How to ensure your assessment results are accurate – jump to the checklist.
Many coaches begin their work with a client by using an assessment. Oftentimes coaches are certified in one or two assessments that form the cornerstone of their work, and most of these assessments provide a roadmap to help you move from fair or poor performance to improvement. One of the clear advantages of these prescriptive assessments is that they can provide clear measurement of your improvements.
If, however, you are seeking clarity of goals/objectives, wanting to feel a sense of passion at work, or looking for ways to be authentically yourself at work, a prescriptive assessment such as those described above may actually be detrimental for you. You may have found yourself in midlife doing work you don’t care much about and that doesn’t fit you precisely because others have prescribed your path for you. Instead of gaining self-awareness and tapping into your own inner voice of wisdom, you’ve fallen into your commitments to jobs, organizations, and even groups of friends instead of intentionally designing your associations and activities.
When this becomes apparent, the result is dissatisfaction and often impatience to correct course. “Improvement” in this situation is not measured by a better score on a test but by a greater sense of fit and satisfaction with the activities and people who fill your life.
The role of descriptive assessments (strengths, capacities, and interests)
Assessments that reveal innate strengths, talents, capacities, inclinations, values, virtues, and current interests help reveal the characteristics paths that would “feel right.” However, assessments are not like a GPS App that clearly tells you where you are or the best route to travel to your destination. Even if assessments did operate like this, even a GPS doesn’t choose your destination.
So what is the role of a descriptive assessment? Humans have innate inclinations to compare themselves to others. We are often on the lookout for people who might be a threat because their status, talent, or knowledge is so much greater than ours. We also look for those who will not be a threat because our own status, talent, or knowledge is so much greater than theirs.
This comparative habit fuels a lot of the competition and security-seeking that drives us even when we are in roles that do not fit. An assessment that is descriptive rather than evaluative can help you understand yourself and the reasons why your experiences have been satisfying or not. Descriptive assessments are therefore sometimes even more valuable later in life, because then we have the lens of experience through which to understand the results.
Take for instance the example of one of my clients, whom I’ll call “Fred.” Fred took the Gallup StrengthsFinder (which sorts 34 possible ‘talent themes’ for each individual to come up with a ‘top five’) and learned that he has the talent of “Belief” in his Top Five. [Gallup says that “people especially talented in the Belief theme have certain core values that are unchanging. Out of these values emerges a defined purpose for their life.”]
In the context of coaching, however, Fred objected, saying that for him, “Belief” is a drawback, not a strength. “Yes, when I feel like a line has been crossed, I fight for what I believe in,” he says. “But my wife and kids are always telling me I’m a big pain in the ass. I’ve learned that I need to get it out of my system someplace else. They don’t want to hear it.”
Because Gallup has described “Belief” as a talent rather than a weakness, I as Fred’s coach could then move him toward exploring other ways of understanding this habit. He learned that he might leverage this positively if he could learn to read his audience more effectively.
For a second example, let’s consider another client who I’ll call “Kim.” She took an aptitude assessment that identifies characteristics through use of qualitative measurement. In this case, she got lots of “high” scores. However, she quickly learned that a high score doesn’t mean a good fit in every situation. There are some jobs that do not require her very strong tendencies, and in those places she felt frustrated that she can’t do what she feels made to do.
Another well-respected descriptive assessment is the VIA Character Strengths Survey. This free survey can help identify the natural approach you take to life situations. When you are prevented from taking your own natural approach, or if you are talked into taking a different approach because someone else believes it’s the right thing to do, you will wind up feeling like you don’t fit (or worse, you’ll feel like you aren’t good enough).
“Kathryn” (not her real name) was an extraordinarily positive, grateful, people-oriented woman who could make anyone feel valued and cared for. When she took a highly administrative role where meeting deadlines and productivity goals was far more important than interacting with people, she failed– and concluded that it was time to retire. Together we uncovered that she wasn’t losing her brain capacity. She had just wandered off her path. Once she got back on her path, she was back on purpose and feeling good about her contributions again.
How can you make sure your assessment results are accurate?
When you are about to take a descriptive assessment, prepare with this checklist:
Make time so you can concentrate without interruption. Most assessments will tell you how much time they will probably require for you to take them.
Plan to take the assessment when you are alert and in a positive frame of mind. Early on a Saturday after a good night’s sleep might be a good time, when you are starting your weekend and expect to be left to yourself.
Make a short list of positive experiences before you begin. Choose experiences where you were doing well, feeling engaged and feeling good about yourself. (Experiences that feel good but don’t belong on this list include anything where your choices and performance had a small or nonexistent impact on the outcome, such as winning a lottery, getting invited to an event you really wanted to attend, or finding out you don’t have to go to work/school because of the weather.)
Review your list of positive experiences in some depth before you begin the assessment. Where were you? What were you doing? How exactly did it feel to be engaged in that activity?
As you take the assessment, don’t indulge thoughts about problems or worries. As those thoughts arise, mentally note that it’s a thought about a problem and let it go. If it’s important, it will come back to you after the assessment is over. Stay focused on what it has been like when you’ve done well.
Should I retake a personality test / descriptive assessment?
Maybe. The value in retaking descriptive assessments depends on the topic of the assessment and the proven validity and reliability of the assessment. This is a good question to discuss with your coach.
Some of these sound interesting. Can I just take the assessment on my own?
All of the descriptive assessments I’ve described in this article are available to the public, and you can choose to take them on your own. However, I encourage anyone taking a descriptive assessment to discuss the results with a coach who is familiar with the assessment and can help you leverage your results so they will be more meaningful to you.
When you take an assessment on your own without getting any training or support for framing and integrating the results, the results may even wind up feeling meaningless.
I’ve taken an assessment and I don’t understand why my results matter. Can I sign up for just one session with you?
If you are looking for one session, there are a lot of people who do one-offs. I don’t. The reason for this is that I want to work with people who are really seeking to change and transform their lives and the way they approach their work.
I believe that true transformation takes time, and a single session is not enough for you to get at what is most important. I have found that people who want real results need to spend time with me. I am about long-lasting results, not a quick fix.
How to get started
If this describes you, Schedule A Chat with me to explore your options for free. Don’t worry — by the time we actually talk, we’ll have laid the groundwork and have already started getting to know each other. It takes just a few days to get there, so let’s get started now!
