Kathy Kolbe is an acclaimed theorist, bestselling author, entrepreneur, educator, organizational strategist, consultant and speaker, and is the founder of Kolbe Corp and the Center for Conative Abilities. She has been called Abraham Maslow’s successor because of her work in showing how the three parts of the mind (cognitive, affective and conative) impact the creative problem solving process. She is also considered to be the world's leading authority on human instincts and conation, and the third faculty of the mind. 

The seminal theorist in identifying human instincts, Kolbe has solved the riddle of how to determine a person’s modus operandi (M.O.).  She has developed the only validated assessment of instinct-based strengths, and discovered the algorithm for synergy.  Based on this seminal work, Kolbe was able to identify the algorithm for team synergy. After decades of research with hundreds of organizations, she was also able to author a comprehensive set of programs to assist leaders in making wise decisions based on a comprehensive set of human factors involving cognitive, affective and conative levels of effort.

Kolbe’s achievements in advancing the understanding of human nature and instinctive drives have led to studies of her work at Stanford, Harvard, University of Chicago, UCLA, California State University, and other universities throughout the world.  She is an Entrepreneurial Fellow at the University of Arizona, and has been an adjunct professor at Arizona State University.  

Kolbe's father, Eldon F. Wonderlic created the Wonderlic Personnel Test in 1936. It was developed to measure cognitive ability in the areas of math, vocabulary and reasoning. She grew up working with her father, and observed that many people who scored highly on the Wonderlic test weren’t necessarily successful. Discussions with her father led her to seek a greater understanding of non-cognitive factors from a very early age. 

Kolbe’s observations led her to systematically chart patterns of behavior she observed. Being a linguist, she sought just the right words to describe the consistent differences that appeared. Turning to a tattered edition of Roget’s Thesaurus, inherited from her father, she found the word “conation” – and also that Roget’s seminal work could answer many of her other questions.

• Conation is the mental faculty that causes an individual to act, react and interact according to an innate pattern of behaviors. As one of the three elements of human behavior, its function is to convert the affective faculties, which are emotions, preferences or beliefs, and the cognitive faculties, which are learned knowledge and skills, into visible and purposeful performance. It drives us to actually do what the other parts of the mind either make us want to do or know have to be done. Roget's Thesaurus

He had brought order out of the complexity of the English language, classifying words and phrases – not alphabetically – but according to ideas. Of his six classifications of ideas, three dealt with the mind: cognitive, affective and volition (with which he used the term conation). Kolbe then identified and quantified Key Concepts of Conation in 14 Axioms.

The Kolbe Theory™ "builds on the historical, philosophical and psychological foundations to place conation in its proper contemporary perspective by identifying the individual’s Kolbe Action Modes^®."

A few of Kathy Kolbe's many accomplishments and awards are:

• 1984 – AZ Business Person of the Year
• 1985 – Published Wisdom of the Ages
• 1985 – Honored at White House
• 1985 – Recognized in Time magazine’s 1985 “Man of the Year” issue,  in which she was cited as one of seven Americans who possess the “spirit to inspire.”
• 1985 – Received Bullock’s Portfolio Award for outstanding women leaders
• 1987 – MDRT Keynote – Kolbe A Index™ on floppy disc and began training consultants
• 1988 – Trained consultants in Australia
• 1989 – Published Conative Connection 
• 1992 – International Women’s Forum ‘Woman of Achievement’ Award
• 1993 – Published Pure Instinct    
• 2004 – Published Powered by Instinct
• 2011 – Robert E. Fox Lifetime Achievement Award – honoring 30 Years of Brain Research That Maximizes Mental Energy -- Boosting Business Productivity and Reducing Personal Stress
• 2013 – Athena Award Business Woman of the Year
• 2015 – Published Striving Zones