Three Reasons to Use Assessments When You Coach

Coaches are change experts. You, as the coach, help people change their lives, develop personal responsibility, and maximize potential. Solid coaching empowers your clients to find their own answers, discover personal insights, and make good choices. Coaching enables them to move forward to where they want to be, all the while gaining vision, building confidence, unlocking potential, and improving life.

Coaches have tools to help them with their craft. Assessments are tools coaches use to learn more about clients to nurture their personal development. They give insights into many aspects of life. Some assessments measure more permanent qualities such as values, beliefs, principles, motivation, and personality; some assessments measure adjustable aspects of life such as behaviors, competencies, and skills. It is a good idea to measure in both categories (permanent and adjustable) so the opportunities and the boundaries for development are more clearly framed.

Why Use Assessments?

Well-constructed assessments can give tremendous insights. If used in the right way by coaches who und

erstand the tools, assessments can provide meaningful direction to clients who want to learn and grow. Although there are many reasons coaches use assessments, here are three simple reasons to get started.

Reason 1: Assessments can help the client get started in the coaching process.

Assessments provide a good basis for where to start in the coaching process. The nature of coaching is to have your clients set the agenda of the coaching session; however, they commonly need assistance knowing where to begin. Clients gain insight into what to talk about in a coaching session by referring to the results of an assessment. Assessment results also give ideas for powerful questions. For example, asking “What surprised you most about your results?” creates self-discovery moments as they process what they learned from the tool.

The Wheel of Life tool is a great introductory assessment that allows clients to evaluate how satisfied they are with specific areas of their lives such as relationships or career choice. Using a wheel, they identify primary life areas to target for improvement. They may use the categories already in the chart or customize the categories to their preferences. Next, they rank how they are doing in each area from 1 to 10, where 10 is excellent and achieving mastery, and 1 is they could not be doing any worse. Then, they determine two or three actions they can take to make improvements in the weak areas and, ideally, do the same for all areas. The Wheel of Life results give a significant starting point for goal setting and change management.

Reason 2: Assessments can help clients discover personal insights.

Assessments help people to get to know themselves better. Individuals are often surprised to find out how much they think they know about themselves, and then discover they really do not know much about themselves at all. Assessments provide a safe, confidential way to learn about themselves and how to interact with others leveraging their best features.

The DISC is a nice tool to discover personality types. Learning about a client’s DISC type and behavioral styles can be powerful for their work life. For example, if a client is unhappy in his current job and has come to you for career coaching, you can administer the DISC assessment. Let’s say the client’s results come back with a “C” style, meaning he is systematic, respects rules and guidelines, cautious, appreciates independent work, and is introverted. Let’s also say his current job is fast-paced, requires competitive social interaction, and is chaotic. No wonder he is unhappy. Knowing his personality type will help him find a more suitable line of work.

Reason 3: Assessments can reveal their greatness.

It is always more productive to dig for gold than for rocks. In other words, instead of trying to improve on weaknesses, the most effective leaders are investing in strengths. In the workplace, 73% of employees are engaged when an organization’s leadership focuses on individuals’ strengths. Even though the culture may preach a well-rounded life is the way to go, a lot of time and energy can be wasted trying to be good at everything, nurturing mediocrity. The Strengths Finder assessment identifies a leader’s top strengths and then provides insights on how to leverage those strengths to maximize potential. It makes better sense to focus efforts on making strong areas stronger.

Navigate Assessment Pitfalls

Assessments are never infallible. They can be used in ineffective and unhelpful ways. There is not a one-size-fits-all magic tool for all coaching clients. Do not rush in with assessments. Feel free to get to know the client first. Clients can take an assessment almost any time in the coaching journey; it doesn’t always have to be at the beginning of the process. Determine the best assessment to use to support your client’s goals. Assessments should be used to enhance and deepen the coaching process, not override it.

Solely relying on assessments can introduce a potential for bias. Assessments create labels: he’s an extrovert, she’s a command-and-control leader, she’s a people-relator. No matter what your coaching skill level, this information has a very strong potential to impact your coaching. You must be thoughtful with assessments. When you and the client wisely use assessments, you can receive rich, deep, and thoughtful insights to discuss on the development journey.

The Best Assessment to Use

The best assessment to use with every client is you, the coach. Nothing takes the place of you using active listening to gather unfiltered information from the client. You must endeavor to listen without prejudice or judgment, understand, and perceive information. Of course, it is challenging, but it is also one of the most important things you can do. Even though assessments have value in the coaching engagement, none of them should ever replace your deep hearing and powerful questioning.

The best way to support a client is to listen for what is said and what is left out, to pay attention to the client’s tone and cadence, and to ask relevant, powerful, probing questions. Strong coaching insights happen when you help the client discover and bridge critical gaps using your effective coaching skills, not as a result of reading an assessment. Assessments can help, but they will never replace caring and proficient coaching skills.

Finally and most importantly, listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit. You can create prophetic acts and hear the voice of God on behalf of your clients. Powerful coaches listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of power who leads into all truth, who tells about the future (John 16:13). When Christian coaches speak to

the secret things of their clients’ hearts, the Bible says the clients will fall down and worship God (1 Corinthians 14:25). Just remember, the secrets are not their sin, weaknesses, or failures; it is their greatness. Most of us sincerely cannot see how great God made us and how much he loves us. Clients will be transformed when coaches, with the help of the Holy Spirit, reveal to their clients the good hope and future from the Heavenly Father.

Many blessings, Dr. Diane Swanson