Why use assessments?

Most organisations recognize the benefits of assessing potential employees across a range of technical and behavioural competencies. A variation was introduced and marketed as a developmental tool to enable employees to gain insight into their strengths and development needs. With the increased emphasis on leadership rather than technical management skills 360 degree assessments have become a popular and effective tool to obtain specific data on some of the more ‘people centered’ behaviours.

When training and developing employees, a "one size fits all" approach often fails to provide the desired behaviour change and personal growth. One of the main reasons is that these types of interventions are too generic and also offer little ongoing support whilst the individual is experiencing the conscious incompetence phase.

We believe that an essential first step of a high performance coaching process is some form of assessment. With this in place we find that progress is significantly greater; as is buy in to the whole process. Assessments typically include some or all of the following components:

1. An in-depth assessment interview
2. Conducting a 360° (multi-rater) feedback survey
3. Sophisticated leadership personality assessment using well-validated personality tools

A first rate assessment can help a coachee and their coach to more objectively identify his/her own leadership strengths and weaknesses so that they can create a customized development process for him/herself. The same process can be used to help a management team work better together by understanding more clearly how to work more effectively with their differing personalities, leadership styles etc.

The use of assessments has become essential to employers who:

• want to put the right people into jobs,
• provide employees with effective training, development and coaching,
• help leaders and managers to become more effective,
• develop high performing teams, and
• promote people into positions where they will succeed.

The coachee and coach come to an agreement on what developmental needs take priority (identifying which are truly achievable and most important) and an action plan is developed. The coach helps the coachee understand the benefits to change and the consequences if he/she doesn’t. This then becomes a powerful motivational tool.

Then they look for real-time situations where the coachee can practice new behavior that he/she has learned through the coaching process. Reassessment and refinement then becomes an ongoing process between the executive and the coach to help refine their skills. When striving for excellence, a continuous development process becomes a part of daily living for high-performing executives. A high quality coaching process, beginning with assessment, helps to accelerate professional performance.

There are hundreds of assessment tools available to choose from in today’s global marketplace. The most impressive results are achieved, however, when an integrated assessment is used - one that employs cutting-edge technology and empirical data to assess and measure the qualities of "The Whole Person."

CoachMatching has selected best fit leading 21st Century assessments to successfully identify the potential that lies within each individual, team, group and whole of the organisation.

Benefits of Assessment:

The results from a good assessment tool are used to provide a window into the developmental needs and stages of an organisations’ people.

An in-depth assessment interview by a qualified assessor, will help clarify strengths to build upon and uncover hidden roadblocks that often derail an executive. Humans, no matter how much they want to grow often run up against barriers to personal change, many of which they are oblivious to but are all too well seen by others. Detecting and understanding roadblocks is the first step to developing new more effective skills.

Leadership Personality Assessment tools are used to identify and compare a leadership personality profile to validated personality traits of effective leaders. Using these tools will help the coachee identify and understand more objectively their strengths and weaknesses so that they can capitalize on the strengths and develop the weaker points.

360° (multi-rater) feedback instruments solicit input (through the use of surveys) from peers, direct reports and other trusted sources that is then collated and analyzed by an objective third-party (coach).

The 360° survey helps discover any disconnects between self-perception and the perception of others (our blind spots). The results of the 360° feedback allows the coachee to see how well they are rated against well-validated leadership and performance criteria. Most importantly, top of line 360° tools allow room for open-ended general comments. The comments are often the most valuable source of constructive information.