Harry Handles It: Episode 38 with David Kolbe

Most hiring decisions focus on experience, intelligence, or personality, but even when all three look right on paper, teams still struggle with execution, communication, and alignment.

In this episode of Harry Handles It, Harry Nalbandyan sits down with David Kolbe to break down the missing piece that most organizations overlook: how people actually take action. The conversation centers around the Kolbe Index and its focus on the conative part of the mind, which measures instinctive strengths and the natural way individuals approach problem solving and execution. 

David explains why understanding how someone operates is just as important as what they know or how they behave. The discussion highlights how misalignment in these instinctive strengths often leads to friction inside teams, especially as organizations scale and leaders attempt to move faster than their teams can execute.

The episode also explores how leaders can use these insights to improve hiring, team structure, and communication. Rather than forcing individuals to operate outside their natural strengths, the focus shifts toward placing people in roles where they can perform at their highest level while building systems that account for differences in how work gets done.

The conversation covers:

• The difference between cognitive, affective, and conative strengths
•  How the Kolbe Index measures instinctive ways of taking action
•  Why execution breakdowns often come from misalignment, not capability
•  The four action modes: fact finder, follow through, quick start, and implementer
•  How leaders can reduce friction by aligning roles with natural strengths
•  Why diverse thinking styles create stronger teams and better outcomes
•  How communication changes when leaders understand how people operate

This episode is for founders, executives, and operators who are responsible for building teams, hiring effectively, and improving execution across their organization.

"Harry Handles It" is a podcast hosted by Harry Nalbandyan. Each episode explores how top-tier performers navigate pressure, build discipline, and execute at a high level in business and life. Follow the show for direct conversations about performance, leadership, and intentional growth.

Transcript

speaker-0 (00:00.184)

your instinctive strengths about the way you take action. It's called the cognitive part of the mind. So really that's the foundation of what we do is help people understand their own and each other's really cognitive strengths.

speaker-1 (00:25.214)

I'm a lawyer, you're a lawyer, and we use the COBE index at our firm for hiring, scaling, and growth. So very excited to talk to you about the system and everything else it entails. So thanks for being on.

speaker-0 (00:38.424)

Glad to be here. Just curious, how did you hear about us?

speaker-1 (00:41.514)

We ran into the COBE index when we ran into issues sourcing and getting people into the right seats and kind of retaining talent. And so one thing we did to improve the process was add COBE into our hiring funnel. And we did a COBE assessment on the campus. Cause as we were growing, as the teams were expanding, we were finding that communication and execution amongst different departments, different leaders, something was misaligned and not driving in the right direction as

frictionless as it could be. And so we wondered what that possibility could be. And it was very interesting when we did our first COBE index and we found out that maybe 80 to 85 % of our firm were high fact-finders. And that was what activated everybody. And then it started to make sense. I realized me being a quick start, not understanding why execution wasn't happening at a rate that was in my mind, you know, the expectation, but I get it now. So it was a very, very eye opening.

That's how we started with Colby at the firm. That's how we continue to use it. And that was our introduction.

speaker-0 (01:45.356)

Well, thanks for using us. I'm glad that you do and glad it's helping.

speaker-1 (01:49.58)

Yeah. And so for our listeners and viewers who don't know what the COBE index is or what COBE is all about, can you give us a brief overview?

speaker-0 (01:57.89)

Yeah, what we are is we're a quick way to understand something about yourself and the people around you that it's always been there, but nobody's really been able to put their finger on it. It's your instinctive strengths about the way you take action. It's called the cognitive part of the mind. So really that's the foundation of what we do is help people understand their own and each other's really cognitive strengths.

speaker-1 (02:20.526)

So I know the background of the COBE index, but when you say cognitive, what is the COBE index measuring when people take these assessments? Is it measuring their IQ? Is it measuring their emotional intelligence? it their ability to stuff?

speaker-0 (02:36.258)

Yeah, it's it. So the answer is no to the other stuff. But what is it? So if you think of the mind, very broadly speaking, there are three parts of the human mind. And this concept goes back literally thousands of years to Plato and has been talked about for, you know, since then by a number of people. So we didn't make this up, but the first two you're you know about, and it's really what you just asked the IQ, the intelligence, what's called the cognitive part of the mind. It's kind of what you've learned. Your smarts, your intelligence and

Yeah, whether it's an IQ test or, you know, we're both lawyers. So if you pass the bar exam, that's a very specialized test of intelligence. That's the cognitive part. The affective part of the mind is what a lot of people think of as the emotional, sometimes called personality. Although I think the way we use that is very loose. think really your personality is everything mental about you in many respects, but the affective part is your

preferences, your desires, Myers-Briggs, disc, predictive index. Those are a bunch of different affective instruments that look at that. know, things like, are you an extrovert or an introvert on MBTI or Myers-Briggs? But we look at this third part of the mind. It's called the conative. It's the way you take action. So it's not how you think or feel, but it's your pattern of doing things. So it's not about how smart you are or about what you want. It really looks at

Look, when free to be yourself, what is the way you get things done?

speaker-1 (04:04.504)

Part of the discovery of going through the process is part of the Colby training process is the understanding that this is just kind of how people are wired. The cognitive part of their brain, the cognitive functions of their executive functioning is unchangeable. What does that mean from a leadership perspective when you're trying to train and develop leaders in an organization?

speaker-0 (04:25.4)

So I think starting with the individual person themselves, means, look, you need to understand who you are, what makes you tick the way you act when free to be yourself, because that's how you're going to reach your highest potential is when you are working with that rather than fighting against it. Now there are a bunch of nuances here. This, we don't measure what people can or can't do. So we haven't talked about the specific things in depth yet, but I'll just throw one out. We look at something that we call the fact finder.

action mode. So it's the way people deal with gathering and sharing information. And on one end of the spectrum, people like you and me who are well more me, sorry, than you, somebody who gathers and shares a lot of detail, a lot of information does research, gets the facts and figures and then puts them out there. That doesn't mean I can't simplify. It just means naturally I, I look for more detail rather than simplification.

So from a leadership development standpoint, I need to know that about myself. If I put myself in a position day after day after day where I don't have all the information I need, I don't have the time to go get it, I'm expected to make guesses with that aren't informed, that's a bad situation for me. I'm not going to thrive in that situation. So I'm a huge believer in setting yourself and others up for success rather than fighting against it. So.

To develop me as a leader, need to, now that I've learned that about myself, I need to figure out how most of the time I get to operate that way. Then if you're thinking about leading others, not just yourself, you want to be a great leader. It's not just about identifying, well, this is how I get things done. So everybody else ought to do it the same way. No, it's about figuring out what are the roles that are here in our organization? What did those roles look like? And then how do I get the right people in those roles?

And inevitably, you know, it's not always going to be an exact fit, whether that's for me or somebody else. How do you help other people learn how to deal with those times where they do have to work against their grain? Cause you know, we live in the real world, not some fantasy land where every minute of every day we're just doing what's our instinctive strengths say we should do.

speaker-1 (06:37.774)

When you touched on some of the action modes, the fact finder, follow through, can you describe and elaborate more on those, what the COBE index does to help bring to light some of those action modes within the individual people?

speaker-0 (06:48.504)

Sure. So yeah, there four of them. I mentioned fact finder already. That's, as I said, and sharing information. So in all of the four, we, it's a spectrum. have a scale of one through 10, where seven through 10 is what we would call initiating. So in fact finder, somebody really initiates action. If there are seven through 10 in fact finder by gathering and sharing information, doing the research, looking at specifics, setting priorities.

The other end of that spectrum, what we would call a counteract fact finder is somebody who really pushes back against that kind of action and instead focuses on simplifying, on looking at kind of the whole forest rather than the individual trees, to use a metaphor. So it's always, you you are, you land somewhere on that spectrum, that mid range, four or five and six is really somebody who accommodates.

either ones of those extremes. It's easiest to understand each mode by talking about the extremes, but most people somewhere around 60 % of the people fall in that mid range, 50 to 60 % on each of the four action modes. So they bridge that gap and bridge the differences between the people who act in those different ways. So that's fact finder. The second one is follow through. It's how we deal with systems and structure. So an initiating follow through again, that seven through 10.

creates systems and structure and organization. They will put together a flow chart and they will stick with it. One of the reasons we call it follow through is because they don't just come up with a plan, they then stick with the plan to the end. you know, if you are an initiating follow through and you're at step five of a 12 step process, you're going to keep going all the way to the 12th. Somebody on the other end of the spectrum, a one through three and follow through.

is somebody who's very adaptable, open-ended. You put that person into a plan or process. If they've followed the first five steps, it's a crap shoot whether they're going to follow the sixth through 12th. They may just find a shortcut, especially if they've already done it a couple of times. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see where this is going. I'm just going to skip to step 11 because I think those other ones, whatever, that's what they naturally do. Doesn't mean it's the right thing to do with the smart thing to do, but that's just the way they operate. So that's follow through.

speaker-0 (09:08.204)

The third one is quickstart. It's how we deal with the unknown risk, taking chances, experimenting. So an initiating quickstart does those kinds of things. They're the, the kind of people who take action by saying, Hey, you know, you got to try it. Let's see what happens. Take a risk experiment, dive into the unknown. Somebody on the other end of the spectrum stabilizes. They see what's worked. They stick with something that's already worked, kind of the proven what's already been out there.

I think stabilize is one of the key words for them. They don't just go off in some different direction just because they can maybe be convinced to do that. And convinced is one of those cognitive things where you use logic and reason and whatever to convince somebody to try something new, but they don't naturally just take a chance and experiment. And then the fourth one is called the implementer. It's not about implementers and how we implement, carry something out, carry something through. It's about how we deal with.

the three-dimensional tactile, tangible things that we do in life. So it's the name comes from it's the use of tools and implements. So an initiating implementer is literally hands-on. They build physical things. They construct things. They're very concrete. They often communicate more by showing physically than talking. The other end of the spectrum is somebody who really imagines their

They're less concrete and they are more, I don't know, just conceptual. They can think about stuff, imagine if they're drawing it be more two-dimensional than three-dimensional as an example. So those are the four.

speaker-1 (10:48.77)

And when you talk about those four, how does the assessment score and what does the score mean for somebody who has whatever variable they get for fact finding, follow through, extract and innovator.

speaker-0 (11:00.792)

So the score is one through 10 in each of them. One isn't better. 10 isn't better. It's really important people understand. It's just helping you figure out where on each of those spectrums you, you lie in each of the four modes. So that number, a 10 isn't, you got the highest score. A 10 is just saying you're at that end of the spectrum where in each of those four modes, that would mean you are really.

initiate the problem solving process by taking action with that one strength and that, you know, whichever one it is. I think that the key thing for people to keep in mind is because there's no better or worse. It's not like an IQ test where, look, you want to get a higher score on an IQ test. That's the right answer. Essentially. There's no right answer on the Colby. So the score doesn't tell you if you're better or worse. It just tells you how you operate.

So the way to take that information is then kind of as a guide to, okay, this is who I am. So how can I use that strength? How can I leverage it rather than again, fight against it, which we see all the time. And for a variety of reasons, and you know, we can get into some of those, but people have been taught over and over again, if you're weak at something, focus on that, get better. my gosh, you're, you know, you're not as good at spelling. We'll learn to be a great speller.

Okay. Well, I mean, that's a cognitive thing, first of all. So it's different than the cognitive, but what we would say is, yeah, learn the techniques where you have to operate outside your comfort zone, but set yourself up so that you get to use those strengths as often as possible. You'll just have better outcomes.

speaker-1 (12:33.614)

Like putting somebody who is a high fact finder in a quick start role for like a marketing position where you have to come up with ideas, execute on them, get them out. That could cause some friction for the person because that's not how they natively operate. Is that what I'm understanding? Yeah.

speaker-0 (12:49.888)

Absolutely. And then you add in group dynamics to that. So it really starts with the individual and understanding, Hey, I need to be in a role where I get to use my strengths. Then when you look at group dynamics, if you just start with two people, if you and I are very different from each other, cognitively, that might make working together more difficult because we take different approaches. But, and it's a huge, but we will actually better be a better working.

duo than lots of other people because we cover more ground. If there's a particular thing that needs to happen and it really isn't well suited for what I do, you can take it over. And hopefully you have a situation in a business where that's already the case. know, the one, if it's a law firm, the one partner is more responsible for the kinds of things that, that suit their strengths. The reality is there's, you know, there's always a blend of that and you do have to get.

past a little bit the issues around if we're so different, it creates stress and conflict sometimes. Very solvable problem and frankly a problem that I want to see in a lot of organizations. think too many organizations just hire and promote the same people that do things the same way that their boss does it. And they really get into longer term and I don't mean long like 20 years, maybe medium term problems where there's too much group think too much operating the same way.

And then one little thing changes or something else has to happen. And there's nobody in the organization who's naturally inclined to take that on.

speaker-1 (14:24.152)

can see that in the different changes that we make through the organization, whether it's technological, whether it's process changes, the proof is kind of in the pudding with the assessment. found that some people who don't operate in the quick start to our fact finders, it just takes a longer period of time for them to buy in to whatever there is, right? Have you noticed that too?

speaker-0 (14:43.746)

Yeah. absolutely. So, you know, somebody like you initiating quickstart, you, are going to have ideas. You're going to have things you're kind of a, a, a natural entrepreneur in that sense that in the sense of somebody who just comes up with an idea gets, you know, starts tackling it, sees where it will go. If it doesn't work out, you shift, you try something else out. People who are on the opposite end of that quickstart spectrum, because they stabilize, they

They operate most naturally where things have gone well and they keep going with that. They refine it. It doesn't mean they're willing to say, okay, good enough. It never needs to get better. They might be relentless in making it better, but they stick with that core of what they're already doing. That's working well. That kind of person is going to push back against somebody like you who, you know, walks in after lunch and says, oh my gosh, I had this great idea. Why don't we try this? What kind of, mean, sometimes you'll see it. They'll, you know, cross their arms. They'll sit back. They might even put their hand up and be like, Hey,

Hold on a second, Harry. And you want those people around you, if you're the initiating quickstart, because, and I'm an initiating quickstart also, I initiate in both fact-finder and quickstart. When you come up with a bunch of ideas, if you chase after every single one, a lot of them aren't very good. So it's, it's helpful to have people around you who you trust and who are empowered to say, Harry, that's not such a good idea. That's fun. You know, great. Thanks for telling me, but we're going to stick with these other things.

But they also are open to that great idea that does come across and they listen to you. don't just reject it every single time and don't listen. They listen. And then when the right one comes around, then they're on your team for, Hey, I wouldn't have come up with this. It's not something I would do to go start this, you know, new practice area and whatever it is, if it's in the law firm setting. But they've as a team, you're doing better to work that out.

speaker-1 (16:32.074)

And from the Colby perspective, I know which ways we've used it in our firm, but for a consumer facing law firm who is looking to scale and the way you scale service business is just bring in human beings to provide more service, leverage technology and the rest of it. But how can Colby be used to help that human part of it when you need to add in services?

speaker-0 (16:52.558)

So I'd start with two ways, really straightforward. One is looking at the individual and I'd start with the lawyers. Usually start at the top and work down from there. Who are you? Take a Colby A index, figure out more about yourself, and then fine tune the way you practice so that you can do more in any given eight-hour day or 10 or 12 or however many hours in a day you're working.

And that's true for everybody. Yes, it should start at the top, but everybody, lawyers and staff, when they know more about themselves, they can figure out how to work more productively. And without adding a single person, that helps you scale. There's more throughput because you can just get more done. That's step one. Step two, then I would say is look at these small groups of people who work together. So if you think in a law firm, let's say you've got a practice area with four lawyers and

for paraprofessionals, look at that group and figure out what are the roles. And we have other tools that help you figure out for each of those jobs, what does that job look like in terms of the cognitive demands on the person in it? And then you can match and you can see who's, know, who's really well fit to their job, who's not, and you can tweak things. So let's say you've got a lot of demand for follow through type tasks. And by that, mean, systematic, structured, organized, and in a law firm, there's a lot of that.

A lot of the times that's paralegals that are handling it. It's legal secretaries that are handling it. It's kind of the making sure all the things happen that have to happen. Things get filed on time. Correspondence with clients all happens on time. You know, all the financial aspects of running a law firm. When you see what all those things are and which roles need that initiating follow through, make sure those, those roles have people in it like that. Sometimes you just need to tweak it a little bit. Hey, this is a little too much for that person. can.

I'm just moving around a little bit, but when you do that and you see like within one practice area, who all those people are and what those roles are, even if you don't have the ability to change the roles around very much, just understanding the differences in people helps you work better together. So use the example of you as an initiating quickstart, working with somebody who's on the other end of that spectrum and might naturally push back against your new ideas and new directions that you want to go.

speaker-0 (19:09.528)

Just by knowing that now there's a language, the two of you, instead of it being a fight and bad conflict, it's more collaborative. They can say, Harriet, my gosh, once again, love all the idea generation you're coming up with. Let me think about that and get back to you tomorrow. And you don't take it as, my gosh, they can never move forward because you understand that's just them. They need a little time to think about it. They are going to give it the time it deserves and that'll help you. then.

Again, without having to add more people when that practice group can operate more efficiently and more effectively because you're not battling over the process and you get the right people in the right seats. And sometimes it's just moving them around a little bit. So in the law firm context, moving around, I've seen this over and over again where you've got a paralegal who's a great paralegal, but they're supporting either a practice area or a partner where it's not a great fit.

And you can move that person somewhere else in the firm and all of sudden it's just, it's way better because they're in a role that is leveraging their strengths rather than not using them at all. And you really want to do that. And we've all been in those situations where somebody isn't working well and it's really not their fault. It's more because we've just put them in the wrong situation. And that's often fixable. It's not get rid of them and pick somebody else. It's no, just move them around or change their job a little.

speaker-1 (20:31.778)

bit for sure. And I mean, that resonates with me because that's the firsthand experience of what I've felt using the system as the initiating quick start when I have an idea or the execution of one. And I just wouldn't understand why people couldn't get on the page or get on the same page as quickly. But after the assessments, it was really eye opening. Okay. Now I understand there's a different way to communicate what the mission is to this person versus this person.

and how to execute on that mission is different for everybody.

speaker-0 (21:02.222)

Do you find somebody who was maybe more receptive to hearing your initiating quick start ideas that was unexpected?

speaker-1 (21:09.112)

When I changed the way I would communicate my ideas to somebody who was, for example, not initiating QuickStart, had high follow through, had high fact finding, and I changed my expectations of how they would ingest that data and come back to me with it, it was night and day. My personal assistant or my practice group director and I, we found a common language now.

And it's worked so much better to help align everybody in the team because everybody knows that the ideas will be coming and the expectation of the execution of them will be coming. But then I do get the pushback. I hold on, let's do this. Why this? Why that? And it helps create that dialogue. So it's just not people blindly following orders and they don't feel like they're behind on the mission or with the mission to move it forward. And that's been really helpful.

speaker-0 (21:59.862)

I don't know if this happened to you, but I see it a lot with senior leaders who are initiating quickstarts and maybe in organizations where that isn't represented outside of themselves as much. They'll the initiating quickstart. They just, have brainstorms and ideas. just do. they, you know, two things can happen. Sometimes they just learn, I'm just not going to tell anybody at work or almost nobody because nothing ever happens with it. So I'm going to have outside outlets, but if it happens inside a firm or an organization, they get.

Sometimes they get pushback, but almost as often because the initiating quick starts kind of at the top, everybody else thinks, well, you know, Harry said this or David said this. So I guess I have to do it. And what they don't realize is no, it was just your brainstorm. You were just thinking, yeah, what, what about this? Like we could do X, Y, Z. They take it as, I'm supposed to now do X, Y, and Z. They come back to you a week later and say, okay, well I've done all this stuff. And what's the next year? Like, Whoa, hold on. That was just like.

something I thought about. I didn't mean you were supposed to go spend time on it. And then when you learn this about yourself and other people learn, that's just the way Harry operates. Again, I love the way you put it. You get a language around communicating that with the people that you're talking to. And you can even use code words like, Hey, just a brainstorm, but blah, blah, blah. And then they realize, this isn't a marching order. It's just a thought.

speaker-1 (23:21.592)

they want feedback on or whatever it is. It helps bridge that gap for communication.

speaker-0 (23:23.341)

and

Yeah, I would make one suggestion to you. it's why I asked the question. would find somebody, whether it's inside the firm or outside, who is also an initiating quick start that you can just bounce ideas off of. can just say, Hey, I thought about this. What did you, what do you think? And it's somebody who will validate, not in the sense of tell you every idea you have is a good one, but they'll jump into that ideation forming mode with you where it's.

that's really cool. You know, that's kind of like this. And have you thought about that? But it's not challenging. Like, well, did you think about this? That's going to sink your idea. It's more of a, let's take it even further. It doesn't necessarily mean you're going to do all those things, but I just think that initiating quickstarts need that outlet. I don't want you to feel like you have to rein yourself in and it's always about, well, I can't say it the way I really want to say it. I have to put it these other terms for these other people. Now you still should do that. And I think it's a great.

thing for leaders to keep in mind. If you want to communicate and lead effectively, it isn't just about you getting to do what you want to do when you want to do it. It's about bringing other people along, kind of in service to that idea or mission. And if you are challenging to the point of everybody being scared, like, my gosh, how are we going to even do this? That's not helpful either. So it is that balance, but find somebody you can just have those brainstorming sessions with.

speaker-1 (24:50.668)

love that. And I'm definitely gonna take that to heart because what we did, what we found when we did this is most of our firm were initiated fact finders, which makes sense, I suppose.

speaker-0 (25:01.272)

mean, that's common in the legal field.

speaker-1 (25:04.782)

But I think organizational-wide, there weren't very many initiating quick starts. And when we talk about these initiating action modes, what does it mean on the assessment? Does it mean you have to get more than a number for that to be your initiating action mode?

speaker-0 (25:18.946)

Yeah, I mean, the definition is seven through 10, you seven and above basically as a score in any of those action modes is initiated.

speaker-1 (25:26.838)

And have you found, like when we did this training and assessment at a firm, there were people who looked at their scores and said, huh, I wonder if, you know, I'm at beginning of my career, I'm at the mid stage of my career, I wonder if later these numbers or the assessment will change. Is that how, is that what the COBE assessment measures or how it measures?

speaker-0 (25:45.326)

We don't see scores change over time. So we've done test retest studies with gaps from first to second test from six months to 20 years. And in general, they change very little. mean, you there's always some variability, but most of the time they change one unit or less. Some of the times it's two units, but it's pretty stable. So what we don't see is a consistent early in a career, somebody is going to look like X and then, you know, over time they move toward Y. That's not what we see.

The changes that we see are in the way people understand those strengths and how they work with them. They develop strategies for operating outside their comfort zone. They get better at working with people who are different than they are. So for instance, I think earlier in a career, a lot of times when you don't get to work with your cognitive strengths, there's a higher level of frustration because you just haven't figured out how to make that work. Some things are really...

Straightforward and simple. Like if you have a job where you know, you're going to operate outside your comfort zone for a chunk of the day, do some of those things earlier in the day when you still have energy, but also set a timer. I mean, literally, you know, use your phone and give yourself a half an hour and do that stuff that isn't a good fit. But it only is going to be for half an hour. And then you get to take a break. You get to do other things. And then if you still need to do more later in the day, okay, there's another half hour chunk. You can also.

partner with people. And that's why I was saying it's really helpful to have people not like you around because you can go to them and say, Hey, will you help me on this project and have them do the stuff that doesn't fit you very well. Most of the time that means you're going to have to take on some of what doesn't fit them. You know, you're bartering that time back and forth, but there are ways to fix those problems. And that's what changes over time is people's ability to do that.

speaker-1 (27:34.158)

Yeah, early on in my journey, that's something I struggled with because there is a craft of practicing law. And then there is the craft and the other business of operating and managing and growing a business. Two very different things. Somebody who, I mean, as far as I can remember, know, commerce, economics, trying to build things. That's just what I've always been into in addition to trying cases and being that person for clients.

speaker-0 (27:45.058)

Yep. Absolutely.

speaker-1 (28:00.992)

in the beginning when it was just all about learning the craft because as you know, when you graduate from law school, you don't really know what the practice of law is. That's something I really struggled with is I have these ideas of how to make the client experience better. I have these ideas of how to make the litigation process better, to make it more efficient, to provide a better service for everybody. And so that was a struggle early on. And when finally the entrepreneurial sales, it was very freeing. And that's something that was creatively.

it enabled a lot more output.

speaker-0 (28:32.364)

Yeah. So, you know, what I have seen both from being a lawyer and from doing what I do, and by the way, it's been, let's see, 28 years, I guess, since I've been a practicing attorney. I'm still a member of the bar. So I guess I could go out and practice, but nobody should hire me. If I try to do that, just say no. But I think the, the being a lawyer part for most, and lots of, you know, there are many different types of law. you know, being a corporate

transactional lawyer is very different than being a criminal defense lawyer. So I don't want to overgeneralize here, but if there's a theme, it's the initiating fact finder kind of predominates definitely in law school where it's all about, you've got to read all the cases. You've got to know all the stuff, all the rules that courts have said, and then be able to apply those rules to a specific set of facts and details. If you ignore all of that stuff, you're going to get in trouble in most law school classes. Certainly the first year you're going to be in trouble.

changes a little bit and it depends on the law school sometimes too. But, and then when you're a new lawyer, you just, it's, the rare law firm that empowers you to start doing things differently. They're like, no, you're going to do it the way we've been doing it for 20, 200 years, whatever the age of the law firm. But as you said, when you get to the point for somebody like you, where you have kind of almost the authority to try things out differently and to,

Even it, and it seems as simple as, the way we handle clients. Talk about a way you can grow a practice. You change the way you deal with clients, not the way you practice the law. That can unlock all kinds of potential, but so many people won't do it. Not because they don't want to, but just because that's not how they're wired. They're like, no, we've got a way it works. It's, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's like, well, it's not broken, but it could sure be a lot better, but a lot of people aren't, you know, that's again, that's just not how they're wired.

speaker-1 (30:29.75)

law firms or other businesses are recruiting leaders. Do we hire for resume? Should we hire for personality? Should we hire for instinct? Is there, you know, where are leaders getting it wrong for hiring?

speaker-0 (30:39.704)

I think we should hire for all of the above. mean, if you want a great person to work with, you want somebody who checks all of the boxes, not just one. So sure, we have a process for using Colby in selection recruitment hiring decisions, but I would always say you should look at other parts of the mind and everybody does. So if you think about, I mean, we'll stick with the law firm example, though, obviously, you know, people who are listening in other businesses, it's easy to figure out how this applies outside of just law firms, but

You want to hire somebody who's a really smart lawyer, who's really good cognitively at what they do. They know the law, they know how to apply it. They can convince people of things and whether that's a trial lawyer or convinced, you know, corporate clients, that's got to be there. I would never say, well, just look at somebody's Colby result and hire for that and forget about all this other stuff. No, absolutely not. Now there are times where it might be more or less important, like hiring a new lawyer into a firm.

fresh out of law school, you want to see, they, do I think they're smart enough that they can learn what we're going to teach them? Cause as you were saying, there's so much a new lawyer doesn't know about practicing law. There's still a lot to learn. And if you can figure that out, yeah, they're smart. They don't have all the experience versus if you're hiring somebody in to be a partner, you know, you're, say acquiring a small firm to join your firm, maybe start a practice group that they've been doing. Well, you wouldn't hire.

I mentioned criminal defense law, you wouldn't hire a corporate attorney to start your criminal defense practice because they'd be starting as a brand new lawyer and they wouldn't be very good yet at being a criminal defense lawyer. It might never be for all we know, so yeah, the short answer is hire for the cognitive piece, hire for intelligence or the cognitive piece, hire for the personality values is another thing that goes into the affective part. You know, the value of hard work. Some people are like, Hey, I'm a grinder.

And if I don't see you in here on Saturdays, I'm not sure I can trust you to be my partner because that's my culture. Know it. I mean, maybe that's one of the first principles here is know what you're looking for and hire for that and don't compromise on it in all three of those parts of the mind.

speaker-1 (32:49.998)

Well, David, thank you so much for this incredible conversation. Can you tell our viewers how they can get in touch with COBE, schedule an assessment, find more information out about the program and what benefits it could offer?

speaker-0 (33:01.23)

Sure. You can go to colby.com. It's K O L B E dot com. And you can do all of those things there. I'd really encourage people to just go there and take your own Colby a index. It's real easy. There's a button right there to take it. It's, you know, 15, 20 minutes. if you want to get in touch with us, that that's the place to go to. You can get to different emails and get in touch with us. And we'd love to help you figure out how to go deeper for yourself and inside your, company or your firm.

speaker-1 (33:28.874)

Awesome. Thank you so much, David. Thanks for being on.

speaker-0 (33:31.352)

Thanks for having me on.