Your Instinctive Strengths, Your Money and Your Team, with Dana Anspach

On the latest installment of the Powered by Instinct Podcast, Kolbe Corp CEO David Kolbe talked with Dana Anspach about what it means to trust your gut in the high-stakes world of finance. Dana is a Kolbe certified™ Consultant and the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a financial planning firm that regularly uses Kolbe theory to cater to their clients’ instinctive needs. Understanding those needs allows Dana and her team to present and share information in the best possible way for each client, while also better understanding and anticipating client questions and reactions. 

David and Dana also discuss the impact Kolbe has had on her professional life, why Kolbe is the only assessment she uses with clients and with new and existing employees, and how taking the assessment helped her grow as a leader. 

Host: David Kolbe (8273)

Guest-at-a-Glance 

Name: Dana Anspach (6582)

What she does: Dana is the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, LLC. 

Company: Sensible Money, LLC  

Noteworthy: Dana is an influential thought leader in financial services and gives advice on financial planning and retirement. She is also a Kolbe Certified Consultant.

Where to find Dana: LinkedIn 

Podcast Insights 

🎙️Kolbe changed the way I see people. Dana was the type of person who, as she says, thought her way was the only way to do certain things. As a result, she didn't understand why others took different approaches and struggled with assignments while she finished quickly. But then, she took the Kolbe assessment, which was a life-changer. The results helped her understand herself and, most importantly, her coworkers. ''I used to be a lot more arrogant in thinking that my way of doing things was best. And I would think, 'This is easy for me; why can't you do it?' And then I started to see things so differently. This is easy for me because that's within my strengths, and that is easy for them because it's within their strengths.'' 

🎙️Kolbe is an essential part of our hiring and employee training. Moreover, Dana's company suggests clients take Kolbe A as it helps the team understand clients better, how they collect and process information, and determine their needs. As a result, Kolbe has become an integral part of the company culture. ''We train on it every year. We have a folder with everybody's Kolbe A indexes and a folder with their A to A with all their immediate team members. And they can request one with anyone on the team if they want to see it. And so, once a year, we ask everyone to go in — it's part of the training we have built into our process — to look at it, and we will ask them to share some things they learned from revisiting their Kolbe. We'll ask them to share some things they saw and insights they had in working with others.'' 

🎙️It takes maturity and something like Kolbe A for leaders to acknowledge that they are not perfect. When asked whether the Kolbe assessment had a more significant impact on her productivity or leadership skills, Dana said that it was the latter. ''Leadership starts at the top, and if you're not willing to look inside yourself and some of that shifts to the affective side of being able to say, 'I'm willing to look at myself and see what needs to change to be a more effective leader and that my way isn't always right.' I can see how leaders can fall into that trap of, 'I'm great. Look what I've accomplished.' But my favorite saying is: ‘What got me here won't get me there.’ And some of that is my Kolbe and me constantly looking for how I could do better and how this could be more effective.''