Maximize Your Performance by Tapping Into Your Strengths with Special Guest, David Kolbe

What if peak productivity wasn’t about learning new ways to do more, but about working in alignment with your natural strengths? 

In this episode, David Kolbe shares how to harness your innate abilities to improve performance, boost efficiency, and create lasting success in business and life

What’s Covered in This Episode?

•  The surprising reason why hard work isn’t always the answer to peak performance.
•  How understanding your strengths can transform the way you work and lead.
•  The role of the Kolbe Index in identifying your natural problem-solving style.
•  Why productivity struggles often stem from working against your instincts—and how to fix it.
•  How entrepreneurs and leaders can create high-performing teams by leveraging individual strengths.

David Kolbe is transforming how the world understands human performance. He comes from a lineage of psychometric pioneers and is the CEO of Kolbe Corp,  the leader in helping people leverage their instinctive strengths to achieve what they care about most. 

David helped develop the original algorithm for the Kolbe A™ Index - the only proven tool to unlock conative strengths. 

David's book: 

📚Do More More Naturally: Empowering Effortless Success And The Freedom To Be Yourself by David Kolbe and Amy Bruske  https://amzn.to/4iuzyKD 

Simple & strategic marketing solutions for the busy coach and consultant. Visit www.reinventingperspectives.com

Transcript

David Kolbe: [00:00:00] I'm always skeptical of people who say, oh, you can get more and work less. And by the way, it's not about working less necessarily. So you talk about hustling. It's about setting yourself up for success.

It's about setting big goals. But then making it as easy as possible to reach those goals. Most people There's so much they want to achieve that when they can achieve the things more easily, they'll take that energy and they will plow it into additional things.

It's Tizer Reinvent

Priscilla Shumba: Welcome to the lessons of entrepreneurship, the journey of reinvention today. I have an exciting guest David Colby the CEO of Colby Corp. David, I'm so excited to have you here because you have lived and breathed something that entrepreneurs are constantly pursuing, which is [00:01:00] performance and high performance.

So I'm so excited to have you here. David is the author of a new book David, please let us know who you are and what you're about. 

David Kolbe: Thanks for having me. I'm father of four husband to Pam CEO of Colby Corp. And our mission is to help people understand their strengths and specifically the strengths in the way they instinctively take action so that they can use those strengths, which are really the key to driving success.

So they can use those to achieve the things they care about. 

Priscilla Shumba: I'm excited. It's a great title for a book, do more, more naturally. I said, it's either going to be like you read it and you're like, no way. I've got to do something more to get more productivity and performance. Or you're going to be like I've been waiting for this. Tell us more about what led you to the point of writing this book and what the premise is.

David Kolbe: We have a mission. When I say we, it's my coauthor, Amy Brewski, but also the company that we run together. We have that mission to help people achieve the things they care about. And that's really what drove us to write the [00:02:00] book. So the mission has been there for a long time, but periodically, honestly, some of its frustration.

We meet with our clients and a client will get their Colby results. So we have this thing called the Colby A index that helps you understand these strengths and they'll get the results. And it's very gratifying because they love it. But the frustration is so many times we hear people say. Oh my gosh, I wish I had known this 20 years ago.

This makes so much sense. I could have avoided these struggles. And that's really what doing more and more naturally is all about. It's about helping people understand. There's this part of you that you don't need to change. You need to tap into it. But when you learn how to tap into it, you learn how to use your energy more effectively and more efficiently so you can get more done.

But it actually doesn't use more energy and it doesn't have to take more time and I know it sounds too good to be true and I'm not naive, there are sometimes limits and there are usually obstacles but it's [00:03:00] absolutely possible. 

Priscilla Shumba: In the world that we live in, you get this, I hustled so hard to get here. And you're trying to transform yourself into alpha to get things done, or, you're trying to take on the get things done persona.

I'm interested in knowing, how did that come about in your life and Amy's life 

David Kolbe: in my life, a little bit of the story is the company that I run was actually founded by my mom. Almost 50 years ago now. I came to it that way. She started the company. She created the Colby A Index. I had been doing other things. I worked in the U. S. government. I was a lawyer then after that for a while.

And then eventually came to work inside the company. That's my journey to getting here. And it's been quite a blessing. She had to recruit me to come into the business because I was working as a lawyer, before I came in. But given what we do, that was easy for her to do actually. 

Priscilla Shumba: So for her to come up with this [00:04:00] index , her founding story of trying to build this business and how did she get onto this work on your strengths? 

David Kolbe: There are a couple of tracks to that. Number one, she's really an entrepreneur at heart. So she was going to be creating businesses. She had actually started at least one other one formally. She took some time off to raise me and my sister. But then, as I said, she's an entrepreneur at heart, so she couldn't help herself, and she started doing other things part time, and then really started the business.

Out of the house. So it was not really part time, but she was doing it from home. So she was there when we got home from school and everything. But the other part of the story really is her dad was in the personnel assessment business. He developed something called the wonder like personnel test, which is a short form intelligence test that lots of businesses use to understand how smart people are usually used in a hiring context.

She had that [00:05:00] background and she had the notion of understanding what makes people tick. But the way she tells the story, she argued with her dad sometimes saying dad, it's not just intelligence. Like we all know smart people who aren't right for a job just because they're smart, that's not enough.

And he would tell her Kathy, you go and figure that out. This is what I do. This is what I've figured out. After a number of years, she took him up on that and figured it out.

Priscilla Shumba: I can imagine you have granddad measuring intelligence how people tick and mom being like no, there's another way. That must have been an interesting upbringing. I love that you talk about effortless success. Practically, what does that look like?

'cause sometimes the moment people put effortlessly, they think, okay, it means I've gotta do nothing. Misconceptions about what that actually means.

David Kolbe: And as I said, sometimes it sounds too good to be true. I'll just speak for myself. I'm always skeptical of people who say, oh, you can get more and work less. And by the way, it's not about working less necessarily. So [00:06:00] you talk about hustling. It's about setting yourself up for success.

It's about setting big goals. But then making it as easy as possible to reach those goals. So this is not about Oh read my book and then you can just do nothing. You can do less if you want. You can , spend less energy to do the same things. But I think most of the people who are going to be attracted to the book are the ones who There's so much they want to achieve that when they can achieve the things they're starting out to do more easily, they'll take that energy and they will plow it into additional things.

It might be, oh, I'm going to do more with. Stuff at home that maybe I haven't had the time to do, or it might be, I'm going to start another business and run that. The basics of what we're trying to tap into is this notion that when you do things in a way that's not natural to you.

What we measure isn't about what you can or can't do, so sure, you can do it. I'll use a little example from myself. I'm the kind [00:07:00] of person who needs information and detail. I do research. I really need to delve into things become an expert. If I am doing something where I don't have the opportunity to use that natural approach that I take, where it's about, hey, Don't ask questions.

Don't justify go on little data and information and just guess I can do those things. But . It takes a lot more energy for me to achieve the same results as somebody who more naturally does that. So I do it. I grind. It feels like hard work. Honestly, it does not give people the same sense of accomplishment and joy to do things in a way that doesn't suit their natural 

instinctive ways of taking action. So I work hard, but it's not fulfilling. Takes extra energy to get, frankly, not great results most of the time, because it is so hard. And even if I get great results, I burn out. And so it's not sustainable. So sure, I do it for six months or a year or however long I can push it.

And then it's you know what, I [00:08:00] am done. I'm out of here. Sure, , I achieved success or notoriety, whatever you were working toward, but it's not worth it to me. So just avoid those mistakes, figure it out earlier and do those things in a way that's going to be more natural for you. 

Priscilla Shumba: Could you give us an example of a type , what's natural to you is in depth analytical. Getting in there that fires you up to do things, maybe another example of another type, so that people have an idea of what you mean by your natural way.

David Kolbe: Yeah. What we analyze if you take a Colby index, and by the way, you can read the book and you don't need to take a Colby index. we leave the jargon out. But what We do is identify four what we call action modes. The first one I described is what we call the fact finder. That's how you deal with gathering and sharing information.

The next one is what we call follow through and it's how you deal with systems, structure, organization. So one end of the spectrum are people who naturally create systems. If there's a chaotic situation, they will [00:09:00] find the patterns. They will put that chaos into structure. They will then.

Follow through. That's where the name comes from. They'll follow through with that system and structure. So if there's a 12 step process, they'll do the 12 step process. The other end of the spectrum is somebody who's very open ended and adaptable. They're very low on bureaucracy. So if there's a 12 step process for this person.

They probably won't get through all 12 steps. Maybe they'll do it once or twice and then they'll look for shortcuts and efficiencies. And it's just the way they are, by the way. It's not, Oh, they're a rebel. Like maybe that's the way it comes off, but it's not that they're doing it to be rebellious.

They're just doing it because that's who they are. The next one is what we call quick start and it's how we deal with innovation, taking risks. The, Dealing with new and unknown stuff. I'll start at the other end of the spectrum this time. On the one hand, it's somebody who stabilizes.

Somebody who figures out what works [00:10:00] and sticks with what works, rather than doing something new just for the sake of doing something new. That's the person on the other end of the spectrum. They experiment. They take Risks, they do things differently just to do things differently. And then the last one is what we would call implementer.

The name is a little confusing though. It's not how we implement as in carry things out. That's more the follow through one. The name comes from the use of tools and implements. So it's all about the way we deal with the three dimensional, tactile, literally hands on kind of world. One end of the spectrum are people who take action by Building physically constructing if they tackle a project, they gather tools and they physically are going to put it together.

They need to walk and be in a physical space. That's the way they take action. The other end of that spectrum is somebody who imagines, somebody who doesn't need to see something to do it or believe it. They just create more conceptually rather than physically [00:11:00] building stuff. So that's the quick run through of those four.

Priscilla Shumba: That's a really, great and comprehensive I even thought of myself just in the house when I'm cooking. I can't follow a recipe and for some reason I just cannot. , I'm dreading it and I just skip steps and I try to figure it out from a few pictures.

And my daughter will always say, but mom, there's a recipe. Are you following the steps? So it's interesting that you say that even in, everyday little things, we sometimes dunno why. Or we just think, oh, I'd just rather not read that, or I just prefer not to. 

David Kolbe: Yeah, and that's a great example, partly because so I'd challenge you just a little bit on the language. You said, I can't follow a recipe. You can, you can. You've done it before when you had to, but you won't follow a recipe. If left to your own devices, you'll just do it differently and sure you can follow that recipe, but.

That's because that's not naturally you the process of cooking is less [00:12:00] appealing for you. If that's the way you're forced to do it so for instance, and you'll see this, you know with chefs There's some acclaimed chefs who don't follow recipes who just create and invent and then there are others Who are the opposite I create the recipe and it is Very detailed and is meant to be followed even though I created it if I'm making this dish I'm going to do it exactly the right way.

It's not that one or the other of those pproaches is right, in some all encompassing way, it's just each approach is right for that person. 

Priscilla Shumba: I would always say, I wish I could follow a recipe and like you said, it's not that I cannot, I just won't and it just doesn't feel good to me, but I admired people who could and I always said, Oh, I wish I could. So it's, yeah, it's interesting that understanding that natural way.

David Kolbe: Yeah. Part of the trick and what I really hope people who read the book and kind of. Find out about our stuff, even if they don't read the book. Understand is I totally get that you admire the people who do it that other way. [00:13:00] And sometimes you'd like to, because well, especially if you're cooking something for the first time, if you don't follow the recipe, you're unlikely to get great results.

Okay, 

Priscilla Shumba: true.

David Kolbe: actually baking is particularly rigid. If you substitute this or that when you're baking, a lot of times it just doesn't turn out. Or if it says, oh, you have to sift the flour before you mix it, and it tells you a specific order of things to put in the mix, if you don't follow it, your cake won't rise.

It'll be, too dense or sticky or something like that, just because you didn't do the right order. All the ingredients are right. I'm like you, yeah, there are times where I wish I were more like that other person, but , what we really want people to do is celebrate who they are. So recognize, you know what, yeah, I need to bake and I really wish I were the kind of person who naturally followed those recipes in detail, but because I'd get a better result most of the time.

So instead, like once you learn [00:14:00] that. Channel your energy into the kind of cooking that's right for you. Hey, you're going to experiment. You're going to make things up more. You're going to have somebody else's recipe that you find online, and then you'll go off in new directions. Oh, I see people make it like this.

I'm going to substitute this for that. And then to use your story, you have to convince your daughter at that point. Hey. Sweetie, I'm experimenting today and you know what that means. It might be terrible. It might be the best thing we've ever had. 

Priscilla Shumba: Thank you. I really appreciate that. Now, I know you talk about performance and productivity, from the Colby A index, you get a sense of okay, what are my strengths? And now you're thinking, how do I apply this to being more productive and being more of a high performer?

Especially to those in the entrepreneurial space, building businesses.

David Kolbe: So it starts with yourself and understanding your strengths and then understanding, okay, what does my job look like? And you really want alignment between your strengths and the way you're doing a job. So using the cooking [00:15:00] example we were just talking about. For someone like you and me, that's not necessarily that process oriented, follow the recipe every single time, as I was saying, steer away from baking and maybe be the person who creates new recipes.

So you're not following somebody else's, you're coming up with your own and then somebody else can follow it after you. In other work contexts, it's a similar thing though. If you're in the financial. Yeah, a lot of finances , in a corporate setting, and that can even be a small entrepreneurial kind of business setting.

A lot of it is about process and making sure that things are documented very carefully. If that's not you, try to create your role so that you're not handling those things because that's not going to be very productive for you. You will get burned out. It'll be hard for you to maintain that energy.

For the entrepreneurs listening, the reality is that Especially early stages of companies, you often have to do everything. And I get that we've all been there, but what you should [00:16:00] really work toward is quickly finding ways to collaborate that doesn't even have to be hiring a full time person.

It can be. How do you, hire an accountant? How do you hire other people outside the company to do some of those tasks? But then when you can hire other people, build on your strengths, start with who you are so that you can do more and more naturally, and then hire the people who do things different than you do them.

Don't necessarily just want to react and find somebody the exact opposite, but you find the tasks in your company that don't fit you well that you're currently doing and you find somebody who's better suited for those roles and the company will just, it can explode. It can just be so much better because that potential is unlocked and you are not then doing things that are a bad fit for you.

Priscilla Shumba: I came across some writings. I can't remember what the author is. And he was talking about how he just focuses on one thing. Once he realized he was very good at, deal [00:17:00] making 

that was the business. Everything else that he had been doing at that point that he thought was the business but that really wasn't getting him very far and it was draining his energy and the momentum was slow.

Once he just said, you know what, deal making is the business, everything else has got to go, he just propelled his business, 

David Kolbe: right. And it's being smart about everything else having to go. Usually that doesn't mean. Nobody has to do it. It usually means I shouldn't be doing it. So for an entrepreneur, yeah, if deal making is your thing, set yourself up for success by having all the other requirements of the job dealt with by somebody else.

So it is then about being able to have that focus. That freedom is really part of your success to have the freedom to do things your own way, to be yourself. But , another joyful part of all this is when we realize that. We need other people to do things that we don't naturally do. As I said, it unlocks a lot of [00:18:00] potential.

So for me a lot of that system and structure related stuff. When I realized there are people who actually thrive on that. An example from our own company, we got to a point where part of what we were doing internally was we needed to focus on policies and processes so that we could be more efficient and we were going to document and sometimes create these processes.

So it was a really good, smart thing to do for the company, but at our leadership team level. None of the people who was in the room figuring out this is what we should do. None of us naturally did that. But we knew there was somebody else on the team who had the right instincts for this job. And we went to her, and even though the rest of us were thinking, Oh my gosh, this sounds terrible.

This would be like a prison sentence for us. To her, when she found out she was getting to do this stuff. She loved it. She lit up because she would get to so it's not just one plus one equals two. It's [00:19:00] really the multiplication of three times three is nine. It's not six just addition.

And that is the potential that you unlock when you work with other people who compliment your strengths. 

Priscilla Shumba: This is something that I think everyone and their team should do because like you said, someone gets a task and you think just because they have the title, they must love The work and every day they are dreading coming to work and they're not showing it, but you see the performance and you see the attitude and the way they talk behind closed doors and, it just goes on and on in a negative way.

David Kolbe: Yep. Yeah. And it starts with the individual. If it's an entrepreneurial business, usually that means it starts with the entrepreneur and building around that. But I totally agree. Everybody on the team should know it and leaders, whether that's an entrepreneur, leaders at home, leaders in church, wherever it might be.

I think leaders have a responsibility to get the most out of other people and to give them the best ability to reach their potential by tapping into who they are. So it's not enough to [00:20:00] just say, Oh, I learned it for me and I'm going to be selfish and like just create the system that works only for me.

No, you've got a responsibility to broaden that and make it work for other people as well. 

Priscilla Shumba: , especially in this time where with small business, it's so hard for people to attract. Talent and it's hard for people to keep them and people are unhappy and I think a lot of that unhappiness sometimes, you've got a job description where, you know, 75 percent of the things you have to do on a daily very draining and for very little.

David Kolbe: What we talk about a lot in the book is that sustainable success. so you talk about retaining people we see so often people leave and sadly it's the best people it's the people you want to keep Look, we all have seen it the people who are the best get more and more stuff thrown at them because oh my gosh I want something done.

This is the person to go to, so they start doing things that maybe aren't a great fit for them. And even though they can do it and they will do it because, gosh, they're dedicated and hard working [00:21:00] and all of those things. But . It starts to be more of a struggle, not just because they have so many things on their plate, but because so many of those things aren't a good fit.

We were working with one of our clients, a very large property developer manager of retail developments Their number one manager of properties and we're talking like billion dollar properties. He was so good, he'd gotten promoted. He was managing their top. Producing property and they gave this person another promotion like, Hey, now you get to oversee all of those people.

But his job changed. His job went from being on site managing the property to now he was back at the corporate office. Managing all those other people that fundamental shift in his role took him out of what made him successful and he was very smart. It's not that he wasn't smart enough. He had great people skills.

It's not that he, didn't have the people skills. It was mostly he was the kind of person that takes action through that physical, the implementer [00:22:00] strength. Where is that? end where he physically constructs, builds, sees things needs to be part of that environment. But our client came to us and said, This was our top guy and we might have to let him go and when we started talking to him, it was clear.

He was basically saying, yeah, and I'm about to quit. Even if they don't fire me, I used to love my job and I hate my job. We were able to identify what was going on. It wasn't personality conflicts or too much work or anything like that. It was they took him away from his instinctive strength. So we were able to help them put him back in a place where he could use his strengths.

It was a little tricky because yeah. Look, the real world being what it is, he didn't want to have a demotion. It would have been easy enough to say, Oh, just have your old job back, managing our number one property. But that would have been seen by him and others in the organization as a demotion. And also, they really wanted him to play a role developing other property managers because they thought , that was really, [00:23:00] important for the company.

But we helped them figure out a way where he could do both of those things. The nut of it was, Take him out of the corporate office. If you want him to develop those other people, send him to your other properties, have them spend two weeks there at a time so that he can walk around, he can learn it, he can see what's going on and he can physically show those other people what he sees.

literally putting his hands on it and saying, look, this is what you're missing. This is what you need to do better. And when they did that, things turned around. He went back to excellent performance and he went back to having joy in his job. 

Priscilla Shumba: when you say it, I can see it in so many instances where You're lucky if the person even understands why they're not enjoying the work anymore. It makes that connection between, hey, I'm a person who's more hands on. Because, everybody loves a promotion. And it has so many social things and hierarchy things associated with it and feelings of power and [00:24:00] influence and things like that, that you can easily get lost in all that.

But allowing the person to help design the work maybe, it's

David Kolbe: Yeah. 

Priscilla Shumba: Having those hard conversations rather than drawing a conclusion. What would you say is the primary way in which you work with business or small business, if you do?

David Kolbe: Yeah, we do. We work with all kinds of businesses from a strategy standpoint. Sometimes I think maybe we should focus because we'll work with very large international companies. We work with governments, but really, most of what we do are with , small and medium sized businesses.

So it's everything from a lot of the stuff we've talked about helping them understand who the people are in the organization working on communication so Some of that is just recognizing, Hey, if I'm working with somebody who is maybe opposite of me, I talked about myself as asking lots of questions, needing lots of information that everybody's like that.

So when I'm dealing with somebody who isn't like that, how do I give them the bottom line? Give them the three bullet pointed highlights that [00:25:00] are most important. Especially if I'm talking with potential clients, like I don't want to overwhelm them with facts and figures and details if that's not. The way they operate.

So communication putting teams together and managing those teams. We have software and other solutions that help with hiring. I talked about, understanding the role that somebody is going to be in and then picking from among the candidates for that job. And We don't pick one. We never say I shouldn't say never.

I guess it's possible. We basically say here are people who are a good enough fit You should of course always consider other things like job experience and you know Are they committed to what you do and lots of other things but it's what we do for small businesses is pretty comprehensive

Priscilla Shumba: A lot of times it's just communication breakdown, and it's such a big thing, but sometimes we don't see how big it is. Understanding yourself, understanding other people, how to work well, whether it's with client, whether it's with staff, with team, and it is really critical to [00:26:00] success, really.

Because , like you said, we do need other people. Thank you so much, David. Please, the new book is called Do More, More Naturally. And they've got a Colby A index that you can take to find out your strengths and, understand how you tick so that you can really perform and be more productive.

Is there anything I missed, David?

David Kolbe: No, I think that's all if people are interested in getting their colby index. They can go to 

Priscilla Shumba: Thank you so much, and thank you for your time.