) and affective (“feeling”) parts of the mind. Yes, Kathy’s theory is that we have not two, but three parts to the mind. (What I find even more amazing is that some early results of recent brain mapping research is showing some support for the existence of conation as a part of the mind. Interesting!)
Moreover, my intuition was pointing to a connection to the leadership model I’ve been using for the last few years, centered around alignment, action, and result. I felt I understood how alignment works in terms of the degree of overlap of individual values with organizational values, purpose, and mission. Likewise, I felt I understood results in terms of the SMART model: specific, measurable, attainable, rewarding, and time-bound. However, I had a less clear picture of action. How does action come to be? How do we choose to take action, and of what form? When I read Joan’s interview with Kathy, I wondered: could conation be the well from which we determine our actions? To explore this for myself, I took the Kolbe A™ Index and from that discovered my own innate talents. In the Kolbe language, this is one’s M.O., and mine is 6-4-8-2 (yes, that’s the “6482″ in my Twitter bio). I read through the materials on what this meant (an “entrepreneur!”), and with some help from Joan, gained some additional insights; specifically, that my instinct is to lead with an insistence (8) in the third Kolbe Action Mode, “Quick Start” through improvisation, and back it up with a strong accommodation (6) in the first Action Mode, “Fact Finding” through explaining. Basically, I will juggle rapidly-changing priorities through an experimental approach backed by calculating probabilities. (I wondered: does Kathy have some kind of pipeline into my head? Holy cow – that’s me to a tee!) The accommodation (4) in Follow Thru means that I’m naturally drawn to maintaining and modifying systems, and the resistance (2) in Implementor means that my natural knack is for imagination, abstraction, conceptualization, and symbolism.
There was something fundamental here, something that I haven’t gained from Myers Briggs, Strengths Finder, FIRO-B, and DiSC. It was the sense of “yes, this is who I am” I got from the Kolbe A™ Index, as opposed to “yes, this is who I want to be” that I get from the others. There is a big difference between the two in my mind.
Moreover, the Kolbe model extends beyond that of the individual – with additional measures, it applies to teams as well. That definitely got my attention. Through Joan, we contacted Kathy Kolbe to conduct an assessment of the team I was leading, so that the team members could get the same insights from the Kolbe A™ Index that I got on myself, plus I would get extra insights on how the ensemble of team members combine naturally as a problem-solving team. Kathy Kolbe came to Houston, along with the company CEO David Kolbe (yes, they are related – he is her son), and conducted a learning and evaluation session of the team. Joan also graciously attended to help moderate and share her experiences with Kolbe. Through the assessment, I gained some additional insights into the composition of the team through the identification of which Kolbe Action Modes the team initiates solutions, responds to the situation, and prevents problems. The insights showed where I as the leader could expend my effort most efficiently to enable the highest degree of performance by the team. The assessment also indicated where the team had some aspects of “conative cloning”, meaning where the team was replicative instead of complementary in problem-solving approaches. Kathy provided suggestions on how to address the specific instances of conative cloning on the team, covering actions I should take as the leader, how I might sub-divide the team into smaller units, or bring in additional team members with the missing M.O.s onto the team to provide a better degree of complementary problem solving.
The final point from this tremendously insightful week was an approach to building teams in the first place. A leader can use the Kolbe model to augment team selection, either by using it to fill in M.O.s missing from the team, or even to build a team from scratch by adding Kolbe assessments to the screening and selection process.
In the months since I first encountered the Kolbe model, I’ve participated in a Kolbe Certification class, have conversed with others putting Kolbe into practice, and have laid plans on how I will add Kolbe to my leadership toolkit when I form a new team later this year.
I encourage you to explore the Kolbe model yourself. Go to http://www.kolbe.com and read the material there. You can also contact Joan Koerber-Walker through the earlier link, and she can help you as well. Basically, if you are a leader seeking to build and lead high performance teams, or are attempting to diagnose issues with teams not performing at peak effectiveness, give Kolbe a look. You may be amazed at the results.
Watching you and your NASA team tackle the issues raised by the Kolbe analysis was heartening. You are a leading edge leader. Unlike way too many business people in leadership roles, you grabbed hold of the information we provided, immediately discussed action items and sought more solutions.
Business people who act on conative truths the way you are doing it can become the rocket scientists of an economic recovery.
Looking forward to having you join us at the next Kolbe Certification program.
Kathy
Thanks again for meeting with my team personally, Kathy. I’m honored. I do look forward to learning and discovering more about the Kolbe analysis so that I can share and apply it.
Joe,
Interesting article. Two questions.
1) Would you recommend this for a management team (Office Manager, his deputy and direct reports) or is it more applicable to a project team (team leader and team members)?
2) How long did this assessment take (was this a day long workshop, two days etc) and was there prework for the assessment or was it all done at one time.
Thanks, and appreciate your insights,
Gary
Thanks for the comment and questions, Gary. The assessment itself is fairly quick and can be completed in less than an hour, with a half-day assessment workshop to explain the results and discuss actions and next steps. The Kolbe analysis is appropriate for teams of any types. There are even assessments for parent-children and for relationships. My direct experience is limited to an application to a project team; the rest is information I read from my research. You can see more at http://www.kolbe.com.
Joe,
What a great post! The best thing about discovering something important is when we share it with others. It may be a personal discovery, a team discovery, or a great innovation. Kolbe is all three.
Sharing discoveries and encouraging us to seek out new ones is what you and all the leaders at NASA demonstrate. This is the sign of true leadership.
Whether through innovations, accepting the challenge to reach for the stars, or driving new technologies for space exploration that become technologies we use right here on earth, NASA and Its leaders are some of our country’s greatest assets. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to see a little slice of NASA through the eyes of your team.
Joan Koerber-Walker
Thank you Joan!
Joe, that’s exactly how I felt 20 years ago when I was on the receiving end of the power of conation and the Kolbe model for building productive teams. Congratulations to you for internalizing the new knowledge you have received about yourself and your team so quickly.
Kolbe Wisdom truly provides a leader a practical and applicable approach in creating and sustaining high performance teams. You will gain vocabulary and understanding on utlizing team strengths, capitalizing on differences, improving communication, collaboration and team deliverables.
Today, the speed to which we can organize ourselves as a team is king, and directly impacts our ability to capture, capitalize and execute on emerging opportunities. As a Kolbe Certified Consultant in Michigan for 20 years, our organization has been working with project teams and simultaneous development teams in the automotive industry. We wish more leaders in the automotive world would embrace this concept as you have.
As you continue to learn and apply Kolbe, your team members will be so attuned to each other and the nature of the work that needs to be done that their communication handoffs will be seamless. Using the Kolbe Wisdom with your teams will insure that the efforts that you do together, will pay off.
Congratulations on your leadership decision to incorporate Kolbe and the Leadership Analytics.
Thank you for the reply, Mari. I’ve just scratched the surface and look forward to learning, sharing, and applying more about conation and the Kolbe model.