Artists in the ZONE
Why the Kolbe A Index is the best assessment test
for artists to master their Creative Process
#KolbeStrengthsWeek
The Creative Process is about
getting into FLOW
You’ve been there - the zone where time stops and your creative energy has direct access to your body and your materials.
It’s easy, right?
Master difficult skills, practice for years and years, and then - just stand in front of your canvas and paint masterpiece after masterpiece?
For many, feeling free in the creative process is harder than it seems.
Many artists experience a deep-seated
sense of SHAME for who they are and how they work.
As children, they were often chided for daydreaming and staring out windows, for not listening because they were too engrossed in reading or coloring, or teased because they were “weird.”
For some, anxiety around this past wounding has create a lot of struggle around making art that, deep down, they desire passionately to create.
This may be you - or someone you know.
(Asking for a friend!).
Creativity coaches (like me)
work with artists to get them past and through these blocks,
… so they can access their deepest core of self-creation,
and discover the joy of calm, centered, FLOW.
I first started doing this because I didn’t start making art until I was 53 - precisely because of the anxiety I had around all of these issues.
It felt irrational - who was I to want to be an artist when I couldn’t even draw?
Classic Impostor Syndrome!
Yet I felt DRIVEN to do it - and it held me back, nonetheless.
WHY KOLBE?
When I worked through a lot of these issues for myself, then started coaching artists, I felt like a training on how to learn CREATIVE SELF-AWARENESS was desperately needed.
I started looking for ways to increase my knowledge about the creative process - and develop a process that could help artists understand themselves and how they worked, so they could stop shaming themselves for who they are.
All the test help increase self-understanding - Myers-Briggs, DISC, The Enneagram, and others. But when I really started to understand what the Kolbe A Index was about, I realized I had found the one test that could bring insight to the creative process that the others could not.
The Kolbe A Index
(take the test at www.kolbe.com - it’s 36 questions - results cost $55 / I’m an affiliate because I love this test!)
The Kolbe A Index is a personality test that measures the CONATIVE part of your mind - the Instincts, Drive, Mental Energy, Innate Force, and Talents - and how you work when you are STRIVING.
This is what artists DO - they long to get into that ZONE - the state of FLOW that the Hungarian socialogist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about in his TED Talk - Flow, the secret to happiness.
This state allows our bodies to shut off certain parts of our minds, so the creative self can dive into the subconscious realms and retrieve archetypal images, memories, and ideas, and transform them into something new on the canvas, in the forge, or on the stage or page.
The Kolbe A Index measures four areas:
Fact-Finder measures how you deal with Information - do you Simplify, Specify, or somewhere in the middle - are you good at Explaining?
Follow-through measures how you deal with SYSTEMS - do you Adapt to others’ ways of doing things, Systemetize projects yourself? Or do you Maintain the bridge between the two?
QUICK-START measures how you deal with RISK. DO you Innovate - dive into projects (many artists are “Initiators” in Quick-Start, with high numbers in this area), or do you Stabilize, needing lots of safety in a new project? Or, do you Modify in the middle ground?
IMPLEMENTOR measures how you deal with TANGIBLES. Do you need all the best materials, and learn from doing? If so, you Demonstrate. If you have a low number here (like me, and many artists), you Envision - you can see things before they are built. Or, you are in the middle, and Restore things to a balanced position in the tangible world.
The interesting part is that this test is used mostly in corporate settings! (And sometimes the information seems a bit dry for artists to get into.)
But I found a way in - through the elements - Air, Water, Fire, Earth.
Many artists THINK in the elements.
Artists understand at their core this way of viewing the world,
as essential energies that arise
through transformational processes into and out of physical form.
I see these 4 KOLBE “ACTION ZONES” as ELEMENTAL
AIR - the Mind, is Fact-Finder - how you deal with information
Do you go down rabbit holes? Are you a good teacher? Do you need every little factoid? Or are you just a Bottom Liner?
WATER - Systems, or Follow-through, is how things FLOW
Energy, emotions, relationships, projects.
FIRE - is the Creative Spark - Quick-Start
The heat that rises in the initial stages of a project - are you a slow-burn? Or do you stoke that fire quickly?
EARTH - is the REAL WORLD of STUFF
Implementor is about how you actually build things - is it easy for you to manage materials, wood, metal, paint, objects? Or do you like to Envision things, and spend a lot of time dreaming before you can go to work?
Do you need the best materials all laid out before you start?
Or can you patch together a a bicycle seat and handlebars and create something new?
Oh, snap! Picasso already did that!
He was probably an Initiator in the Implementor Action Mode.
Understanding the Elements is Understanding FLOW
So when artists take this test, they come to understand that they are FINE - no PERFECT - just the way they are. And once you get that - it is really helpful and easier to find ways to access your personal power.
There’s so much more to understanding the KOLBE - and I dive deep into it in a couple of different trainings, including The Kolbe Elements with my clients - so they can transform their mindset and stop shaming themselves for how they work - and find ways to work more freely, accepting the ways they work.
For instance - Envisioners (low numbers on the Implementor area) are BIG procrastinators (like me!), because we can SEE everything in our head SOOOO clearly - why does it need to be actually built in the REAL WORLD?
So when I accept this about myself, I realize I need tools to finish certain things - Deadlines, Accountability Partners, and build my vision into the process by listening to it - and not the voices of others telling me to do things a certain way.
Patience, grasshopper!
I hope that you can claim some of the freedom that I have found through this very fascinating self-knowledge of the creative process.
Here’s the Kolbe Elements video I made to help unpack these ideas. I hope you enjoy it!
Watch it on Youtube by clicking the image:
Watch on YouTube!
