Coaching assessments can help you understand yourself better, which is an important first step for self-improvement.
Discover some great assessments here.
Key Takeaways
| If you only have a minute | Remember This |
|---|---|
| Why it matters | Coaching assessments don’t make you successful—they help you understand yourself so you can grow. |
| What they do well | Offer clear, research-based feedback about your communication, emotional intelligence, and leadership tendencies. |
| What they can’t do | No test can measure your full potential or guarantee promotion—your effort makes the difference. |
| How to use them | Treat assessments as a starting point for self-reflection and skill-building, not a final answer. |
| Next step | Use your results to set coaching goals and find the right coach to help you apply them. |
When you are considering a coach and they offer you an assessment, you might wonder, do coaching assessments work to make you more successful?
Many people think coaching assessments are magic tests that reveal whether you’re a leader or not. The truth is, assessments are tools—valuable only when you use them for reflection and action. While an assessment might help you uncover blind spots, identify strengths, or reframe how you see your skills and others’, ultimately the power to develop your leadership skills lies within you.
Most coaching assessments are rigorously developed and tested. So, they will generally do what they say they will do. Most of them generate a personalized feedback report. In the report, you will find specific information about the impact of skills and actionable steps for self-improvement. From there, it’s up to you to make the most of the information provided and decide what changes will improve your results.
Here are some common ways coaches use assessments to help clients get better outcomes:
How Coaching Assessments Help You Understand Yourself
Nearly all coaching assessments will help you understand yourself better. As a result of answering a few questions, you’ll get a full report about your skill level in the areas they are testing for. Specifically, they will have personalized insights about your skill level and the impact of those skills. Furthermore, they may suggest actions or exercises for improvement.
The best of these coaching assessments reveal personal skills or communication styles that you can develop to get along better with teammates. For example, if you discover a trait, behavior, or skill where you score lower than want, you will now have enough information to start developing it. This increase in self-awareness is valuable in itself.
Examples of Popular Coaching Assessments
Here are a few of the most popular assessments that coaches use.
- The MBTI will offer personalized insights into how you communicate and process information.
- The DISC assessment will help you see patterns in your behaviors and communications.
- The Hogan assessment will give you information about some of your personality traits.
- The EQ-i 2.0 will reveal the ways that you manage yourself, your relationships, decision making, and stress.
- The Clifton Strength-Finder will reveal strengths, probably in ways that you have never thought about.
All of these can help you understand yourself better, which is an important first step for self-improvement.
To be sure, each of these assessments has limitations. For instance, the MBTI helps groups understand each other when the group shares information. As an individual without a group setting, you may find it less useful. Corporations still use the Hogan Personality Inventory even though academic reviews have questioned the link between personality and job performance. Be sure to ask your assessment professional about what the assessment can and cannot do.
Do Coaching Assessments Work to Improve Your Skills?
As I said above, only you can improve your skills. There is no magic button to self-improvement. However, assessments can be a great tool to help you find what you want to work on. For instance, you might see that you don’t score well on something you thought you were pretty good at. On the other hand, you might discover a new skill that you didn’t know existed. As a result, you have uncovered a blind spot. That is always useful, especially if you are open to self-reflection and willing to try things a little differently.
Often the assessment report will offer suggestions for developing new skills. Your assessment professional will guide you to focus on a couple of skills that might make a big difference for you. If you take a self-assessment that isn’t guided, take time to create a plan for self-improvement. Try working to develop skills you want to have and retest yourself in three to six months. Did you improve?
Do Coaching Assessments Work to Improve a Job Search?
Sometimes coaching assessments are used by organizations in the hiring process. These are specifically intended to screen candidates for certain traits that are important in their workplace and culture. Because you may not know which traits they are looking for, or what your score is, the assessment may or may not help you in your job search.
If you take an assessment with a coach outside of the hiring process, you might identify skills that will help you get hired into your desired job. That can be valuable information. If you are motivated, you can develop new habits and skills in as little as three months. With that awareness, you can focus your job search and show new skills on your resume.
For ideas on how to set clear growth goals, see How to Identify Your Leadership Coaching Goals (and the Right Coach to Help You Reach Them).
Do Coaching Assessments Work to Improve My Chance of Promotion?
If you are working with a coach to position yourself for promotion, an assessment can be a fantastic tool to guide you and the coach in setting goals for your leadership development. Following an assessment, you can pinpoint opportunities for growth. In addition, the report will give you a language and pathway to improve your skills. A coach can help you find ways to try out new skills, see how they work, and solidify your learning.
Personally, I have seen people double their emotional intelligence score in six months. On average my clients gain 18% in emotional intelligence in six months. This is enough to get them promoted within 12 months. As a result of their assessment and their work with me, my clients make visible changes in the workplace that their boss notices and rewards.
Keep in mind that simply taking the test won’t improve your skills. Coaching assessments work by offering you data and insights into opportunities for you to grow your own skills. It’s going to take some dedication on your part to implement a plan for improving the skills you want to develop. Specifically, you’ll need to experiment with new techniques until you find what works for you.
If you’re curious about how emotional intelligence drives better leadership, explore what leadership coaching is and why it works
Free or Low-Cost Coaching Assessments You Can Try On Your Own
Here are a few assessments that you can try out on your own, even without a coach.
Clifton Strengths Finder: For $24.99, this assessment from Gallup, backed by decades of data, will reveal the top five strengths you probably didn’t know you had. For a little more, you can see your ranking in all their 34 competencies.
FIRO B: This is a well-researched personality assessment that has been used by the military and is similar to the MBTI. Use it to learn how you best relate to others on a team.
Skill Matcher: This is a free tool to find your top strengths out of 40 skills to help you focus your resume for a better job search.
Further Reading
Explore the full How to Find a Coach series to better understand what kind of support fits your goals and learning style:
- Why Hire a Coach, and How to Find the Right Coach for You
- What Business Coaching Is and Why It Works: The Proven Science That Helps Good Leaders Get Even Better
- Coaching vs Teaching vs Therapy — What Is Better for Me?
- If You Can’t Find a Good Mentor, Get a Great Coach: How We Really Learn at Work
- Executive Coaching vs Leadership Coaching: What Is Better for Me?
Every great leader keeps learning. Explore more about leadership coaching and discover how to find the right coach who can guide your next level of growth.
When you’re ready to apply what you’ve learned, find the right coach who can help you turn insights into real-world progress.
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