The contents of the junk bag lay scattered on the table. Three sets of eyes darted around the debris, looking for order, perhaps inspiration, for the game they were to develop and sell. The clock ticked down from three minutes.
I watched with amazement as the test subjects performed just as we’d been briefed they would. Bill the “Fact Finder” started touching everything, making tidy piles of the disorder. Elizabeth the “Follow Thru” went into full shutdown mode, arms crossed, inattentive. Sue the “Quick Start” leapt in, assembling a bizarre shoots and ladders game involving a makeshift blow gun, marbles, and bits of string.
We were in a workshop to learn what our Kolbe A index revealed of our dominant conative traits, that is, our preferred way we get things done. Three class members, selected for their strong index results, had left the room when Elizabeth Berry pre-briefed us on how these three very different trait qualities would handle the group stress test. A frank naysayer, I sat enthralled as these free-willed participants struggled through the challenge exactly as their testing had suggested.
If you’ve never heard of conation, you’re not alone. Conation is your instinctive style of action, your “gumption,” so to speak. It is considered to be the third part of your mind after cognitive (thinking) and affective (feeling), and plays a huge role in both how you get things done, and more importantly, your stress levels. You and I get stressed out when we don’t act in a conative fashion that best suits us.
But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself — Let me explain. Kathy Kolbe, a researcher into action or conative styles, developed a standardized test to measure dominant conative traits. No trait is good or bad, but someone who’s hard wired to use one style will feel awkward and discouraged if they’re forced into the wrong mode. When doing a task in our style, time flies by and we cut through the task “like butta.” But when forced to act in a conative style we’re resistant to, we stress out, and after much whining and delaying may eventually complete our work.
There are four distinct patterns of action. To identify your own action-mode profile, you can take the 36-question Kolbe A online (the test is free, but interpretation costs about $50) at www.Kolbe.com, or simply observe your own approach to getting something done. To give you an example, staff with different profiles might respond to a challenge — let’s say, learning to assist in an ERCP — in the following ways:
Quick Start: If you’re a Quick Start who wants to assist, you’d probably ask your unit manager to be assigned to the next available case, get a few tips from an experienced nurse, and feel comfortable just jumping right into a case with an experienced nurse at your side.
Fact Finder: You’d spend hours reading, watching, asking questions, and learning about ERCP before actually assisting with your first case.
Implementor: You pay less attention to words than to concrete objects, so you might review ERCP films or play with salvaged guidewires, sphincterotomes, and stents before you go near the radiology suite.
Follow Thru: You’d likely ask to sit in for several cases, or read books or articles that explain the assistant’s role in an ERCP, and then learn ERCP skills in order of difficulty. You might make lists of your plan, and check them off as completed. Why did I climb on the Kolbe bandwagon? I took the Kolbe A in December to prepare for the January workshop, and was dismayed to get results that stated that I was “in transition” — they said it meant that I was under stress and operating outside of my strengths —- but to me, it meant that I had failed my “personality test.” I howled about it. I fumed. I resisted. And then when I got to the workshop, I understood.
Berry explained that some people, although they have one or even two preferred action modes, can function in other modes if forced by circumstances; they’re just not very happy in them. Most people’s testing identifies their one or perhaps two strong suits, one or two neutral, and one mode of action that they would rather avoid like sticking a scope into a diverticula. I had tested about even for three of the traits, just a little stronger on Fact Finder and Quick Start.
What had happened, Berry explained, was that by the nature of my profession I am forced to adopt traits that are outside my comfort zone. Follow thru? I’m just not nit-picky enough by nature, but in medicine none of use can afford to drop the ball. Implementer? I am competent and can do my own household repairs, but I don’t enjoy it. I feel the same way about the intricate hands-on nature of ERCP. But I really love researching in books or on the internet (Fact Finder) and then immediately putting my knowledge into action (Quick Start).
How can you know your highest conative traits? Imagine that you’re Oprah, and have 40 competent and knowledgeable assistants. Which parts of your job do you relish? Which parts would you delegate out immediately? Be honest. I would, if I had great assistants, delegate out much of the implementation and follow through.
Since January’s conference I’ve begun to do so, delegating extensively to my office manager and nurse (both strong Follow Throughs and into nit-picky detail work); I’ve referred out my Implementive ERCPs and Web site redesign. And I amuse myself by categorizing my staff’s conative types. As a Quick Start, I recognize the room friction when I am paired with a highly qualified and competent, though tediously methodical, Follow Thru nurse. I can appreciate our complimentary approaches to caring for our patient, and try to celebrate that diversity rather than fuming about her slow-mo endo.
I challenge you. Go to Kolbe’s Web site and pay for interpretation or figure out your conative style for yourself. Learn to listen to your gut instincts.
Happier Fact Finder and Quick Start physician Patricia Raymond, MD, FACP, FACG, encourages fellow Fact Finders to read more about Kolbe testing at www.oprah.com/spiritself/omag/ss_omag_200601_mbeck.jhtml,Quick Starts and Follow Thrus to take the test at www.Kolbe.com, and Implementors to start analyzing their coworkers.