Is the Kolbe Index™ the same or similar to other personality assessments?

After using The Kolbe Index™ for over four years, I finally decided to make the investment to be a Kolbe Certified™ Consultant. It was an incredible experience that only reinforces Stellar's mission to help people that love to work find the work that they love.

There's a ton of deep insights and great wisdom that Kathy Kolbe and her team bring to each training and I'll unpack that over time with additional blogs and articles.  For today, I wanted to start with the first question that most clients and candidates ask about The Kolbe Index™:

Can you use the Predictive Index™ or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, or CliftonStrengths or DiSC with the Kolbe A Index? Are they compatible or do they measure the same thing?

The Predictive Index and Myers-Briggs assessments measure traits falling within the affective (feeling) part of the mind — entirely different qualities than the Kolbe (which is a measure of the conative, doing, domain), so they do not provide redundant information. Assessment tools for the affective domain and the Kolbe Index identify entirely different human characteristics. If the instrument asks questions related to any of the following, it will gather information related to the affective domain:

• Desires
• Preferences
• Social Style
• Values
• Beliefs
• Personality
• Attitude

An accurate prediction of affective behavior will describe what a person WANTS or WISHES would happen. Knowing that desires can change over time, authors Myers and Briggs recognized that their instrument (the MBTI) ought not to be used for selection. Such instruments generally have around 44% test-retest reliability.

An accurate prediction of conative behavior will describe how a person naturally takes action when striving. Instincts are innate and do not change over time, so a valid assessment of this domain would have much greater reliability. The Kolbe A Index has proven its reliability of over 90%, making it the most reliable selection tool on the market today.

The Kolbe A™ Index helps you understand how a person's instincts drive action or reaction when problem solving, or striving, within four primary zones:

• Information
• Organization
• Change
• Physical space

Conative and affective tools can both play important roles in team success. Kolbe WAREwithal® software predicts how people will act, react and interact. It doesn’t identify whom they want to be with or whether they approve of behaviors or value similar attributes; these are affective issues. The Predictive Index can help explain why people like or dislike each other. The Kolbe Index explains how those people will naturally work together and the potential roadblocks they will encounter when collaborating.

Does that help with the basic understanding of Kolbe versus other assessments?

I hope so, or at least it's a worthy start to a deeper conversation. If you're interested in learning more about Kolbe Index™, please reach out of visit our Kolbe Store.