Accelerate Coaching Outcomes With Assessments

The costs associated with replacing executive leaders—such as recruitment, productivity losses due to disruption, as well as employee and customer disengagement—are staggering. Employers also incur costs when an executive makes suboptimal strategic decisions resulting from a lack of systems thinking, partner engagement, and market acumen.

Enter executive coaching, an approach that enhances leadership skills, style, and overall effectiveness. Combining psychometric assessments with coaching can fast-track the identification of strengths, weaknesses, and areas for growth, factors that become increasingly important at higher leadership levels. Thus, the blending of coaching and assessment data enables the creation of an individualized leadership development plan.

Multirater and behavioral assessments

Although this article does not promote any one assessment, it offers a guide for coaches interested in integrating psychometric tools into their practice. Selecting appropriate assessments contributes to an effective coaching process. When a client seeks to enhance their capabilities in their current or aspirational role, multirater (or 360-degree) and behavioral assessments help them gain self-awareness about strengths and opportunities. In addition, the coach gains a deeper understanding of the client, and both can explore development opportunities together.

Tools such as the DiSC and CliftonStrengths assessments use a self-reporting format that may glean useful information depending on the context. Multirater assessments, such as the KF360 and Leadership Circle Profile, have a self-report component as well as the additional benefit of anonymous input from peers, direct reports, supervisors, external business partners, and customers.

The Korn Ferry Leadership Architect Research Guide and Technical Manual notes three factors that demonstrate the business value in using multirater assessments.

Increased self-awareness. Uncovering gaps in a leader's understanding of how others perceive them enables the leader to realign their behaviors and actions with organizational goals and values.

Identification of training needs. The coach designs targeted training solutions in collaboration with the client and, ideally, the manager to meet the employer's needs, resulting in a more skilled and capable workforce.

Alignment with organizational goals. Multirater assessments can accelerate performance improvement. Therefore, development can focus on the behaviors that most effectively contribute to achieving business goals. When an executive coach interprets the leader's assessment results, and adds their understanding of the client's organizational culture, the dialogue between coach and client can result in targeted development strategies.

Behavioral assessment reports often include development recommendations based on the individual's leadership level that coaches can leverage in working with their clients. In addition, many assessment vendors offer publications with development resources tied to the competency frameworks in their instruments. During debriefs, the coach can also aid their client in receiving and considering the feedback versus responding to it defensively.

Consider Raoul, who earned a promotion to a senior manager role two years ago. He gained the trust of his new team and fostered collaboration in problem solving. Acknowledging he still had much to learn, Raoul and his manager agreed that a 360-degree feedback process would be beneficial. Raoul received positive feedback regarding his ability to build a cohesive team, and his peers viewed him as knowledgeable. However, his direct reports perceived him as hesitant to take decisive action when necessary, often delaying decisions until he gathered all the facts. Raoul's manager observed the same trend.

The coach debriefed the multirater report with Raoul and his manager and shared resources from the assessment vendor's website. Raoul recognized that to achieve the ambitious goals of his department and to further advance in his career, he would need to better address issues proactively, even when information is lacking. With his manager's support, Raoul committed to additional coaching to move out of his comfort zone and develop new leadership skills.

Personality inventories

The Hogan Personality Inventory and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) are common personality assessments. The Hogan assessment measures reputation—that is to say, how others see a leader who responds similarly to the inventory items. The MBTI measures personality identity—how the leader sees themselves. Additionally, several vendors have deep databases that connect personality strengths, potential leadership stallers, and individual values with executive-level benchmarks.

The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines personality as the enduring characteristics and behavior that comprise a person's unique adjustment to life, including major traits, interests, drives, values, self-concept, abilities, and emotional patterns. Various theories explain the structure and development of personality in different ways, but all agree that personality helps drive behavior.

According to Hogan, personality assessments are valuable for:

• Gaining insight into how a client executes business strategy and manages conflict and change

• Assessing a client's strengths, opportunities, decision-making processes, and organizational fit

• Examining how personality influences a leader's effectiveness at leading people

Take Marisol, for example. She is a successful senior director responsible for cybersecurity at a small, publicly traded company. The company is poised for rapid growth in the next two to three years and considers Marisol the next chief security officer. While she has achieved many successes, she struggles with managing conflict on her team. As a result, a few of her best performers have left the company. Personality assessment data indicates Marisol has a strong preference for data over relationships; data, after all, is much more predictable than people. A coach helps Marisol develop her communication, feedback, and trust-building skills so that her team can engage in healthy conflict resolution that results in innovative ideas and strategies.

Coaches can use personality assessments to focus on leadership performance potential and derailers. Such assessments help coaches more quickly grasp the meaning of actions and reactions that drive client behavior. For instance, a leader may have a personality trait that shows up as interrupting rather than listening. At first, team members may interpret the leader's interruptions as showing passion, but over time, it can disengage and frustrate teams without the space to share their ideas.

Personality assessments often incorporate values assessments. It is important to note that an ideal executive personality does not exist; personality characteristics that are successful in one environment can be counterproductive in another.

At times, the combination of a 360-degree assessment and a personality assessment can be powerful. For example, after a company reorganization, Cameron's role expanded to overseeing digital marketing for three regions with a greater span of control. Despite previously being a top performer, Cameron struggled with managing multiple workstreams and leading the team through change. A 360-degree assessment less than six months prior revealed low scores in Demonstrating Resilience and Managing Conflict, with strengths in Driving for Results and Financial Savvy. A coach suggested a personality assessment to gain more insight.

Though Cameron was driven and energetic, the long hours and high stress affected his ability to navigate during this time of change. Further, he began communicating less and less, leaving the team feeling rudderless. The personality assessment helped the coach dive deeper, uncovering a personality-driven tendency to withdraw under stress.

By naming key personality strengths and derailers, Cameron was in a better position to tame tendencies that were not productive. The coach skillfully integrated the multirater and the personality data to help Cameron understand how to manage stress better, organize time, and communicate more effectively.

The combination of multirater and personality assessment tools can provide foundational data on potential career stallers, thereby more effectively guiding conversations and development planning.

Cognitive ability instruments

Early- and midcareer leaders experience more complexity as they take on broader responsibilities. Leaders can strengthen their cognitive abilities over time with targeted development. In addition, executive coaches can guide clients regarding systems thinking, strategic planning, and organizational redesign in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.

The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal and the Hogan Business Reasoning Inventory are text-based critical thinking assessments. The Raven's Progressive Matrices is a nonverbal assessment of general intelligence and reasoning ability that multinational corporations often use. The respective vendors norm their instruments by leader level, so the reports compare an executive's data against an executive's critical thinking skill level. All such instruments come in localized versions for international use.

Like behavioral assessment vendors, vendors of cognitive ability assessments have reports and publications that provide suggestions for development based on the individual's results. The coach can guide the client and support cognitive growth through purposeful stretch assignments appropriate to the individual's needs.

For example, senior leaders recognized that Blake was ready to step up from a business leader to a group leader, and they brought in a coach to support the transition. Blake earned the promotion by managing regional service delivery and taking the initiative to expand a service line and launch a new service offering. As the coach debriefed Blake's Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, Blake was surprised that the assessment only revealed the Evaluating Arguments area as a strength. The results indicated opportunities for improvement in Recognize Assumptions and Draw Conclusions. Blake explained that the results must be a mistake because expanding the business required research, resource evaluation with the team, customizing the pitch, and persisting until winning the business.

The coach reassured Blake and proposed stretching his critical thinking skills by using business prospects he would focus on early in the new role. During the biweekly coaching sessions, the coach guided Blake to increase Recognize Assumptions critical thinking skills by planning thoughtful questions. Blake moved from depending on research and a tailored pitch to having genuine conversations with prospective business partners. Blake talked far less and really listened. His Draw Conclusions critical thinking skills also expanded with the expansion of information. He credits the "bad" news from the cognitive skills assessment with creating a critical thinking pivot point.

Coaching engagements can benefit from combining a cognitive assessment with a multirater assessment. For instance, an executive coach worked with Pat, a high-potential vice president from a healthcare organization who was struggling with building mutually beneficial relationships. Physician partners thought highly of Pat because of her exceptional operational focus. However, it soon became clear that she needed to focus more on strategy if the organization was to reach its long-term growth goals.

During a debrief following a 360-degree assessment, the coach noticed that direct reports and peers gave high marks. At the same time, senior leadership rated Pat lower on thought competencies such as Strategic Mindset and people competencies such as Builds Networks and Develops Talent. The coach subsequently administered a Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking assessment. The data, combined with insights from the multirater assessment, accelerated Pat's comprehension and development planning, fostering the adoption of new behaviors. After a year, she received a promotion to hospital CEO.

Assessment selection

Choosing the best fit assessments requires understanding the statistical criteria that are metrics for assessments. For instance, the aviation industry judges airlines based on safety and on-time arrivals, and the hospitality industry measures fast food restaurants on speed of service, food temperature, and cleanliness. When it comes to psychometric instruments, the effectiveness factors for leadership assessments are validity, reliability, and adverse impact.

Validity. This factor refers to the extent to which an instrument measures what it purports to measure. If an assessment isn't valid, it can lead to inaccurate conclusions about an individual's abilities. The assessment publisher's notes on concurrent validity refer to statistical correlations between the responses of assessment takers and those of high-performing leaders. Predictive validity, a level beyond concurrent validity, is a special statistical relationship showing that an assessment result is highly effective at predicting future performance.

Reliability. This factor is regarding the extent to which the outcomes are consistent upon repetition of the assessment. Unreliable assessments make it difficult to make accurate data-based decisions about an employee's skills.

Adverse impact measures. This concept refers to employment practices that appear neutral but may have a discriminatory effect on a legally protected group. If an assessment vendor has achieved this measure, the vendor will readily claim that distinction. Without testing for adverse impact, a company may find that an assessment unintentionally favors certain groups over others, which may lead to legal risks for the organization. Some assessment vendors will conduct an adverse impact study for an employer for a fee.

Many assessments require special certification by the vendor, while others have different criteria for administration. It is critical to carefully read the assessment publisher's validity and adverse impact studies. Also, when considering an assessment, the coach or other talent development professional must check to ensure the publisher has recently conducted validation studies. Do so by reading the manual or confirming with the publisher firsthand.

Make coaching more valuable

Using assessments is about making coaches more effective and enhancing the coach-client relationship. With the help of feedback, coaching, and continuous learning gleaned from assessment results, leaders can learn to modify their behaviors, which can bring about positive behavioral and reputational change.

Strategic self-awareness and behavior change all result from revisiting and attending to the insights coaches help their clients uncover. Assessments help the coach reach that insight more quickly.