Selecting an Assessment Tool
With so many choices on the market it is hard to know which assessments are best to represent your coaching style and meet the client’s needs. I am a strong proponent of evidenced-based practices and often tout the adage of being research based, data driven, and results oriented to describe my professional nature. It is important to research assessment tools that you clearly understand and are comfortable administering and interpreting with the client.
The first consideration is whether your client is soliciting services for personal or professional growth. Personal growth may be due to some struggle that they are seeking resiliency skills to better cope. Personal growth may also come from a need to learn better self-awareness, communication, or empathy skills to improve relationships and confidence. Though many of the skills someone may seek coaching for benefit their personal lives, those same skills will greatly enhance their professional lives. One of the most profound insights I gleaned as a coach is hearing people question if the assessment I have given them should be answered based on their personal life or their professional life. As a coach, I feel that with strong emotional intelligence skills they should be answered the same – or applicable across all situations.
A professional coaching opportunity may have a specific request to help improve customer service or sales ability. However, sometimes executive coaching is the goal and leadership skills or team building skills are needed. It is not uncommon to have a highly successful employee promoted due to their personal performance only to find they do not know how to develop success in others or lead a team. This is where leadership or executive coaching can become a valuable asset to the organization. The cost of developing those skills in an already talented individual is more cost effective to the organization than losing that employee through frustration or dropped performance because they had been promoted above their skills level. As a coach, I find it much easier to develop leadership skills in a talented employee than to develop talent in a new employee.
Another coaching opportunity that has recently gained momentum is educational coaching. This is a culmination of personal and professional development with a wide impact in both higher and K-12 education settings. Especially during the pandemic, the social – emotional learning (SEL) of all students has become a forefront conversation as schools begin to reopen. But the emotional wellbeing of the faculty and staff are just as important. I also carry the belief that it is not reasonable to ask teachers to develop SEL if they are not emotionally trained to do so. To me, it is like asking an English teacher to cover a Math class. We would not do that without providing some sort of proficiency for the English teacher before stepping into the Math classroom, so why would we not develop our teacher’s emotional intelligence first, then let them teach the students?
How To Use an Assessment in Your Coaching Practice
So, by now, I am sure you are asking yourself, “Where can I find one of these assessments? Which one should I use?” I am glad you asked! There are many on the market and each one serves different purposes. It is important to find ones that you understand and can explain, but also serve the needs of the clients. One that I use a lot for coaching individuals is a transformative emotional intelligence assessment called the Skills for Career and Life Effectiveness (SCALE) assessment (Nelson & Low, 2019). Though they have a suite of assessments I find this one to be applicable to most people across most industries and is available online for convenience. This is additionally impacted by the need to offer virtual coaching during the pandemic.
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