The Case for Assessment-Informed Coaching
If you asked the five people you work most closely with to describe you at your best and at your worst, how confident are you that you’d recognize yourself in their answers? If there were patterns in how you show up (good, bad, or ugly), would you want to know about it?
Most leaders would say yes to both questions. And yet, without an objective and unbiased assessment, coaching conversations often start in the same place, which is a leader’s own story about themselves, including who they are, how they show up, and the intent they bring to their actions, decisions, and interactions. That story is valuable, but it’s incomplete.
Starting with data, not just narrative
When we begin a coaching engagement, we often use personality assessments (i.e., Hogan’s HPI and HDS, and LDW’s Motivational Needs Profile), 360 assessments, or sometimes both. These assessments are aimed to surface insights regarding a leader’s behavior, motivation, and reputation.
Personality assessments offer something a conversation alone can’t, which is an objective, unbiased view of behavior patterns and internal motivations (as long as the personality assessment(s) you are using are validated!). These aren’t judgments. They’re data points that create a shared, neutral starting place for honest exploration.
360 assessments add yet another layer and a real-time mirror for a leader. 360 assessments capture a snapshot, a moment in time regarding how a leader is being perceived by their colleagues. This feedback is timely and specific, which makes it actionable in a way that general impressions rarely are.
Taken together, personality assessments and 360 feedback give both the coach and the coachee something to work with that goes beyond gut feeling. The leader isn’t just hearing our observations, but rather, they are seeing a picture of themselves assembled from multiple angles.
Where the real work begins
Feedback from leaders who have leveraged this approach indicates that using assessments at the beginning of their coaching created a structured way to examine their behavior, motivations, and the impact on others in a way that didn’t create defensiveness.
For the coach, triangulating across multiple data sources opens up richer, more targeted coaching conversations. We can, using the insights from the assessments, dig into internal motivations driving behaviors, explore intent versus impact, and better articulate how these things build to create a leader’s brand within their organization. Also, we can see where perception and self-awareness align, and where they diverge. That gap is often where the most productive coaching happens.
Effective coaching is built on trust and transparent conversation. Assessment data doesn’t replace that, but it does strengthen it. It gives us a foundation to work from that’s grounded in something stronger than one’s perception of themselves (which can often be misguided).
If you’re curious about what assessment-informed coaching might surface for you or your team, we’d welcome the conversation.