AWARENESS
Listening to Yourself as an Artist
& Assessment Overview
If you want to grow your business,
you need to grow the person behind it - you!
Self-Awareness is Key
As artists, we know that self-awareness is an ongoing process that influences our art, but how does this apply to business?
Even more so!
When you know your natural strengths, challenges, fixations and stumbling blocks, you can work with them to avoid problems with your business process. It is amazing to see the connections with how we ARE and how we WORK.
Let’s get into it!
Why all these “Assessments?”
In Module 1: Awareness, we dive deep into your strengths, patterns, and ways of working so you can better understand your own creative process and build your vision and practice around it.
I work with 4 different assessments (full list below), or personality tests, in my coaching practice. I have explored many others, but these four are the ones I have found work best for artists and creative types in particular.
(I am not an affiliate, and receive no money for using these tests.)
You don’t have to take these assessments in order to watch and understand the trainings. You can watch them and take the assessments anytime in the future. It is up to you. You might want to watch the videos, then take the assessments and come back for more insights.
If you do want to take them, the links are below each description.
These assessments and trainings are created to help you understand yourself better so you can let go of anxiety and the shame so many artists hold around societal stereotypes of what a “real artist” is - “flaky,” “bad with money,” “crazy.” This training will help you to really let them go so you can move forward, not stay stuck.
When you are more aware of your:
natural strengths, talents, and skills
motivations and drives
challenges that keep coming up
creative blocks & fixations that keep you stagnant or in an unhelpful mindset
you can work with them to avoid problems with your business process. It is amazing to see the connections with how we ARE and how we WORK.
These tools help reveal these aspects of our mindset and personalities so we can work with them and heal issues around them.
Listening to Yourself as an Artist
& Assessment Overview
If you want to grow your business,
you need to grow the person behind it - you!
Self-Awareness is Key
As artists, we know that self-awareness is an ongoing process that influences our art, but how does this apply to business?
Even more so!
When you know your natural strengths, challenges, fixations and stumbling blocks, you can work with them to avoid problems with your business process. It is amazing to see the connections with how we ARE and how we WORK.
Let’s get into it!
Why all these “Assessments?”
In Module 1: Awareness, we dive deep into your strengths, patterns, and ways of working so you can better understand your own creative process and build your vision and practice around it.
I work with 4 different assessments (full list below), or personality tests, in my coaching practice. I have explored many others, but these four are the ones I have found work best for artists and creative types in particular.
(I am not an affiliate, and receive no money for using these tests.)
You don’t have to take these assessments in order to watch and understand the trainings. You can watch them and take the assessments anytime in the future. It is up to you. You might want to watch the videos, then take the assessments and come back for more insights.
If you do want to take them, the links are below each description.
These assessments and trainings are created to help you understand yourself better so you can let go of anxiety and the shame so many artists hold around societal stereotypes of what a “real artist” is - “flaky,” “bad with money,” “crazy.” This training will help you to really let them go so you can move forward, not stay stuck.
When you are more aware of your:
natural strengths, talents, and skills
motivations and drives
challenges that keep coming up
creative blocks & fixations that keep you stagnant or in an unhelpful mindset
you can work with them to avoid problems with your business process. It is amazing to see the connections with how we ARE and how we WORK.
These tools help reveal these aspects of our mindset and personalities so we can work with them and heal issues around them.
Overview of Assessment Tools
The Kolbe A Index
Kathy Kolbe created the Kolbe A Index after a long history in the world of research and assessment; her father, Eldon Wonderlic, developed the first cognitive assessment for business and government. Kathy realized these insights could cast light on human performance in general, and specifically how children navigated the educational system. She observed how children worked when they were “in the Zone,” or “striving” to create a drawing or project, and from her research, she developed the Kolbe A Index to measure this “conative,” or working mode in adults as well.
When you take this assessment, you’ll see numbers in 4 categories - Fact-finding, Follow-Through, Quick Start, and Implementation. Be sure to listen to the audios from Kolbe when you receive the link to your results. Kathy leads you through what each category and number means, and then my training brings them all together in how these insights work for artists, artisans, and other creatives.
Very enlightening!
I will send you the link to take the Kolbe A Index. If you haven’t received it, email me at hello@shannonborg.com. Here’s the website for more information:
2. The Enneagram
The Enneagram Personality Type Assessment is based on our patterns of behavior. “Ennea” means 9 in Greek, and the idea of 9 personalities or types goes back to Plato and other ancient philosophers. The history of the Enneagram is a fascinating journey in itself, and I explain more about this in the “Enneagram Insights” section of this course . You can watch the training before or after you take the test. Or, you may not even want to take the test yet, but just guess at your type for now - that is okay, too.
Either way, knowing your patterns can help you identify how you handle challenges, your motivations behind why you approach problems certain ways, and more. This training is so helpful for artists to see how they can overcome unhelpful patterns, what to be aware of, and how to lower anxiety.
I will send you a link to take the Enneagram. If you haven’t received it, email me at hello@shannonborg.com. Here’s the website for more information:
3. The 4 Tendencies
The 4 Tendencies is a recent assessment developed by author Gretchen Rubin. I find it fascinating to gain insight into our inner and outer motivations.
How do we respond to expectations - of others, of ourselves?
This quiz is free, but as with the other tests, you have to offer your email address to Gretchen to get the results - you can unsubscribe from later if you wish. I find some of the information they send helpful, and not too frequent.
4. The Pearson-Marr Archetype Assessment
The concept of archetypes goes back to ancient Greek mythology, where gods and goddesses played different roles in the lives of supplicants. The word “archetype” in Greek literally means “original from which a copy is made,” suggesting the “idea” or “form” that holds the concept of the original.
Plato's eidos, or ideas, were pure mental forms that were imprinted in the soul before it was born into the world. Artists understand this - when we paint a tree, we hold in our minds both the “idea/ideal” of the tree, i.e., what we “know”, as well as the actual tree we are painting, i.e., what we “see.”
Archetypes are the ideas or “forms” of human behavior. In this training, I go into how this assessment evolved, from Carl Jung’s concepts of the Archetypes in human psychology, and how they can reveal patterns, behaviors, as well as inspiration and chosen pathways forward for artists.
My “What is Your Artistic Archetype? quiz is free. If you haven’t taken it, it is kind of fun, taking the insights of archetypes into the world of art and artists, how we approach the creative process, and the different possibilities for meaning in our art.
NOTE: If you work with me, be aware that the Kolbe A Index and Enneagram will be provided for you. The Pearson-Marr Archetype Assessment is an extra text if you want to take it. The Pearson-Marr has different levels:
Basic results are $25; a more extensive report is $55.
Again, you don’t have to take the test, but having an understanding of some of these concepts can give insight into how you see the world and where you are on your creative path.
Take the Quiz: What is Your Artistic Archetype? (my free quiz)
