As the interns were developing their story frames for their trait assessments, Charley began to become concerned. First, there were a lot of assessment stories to write. He knew that this would be tough to do in the time he had given them. He decided to send them some guidance.
“I want to give you some guidance on the assessment trait stories you are writing. First, let’s start with the skill based traits. We’ll do the other traits after we see how these first assessments work out.”
“Next, approach your stories from the perspectives of a growth mindset. Tell us your story from where you think you are now and how you want to grow. Remember you aren’t trying to convince us of where you should rank. You are trying to discover for yourself where you want to advance your skills.”
“Finally, confine your stories to 500 words or less. This will make it easier for us to work through the assessments. There’s another reason for confirming your stories to 500 words. We know that to move people, we have to capture their interest in just a few minutes. Five-hundred words can be read in less than five minutes. So this will be a good exercise of writing and telling stories in a short burst to capture interest.”
With this guidance, the interns had a better grasp on the assessment. The stories were written and then they were shared with their peers. The interns were asked to do the belt assignments as they read and heard each story. The interns were asked to do their own assignments as well, Charley was not in the room as the assessments were being done.
The results were as good as could be expected. There were few differences of more than one ranking. When a consensus ranking was made, there was a 98% agreement between the consensus ranking and that of the intern’s own ranking. While this may have seemed to be a lot of effort to confirm what each intern already knew, the process itself gave each of them a lot of confidence in their development needs.
The results were fascinating (see Figure 1). There were no yellow belts or black belts. There were at least two interns with a brown ranking for each of the five traits.
Charley asked the interns to revise their stories based upon the feedback. These would serve as a baseline for the development program to follow.
* * *
“I am never guided by a possible assessment of my work.” – Vladimir Putin
Figure One
Intern Assessments
SKILL BASED TRAITS
| Joyce | Audra | Josh | Connor | Kaylin | Beaux | Peyton | Alan | Lynn | Austin | |
| Story Telling (written) | Blue | Orange | Blue | Orange | Blue | Brown | Blue | Orange | Brown | Blue |
| Story Telling (oral) | Orange | Orange | Brown | Brown | Blue | Brown | Blue | Orange | Brown | Blue |
| Imaging | Brown | Blue | Blue | Orange | Orange | Orange | Blue | Blue | Brown | Blue |
| Conceptualization | Blue | Blue | Brown | Brown | Brown | Orange | Orange | Brown | Brown | Orange |
| Connecting Ideas | Blue | Orange | Blue | Blue | Brown | Orange | Orange | Brown | Brown | Orange |