Discovering our natural drives and instincts
What if you had a secret power that could reduce burnout, increase productivity, and improve communication? Would you be intrigued? Furthermore, what if this power could be used in any situation to benefit your life, and you didn't even have to train yourself to use it? Everyone has such a resource right at their fingertips. It's called 'instincts.' Psychologists have ignored this elusive third part of the mind for over a century, but the influence of instincts-and how to use them to your benefit -is about to be revealed.
The Kolbe Index is probably the single most important profiling tool available to find out exactly what makes you tick. It is extremely important that you read the following information before taking the profile.
There are many personality type tests available today and all of them will enable you to become more knowledgeable about yourself. However, all of these profiles leave out one essential thing that we all need to know to base life and career decisions on, it is something that is seldom talked or written about because only one researcher has undertaken extensive analysis of it. What I am talking about is your 'natural drives' or striving instincts. Your natural drive is totally separate from your personality or cognitive style. Your natural drive or instinct is what pulls you towards certain activities and away from others and it is a vital piece of knowledge that you need to have in your arsenal if you are to plan your life with accuracy. You absolutely need to find out what your instincts want for you and this profile is a tested and well researched tool.
Let's look at this a little more in depth. There is a word called conation (yes, it's actually in the dictionary which literally means 'striving instincts' and it is a separate area of the mind that has not been addressed very well until now. A psychologist and management consultant called Kathy Kolbe started to research this area some years ago and found that there was no reliable way to test and discover how people used their instincts so she set out to quantify them in a scientific way. Her discoveries are now known as the Kolbe Index profile which is a thirty minute questionnaire that can track your instincts and codify them in a readable format. The profile will also give you several occupational areas that are suited to your particular instincts or 'natural drives'.
Abraham Maslow, the famous psychologist and guru of self-actualization said that man seeks "to be true to his own nature, to trust himself, to be authentic, spontaneous, honestly expressive and to look for the source of his actions in his own deep inner nature". He also said that "capabilities clamor to be used and only cease their clamor when they are used sufficiently".
This profile offers you the ground breaking opportunity to maximize your capabilities by recognizing the power of your own will - it allows you to recognize what you will move towards and what you move away from. It will help you discover the instincts that you love to use and utilize happily and it will reveal the authentic expressions of self that you need to trust within yourself. You will no longer have to take debilitating detours as you search for the path of least resistance and greatest self-expression. You'll be spared the frustration of wondering why something that works for someone else doesn't work for you and vice-versa. You will quite simply confirm what you have known all along: that you have a unique way of doing things that works just fine for you and you do not have to be different, you do not have to sing someone else's tune, you can be yourself. The key to success is by understanding and then going with your instincts. This profile will unlock this for you.
Lets look at some of these instincts discovered by Kathy Kolbe. Kathy found that there were four distinct instincts people used. They are detailed below.
The first is known as fact finder. This is the instinct to probe for information and facts and look in detail at things. This instinct also allows a person to be precise, judicious and thorough.
The second is called follow thru. This is the instinct to organize and bring things to conclusion. This instinct also makes people methodical and systematic as well as focused and structured.
The third is known as quickstart. This is the instinct to innovate and be creative and be willing to utilize and discover new ideas. This instinct has an affinity towards risk and is spontaneous and flexible.
The fourth is called implementor. This is the instinct to demonstrate and build. This instinct allows people to be hands-on and physically demonstrate and deal with the concrete.
As unbelievable as it may seem there are only really these four driving instincts that we all use in some way and it is a combination of these instincts that give us a natural advantage in some areas. This natural advantage will allow you to understand why you do some things well and other things simply repel you or give you stress but the results will finally set you free from this stress. Now what people find is that they initiate an instinctive drive in some of these categories but in others they do not want to do them. Also some instincts you would feel comfortable doing but would not necessarily initiate. Let me clarify what we mean by that. You will receive results that will tell you four main things. Firstly you will discover what your driving instincts are. Secondly you will be able to see what instincts you initiate, i.e what you simply will get up and do without prompting in any way. Thirdly you will be shown which instinctual areas you will be comfortable to do or would be willing to do, you may not get up and do them without prompting but if someone asked you you would be OK to do it, so you would accommodate it with very little stress. Fourthly it will reveal what you simply would not do, you would not initiate in that instinctual area nor would you move towards it and if forced to move towards it you would feel stressed by it. Now, has it happens many of us do live in environments where we have been forced to into places we aren't happy in, this is a well-known sources of stress in a work area, being forced to do things that aren't within our best instinctive ranges, in fact Kathy Kolbe has a term for people who are functioning outside of their preferred "action modes" ( aterm defining your best instinctual operating areas). It is known as "conative crisis" or "conative stress" and this is where you have, over time become a square peg in a round hole If this conative stress becomes a regular way of being in the workplace it can lead to faulty thinking and a confused mindset when answering the Kolbe Index and this results in unclear results which means that you can be in a transitional state of mind where you have simply forgotten how to have the freedom to be yourself because your conative mind has been suppressed for so long. So occasionally some people receive an "in transition" result which will not give you a clear indication of exactly what your natural drives are. However this is rectified by becoming aware of this state of mind and if the person retakes the profile it reveals their authentic self the second time. It helps tremendously if the client remembers times in his or her life when they did have the freedom to be themselves and this triggers the ability to retake the Kolbe successfully.
. The profile is simple to take and is not complex but must be answered as honestly as possible. You must have the mindset as you begin it that you have the freedom to be yourself and keep this attitude in mind as you answer the profile "if I had the freedom to be myself I would………"
Please see the resources section for more information on Kathy Kolbes books and research on conation and using instinctive drives in everyday life.