If you read my recent post about hitting the wall and burning out, you know I had to make some massive changes to survive my own business. The biggest shift? I stopped trying to be good at everything and started ruthlessly auditing my day to day tasks.
I started tracking myself like a hunter—paying attention to my tendencies, my patterns, and what actually gave me energy versus what drained it.
A helpful tool I found was personality assessments.
I was at a Real Estate Investor lunch meet up and the presenter that day was excited about a personality assessment that he was using in his company, and how it enhanced hiring, team building, and also saved money in the long term by putting each person in their proper “seat on the bus”.
Whether you are trying to find your own “Zone of Genius” or trying to build a team that is both harmonious and efficient, these tools can be very helpful.
Here is a breakdown of the assessments I’ve used, why they matter, and how they protect your “energy battery.”
The “Energy Battery” Concept
Everyone has unique gifts. We discover these by noticing what we do that seems natural and easy to us, but are seen as difficult or unique by others. People might say you’re a “natural”.
What are the tasks that make you lose track of time and that you would do even if you weren’t getting paid?
If you spend your day doing tasks outside your natural wiring, you will drain your battery by noon. You will experience friction, stress, and eventually, burnout. But when you operate in alignment with your natural strengths, the work actually recharges you. Assessments give you the data to stop guessing and start designing a role you actually love.
The Core Operator Toolkit
1. DISC (How You Communicate)
This one is widely used. It breaks your personality into four main quadrants: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. It’s a great baseline for understanding how you approach relationships and challenges.
Cost: Tony Robbins offers a great free version on his site, or you can pay around $39 for deep-dive analytics.
2. Kolbe A Index (How You Take Action)
Where DISC measures personality, Kolbe measures your conative strengths—your natural instincts for taking action when striving to solve a problem. It ranks you across four modes: Fact Finder, Follow Thru, Quick Start, and Implementor.
The ROI: Kolbe explicitly discusses your “energy battery.” If you force a high Quick Start (visionary) like me to do high Follow Thru (admin) work, they will burn out.
Cost: $55.
3. Culture Index (Who You Are vs. Your Role)
I love this one for companies. It gauges your core traits, but adds a brilliant twist: it compares who you naturally are against who you are trying to be at work. This instantly highlights where you are stretching too far out of your default self to fill a role, which is the exact root cause of daily stress.
The Deep Internal Drivers
If you want to go deeper into why you do what you do, these are fantastic for personal growth:
- PRINT: Uncovers your unconscious motivators (e.g., my dominant drivers were “To enjoy life and have fun” and “To be self-sufficient”).
- CliftonStrengths: Identifies your top themes out of 34 possible talents.
- Enneagram: A deeply insightful 9-type system focusing on core fears and desires. (Great for spouses to understand how each other sees the world).
The AI Hack (The Modern Assessment)
Honestly, an AI chatbot might be the most powerful, free self-reflection tool available today. You can aggregate the data from all the tests above and do interactive journaling.
Try dropping this prompt into ChatGPT or Claude. (Refine it as you see fit):
“Give me a questionnaire based on Kolbe, Clifton Strengths, PRINT, Culture Index, DISC and other similar assessments. My goal is to determine my strengths and weaknesses and to define my zone of genius.”
Another great way to gather information is to ask people who have known you for a long while what they think your unique gifts are. Compare with the results of your assessment and your own journaling exploration and you’ll have a pretty clear picture of where you should be focusing your energy.
Why This Matters for Team Building
As Kahlil Gibran said, “Work is love made visible.” Wouldn’t it be ideal to have someone in every role who actually loves that role?
Just because you hate a job doesn’t mean you can’t find someone else who naturally thrives doing it. Some people hate admin work; it numbs their brain. Other people love putting chaos into order and checking boxes.
I keep Kolbe and DISC results on everyone on my team. We try to understand everyone and nudge them towards their sweet spot.
For example, I am a high-visionary but poor at follow-through because of my ADD brain. I need a team member or team members who are good at detail work and integrating (and reining in) all of my big ideas.
Knowing who you are will help you reduce friction in your life and in your business. Find your genius. Delegate the rest.
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