Purpose, passion, and service: that’s the goal in life, right? To find what you love to do and spend your life doing more of that. It can be difficult to find this sense of self, however, because it’s often wrapped up with how other people see you, what’s expected of you, and what you think you want. So many young students start college without a good understanding of themselves. This can lead to burnout, switching majors multiple times, and a longer than necessary stay at university. To combat this, self-knowledge is key! It can start with the Kolbe student aptitude quiz, which helps identify student strengths. 

What is Kolbe?  

Kolbe, founded by Kathy Kolbe, “was driven to more fully understand what drives human performance and began her own research and development of the first conative assessment.” What makes Kolbe different from other similar companies that offer personality quizzes and aptitude or IQ tests, is that Kolbe is about how you get results. When you take a Kolbe assessment, you learn more about how you approach problems and find solutions.

To put it in Kolbe’s words, it’s about your conative mind. This is the part of the brain “that governs how you actually get things done when striving.” 

The main Kolbe assessment is the A Index, which is for adults. However, they recently launched a Student Aptitude Quiz, which helps identify student strengths. This is great for anyone who is approaching high school graduation, and needs a little confidence boost as they determine their next steps. 

Kolbe can offer insights into how your high school-aged kids can step into their best version of themselves. What Kolbe does is reveal strengths in four different categories that we all express to varying degrees. There is no right or wrong way to be, only information that’s going to help your kids understand how they can take the most effective approach to a problem. 

The Power of Finding Your Strengths

“Kolbe helps youth ‘story their lives into existence’ by giving them an accurate language to describe what is most fundamental to them. It validates who they are and fosters a sense of dignity, worthiness, and love.”

Courtney Osterfelt, Director, The Launch Pad (A Non-Profit Teen Center)

The power of knowing your strengths in problem-solving, at any age, is that you can communicate them to others and apply them for better results. How often in a school or work setting have you (or your kids) been asked to work on a problem in a specific way that didn’t feel normal or natural? Knowing your Kolbe profile would give you the tools and language to apply yourself differently to the project for better results. You may not be able to do away with the assignment structure completely, yet you are better positioned to make it work for you. 

The Kolbe Student Aptitude Quiz and College Planning

Knowing your Kolbe profile before graduating high school (or even in the early years of college), would be incredibly useful for any young adult. It would provide the self-knowledge to identify whether college is a good fit, what alternatives to college might be a better fit, what features might be desirable in a school, and so much more. It’s a tool that can give your kids the confidence to say, “Here are the systems that I could benefit from, and here are the systems that will pull me down.” 

This is essential to preparing for life after high school. Many students (and frankly, parents), think college is the only way. And while college can be an incredible experience for many, there are just as many kids who feel shoehorned into a system that doesn’t benefit them. Not to mention, sometimes college is a great fit, yet the institution is not. Campus size, student-to-professor ratios, urban or rural campuses, and other factors can have a major impact on an individual level. 

Knowing strengths can also prepare your kids for careers that would be a good match. For example, if the Kolbe assessment reveals that you are good with tools and projects that require hands-on problem-solving, you could be in for an unhappy career if you choose something totally opposite. 

The Kolbe Student Aptitude Quiz helps your kids:

• Learn their strengths and how they best get results
• Discover “Authentic Abilities” and how to use them
• Get personalized suggestions for how to reduce stress, improve performance, and discover purpose
• Better communicate what’s important to them
• Identify potential careers or study habits
• Boost their effectiveness when trying to be productive

What Do Student Strengths Have to Do with Passion?

So what does a strengths assessment have to do with passion? 

Well, we’d argue that there’s actually a direct link. The key is self-knowledge. The more you can learn about yourself and what makes you tick, the closer you get to unlocking your passion. While passion MAY be a specific career or activity, for some people it’s more about the process or results. 

Kim Butler’s sister, Tammi Brannan, is the founder of the Blueprint Process, which is a coaching method that helps people discover their passion and Purpose. What she’s discovered through this work is that Purpose is not so much about your job title, it’s about the results you get and the tasks that you do to get there.

Take Kim: her Purpose is “to activate lifelong service in order to prevent millions of wasted lives.” Technically, Kim could accomplish this Purpose in an infinite number of ways. She’s chosen to do so by encouraging people to have and use whole life insurance as a key ingredient to a service-oriented life. And the daily actions she takes to get these results bring her energy. While there are likely many ways Kim could accomplish her Purpose, not all of them would bring her energy or fulfillment in the same way.

Kolbe is an essential part of this. Those strengths and the information about “how you get results” inform how to accomplish goals and Purpose in the most efficient way for a given individual. These strengths are integral to living a fulfilled life full of energy and Purpose. 

Busting the College Planning Lies

If you have young kids, or are approaching high school graduation yourself, we’d like to share our latest book with you: Busting the College Planning Lies. We designed this book for parents and their kids who are considering college. 

Within the pages, you’ll discover useful information such as:

• The true cost of college,
• More effective ways to finance college,
• How to reduce college costs,
• Alternatives to the four-year degree,
• How to factor in student strengths and passions,
• And so much more. 

The Kolbe Student Aptitude Quiz is a great way to prepare for post-high school life, and Busting the College Planning Lies is a useful tool for parents and teens still wondering, “What’s next?” The book releases on December 6th, and you can pre-order a digital copy today.