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What Kinds of Assessments Do I Need as Part of My coaching?

When you want to develop yourself as a manager or leader you need data about you and the organizations in which you have worked, are working, and will work in the future. Every executive coaching case requires its own unique set of data based on the actionable data which already exists, the goals of the coaching, and the availability and practicality of gathering the information.

Most executive coaching situations require data on you and your organization or the system in which you work: Past, present and future. Some cases focus primarily on gathering and analyzing data to help you make decisions. The major focus of other situations is more on using what you and your coach already know to improve what you do and/or help you to achieve key business objectives. The following is an overview of the major categories of data, which are commonly collected as part of executive coaching. Work with your coach, your boss, HR professionals in your organization, and others to help decide which data is needed in your case and can be collected from a practical standpoint.

Data About You

Your Past

You know your past from your viewpoint. Your coach can help you step back and work with you to review your past from a more objective perspective. Usually, this is done through a combination of structured interviews of you and others with whom you have worked and interacted, a review of your resumes and other records of your life and work, and surveys about your life and work and how your view those experiences. By working with your coach the two of you can come to a new awareness of the patterns in your life and work, how they may have affected you and your environment, and their implications on your current and future thinking, feeling, and behavior. By truly understanding your past you can better understand what drives you today, how you can best deal with current challenges, and how you can change to more effectively address future opportunities.

It is especially important to let your coach know about previous coaching and developmental experiences you have had and the conclusions and changes, which took place as a result. This will allow you and your coach to leverage those past activities and what you have learned so your new coaching can take advantage of your past developmental experiences.

Data on You- Present

Normative assessments and surveys of you and people with whom you work are one of the best ways to come to an objective sense of who you are, what you do, and how it affects your success at work. They are instruments where norms or averages have been established across large groups of people who you can compare yourself to. They help you compare yourself to other relevant groups. These standard tools come in the form of surveys, tests, questionnaires, interviews, and tasks so you can see how you perform and respond compared to established norms of representative sample groups of people. The following are some of the most common assessments used as part of executive coaching:

Personality tests
Interest inventories
Style surveys
Developmental assessments
Skill inventories
and
Feedback surveys

Most of these assessments take from ten to ninety minutes to complete. All but the feedback surveys are usually completed by you. Most of them include multiple choice questions. Your scores on these assessments are based on the degree to which your responses are within the typical range of responses by people similar to and different from you. For example, if you repeatedly answer questions on a personality assessment in ways which suggest that you see yourself as independent, the degree to which you get a high score on "independence" is not just based on how high your score is but also on how much higher it is compared to the average person in your comparison sample group (men vs. women, age group, years of experience, etc.). In addition, your score is also based on the degree to which people in the comparison group vary above and below the average. For example, if most people score relatively low and there is very little variation between people above and below that low average, then your relatively high score is interpreted as very high.

Test Validity and Reliability

Each assessment device has its own level of validity and reliability. The more it has been researched and proven to test what it says it tests and is accurate repeatedly in different situations, the more you can rely on it to accurately reflect who you are and how you compare to others on important criteria. Since each instrument has its own biases and works better with certain people than with others, it's usually good to use at least a couple of instruments for each thing you are evaluating in yourself to "cross-validate" the findings. By reviewing the results of all of your assessments, you and your coach can figure out what they mean and what they tell you about what you need to do in your coaching and future development.

Personality Assessments

Personality assessments, such as the 16PF or the Gilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey (GZ), usually tell you things about how you are built psychologically: How you tend to think, feel, and behave. They can also often help you better understand why you do what you do and what will be easy or difficult for you to change. For example, if you are naturally sensitive and warm with others you may find it easier to improve the way you listen and show you care about others. You will more likely come across as naturally having empathy and focusing on others. If you are less inclined to be sensitive and warm, you can still learn to be a better listener and focus on others more effectively. But it may take more time, be a bigger "stretch" for you, and look differently for you to show you care than someone else who is more naturally warm and sensitive.

Interest Inventories

Interest inventories, such as the Strong and Campbell, ask you about the degree to which you are interested in a variety of activities, jobs, people, courses, or topics. By comparing your levels of interest with those of others with similar and different characteristics and in different jobs and situations, the inventories can help you see what kinds of things you are more likely to enjoy and be motivated to do. For example, if you do not like routine activities, and you like routines much less than other people in certain jobs where routines make up a good part of the job, you may find it less enjoyable and more difficult to be energized by those kinds of jobs.

Style Surveys

Style surveys, such as the Myers-Briggs and DISC, usually ask you to choose between two or more options representing a select set of tendencies. For example, do you see yourself or find yourself doing things, which are more dependent vs. independent, planned vs. improvised, or taking charge vs. following others? By seeing the degree to which you consistently choose one set of options vs. the another, compared to the degree to which others select one of the options or another, you can gain insight into your combination of stylistic tendencies (are you more independent, practical, and action-oriented in most situations, or more dependent, theoretical, and careful thinking.) Style surveys help you understand how people with your style and other styles tend to think, feel and behave and how they can best interact with other people with similar or different styles.

Developmental Assessments

Developmental assessments, such as the CDREM and SCT, are usually completed in the form of interviews to help determine your developmental level. They help you to compare yourself to others along a continuum of development on one or more scales (self-awareness, cognitive development, etc.). By better understanding your developmental level, you and your coach can gain new insights into how you view your world. Your world view drives your assumptions, your decisions and your interpersonal relationships. It can help you determine what is reasonable for you to expect of yourself in your next stage of development. For example, if you find that you are focused on rules and principles as the primary criteria for whether you believe something is right or wrong (as opposed to the unique circumstances of a person or situation), you are more likely to be rigid and judge others based on your own mindset rather than taking into account what is called for by the people and situation at hand.

Skills Inventories

Skill inventories help you to evaluate yourself on skills required by your current or future areas of responsibility. They are as numerous as the number of skills needed in jobs. These inventories can take many forms: Card sorts, to identify priorities and perceived levels of competency; Job sample performance tests, where you perform tasks and are evaluated based on objective criteria; And paper-and-pencil tests where you are tested on mental acuity, math skills, your reactions to cases situations, or other job-related activities. Another form of assessment similar to skill inventories are surveys and interviews in which you and others rate your effectiveness on a variety of job functions: Leadership, communication, listening, vision, delegation, etc.. These 360-degree surveys allow you to compare how others view your effectiveness with their view others, how they would like you to perform, and how you see yourself.

Other Information about You

In addition to normative assessments it is also very important for you to share a variety of information with your coach about you:

Your current role
Areas of responsibility
Career objectives
Developmental priorities
and
Important issues and situation you are dealing with in an out of your work

By understanding these facts and your perspective on your current situation, your coach can better grasp the context within which you must perform and want to develop yourself.

Data on You- Future

It is rare for any individual manager or leader to have quantitative or even qualitative data, which will help them to predict their own performance. But there are leading indicators which you and your coach can use to help you develop the most likely scenarios about you in your organization. Answers to the questions like the following can serve as leading indicators:

What is the pattern of relationships you have developed in your life and career?
How resilient have you been to changes in your business environment?
How well do you fit in with the culture of the organization in which you work?
What kinds of work activities have given you the greatest satisfaction?
What results have you achieved for your organization in the past six months, year, two years, five years?

By working with your coach and others to answer these and other similar questions you can develop scenarios to help you be realistic about your future and make the best decisions for you and your organization.

Data about Your Organization

The following is a sample of some of the many things your coach may need to understand about your organization.

Your Organization's Past

Strategy
Finances
Customers
Human Resources
Changes
Significant events
Past leadership
Organizational history
Restructuring
Reengineering
Traditions
Successes
Failures
Relevant news stories

 

Your Organization- Present

Who's who
Organizational charts
Culture
Business plans
Team members and their roles and responsibilities
Current business activities
Recent events and immediate challenges

Your Organization- Projected Into the Future

Likely scenarios of how things will roll out in the months and years ahead
Predicted performance of people and businesses
Anticipated accomplishments and difficulties to be faced
Emerging technologies and innovations
Economic trends and leading indicators
Expected changes in your team and other key players
Anything else that has a reasonable chance of happening with significant impact on you and the system within which you work

Updating Your Coach on Changes in Your Organization

Since most executive coaching projects last for months, it is guaranteed that the information your share about you and your organization, present and predicted future, will change during the course of your coaching. Often people being coached forget that their coach is not "on the job" with them, day to day, to stay up to date on changes in their world. Your coach needs to work under the assumption that what you tell him or her at the beginning of coaching is "the way things are" as your coaching progresses unless you inform him or her of changes. By doing so, you can make a big difference in your coach's ability to serve your well.

360-Degree Feedback

What are 360's and How Can I Manage Mine Most Effectively?

A 360 is a collection of feedback from people who work all around you (360 degrees around you). There are many ways to collect the feedback and many kinds of feedback, which can be collected. Data collected through a 360 process is often extremely valuable in conjunction with other objective information about you and how you view yourself. Some form of 360 data is usually used as part of executive coaching. It can be invaluable to help you understand, internalize, and accept how you are viewed by others, compared to your own view, before, during, and/or after your coaching.

Conducting 360's Before, During, and After Coaching

Before beginning your coaching, a 360 can give you a baseline to help you set priorities for your development. That baseline can assist you in knowing what to check up on later to see if the changes you make as a result of your coaching positively change how you are perceived by others. When a 360 is conducted in the middle of a coaching process, it can give you useful data on what's working and what you may need to change about your action plan to make a difference in the eyes of those with whom you work. After coaching is completed, a follow-up 360 can give you a pre-post comparison to help you evaluate the degree to which you have accomplished your coaching goals and set new objectives for your continued development.

Should I do a 360?

If you need or want to know how you are perceived by the people around you and what they would suggest you do as you move forward, a 360 may be of value to you. If you already have this kind of data and it meets the following criteria to make it actionable you probably do not need to collect it again. Just share the data you have with your coach for the two of you to incorporate it with the other data about you and your organization. To decide if the data you have is adequate, apply the following criteria to the existing data:

Current: Usually collected within the past six months or less time
Detailed: With enough specifics, quantitatively and qualitatively, to help you make the decisions you need to make based on the data
Complete: Answering all the questions you need answered
Representative: Collected from people with all the perspectives you need to tap into (people above you, across, and down in the organization, customers, vendors, partners, family members, etc.)
Valid and Reliable: Collected in ways which allow you to trust the information as a true reflection of what's going on and how people honestly see you and the system in which you work

How to Decide to Go Ahead with Collecting Needed 360 Data

If the above criteria are not met or you need or want additional 360 data, you must decide if the potential benefit of collecting such information outweighs the risks. Usually, 360 data can be collected in ways that allow you to get useful information without having significant negative impact on how people view you or their ability to get work done. Sometimes, however, the culture, atmosphere, level of trust, or current work pressures make it difficult to do a 360. When the following situations exist, special care needs to be taken to avoid having a negative impact. In some cases where these situations are in the extreme, it is better to hold off on doing a 360 until a more conducive environment exists.

Red and Yellow Flags for 360's

The culture in which you work places an undue negative stereotype on people asking for feedback
The people who would participate in the 360 would use the fact that you are conducting it against you
The people from whom you are requesting feedback would not be likely to be open or honest
There is nobody with recent relevant experience with you available to be surveyed
People are too busy or distracted right now with unusually high levels of work pressure
You cannot ensure adequate anonymity of the people to be interviewed
You would find it difficult to not use the feedback you receive against the people who provided it
People you would ask to participate have recently been over-surveyed
You don't trust people enough to accept the feedback you would receive

When Do I Use Written Surveys vs. Interviews to Collect My 360 Feedback?

There is no blanket rule about using written surveys vs. interviews. There are however some times when one may be more appropriate than another for you. Surveys are best for getting a quite a few people to rate you on a large number of items and give you short comments about what you do and how you could do it better. They are best at helping you to identify what you need to work on as opposed to how you could best improve on those items. Interviews, on the other hand, tend to be more helpful in going into much greater depth with fewer people to gather detailed, qualitative examples about how you could improve in a few key areas. For example, if you want to know which of a dozen competencies people think you do best and which need the most work, and you want to get rated in those areas by four to ten people in each of three or four groups of people (direct reports, superiors, peers, vendors, customers, friends/family members, etc.), surveys will allow you to quickly identify those priorities. Interviews will allow your coach to talk at length with a few superiors, direct reports, and peers to probe into exactly what you need to do to improve in one or more specific areas (e.g. listening, strategic planning, delegation, risk taking, etc.). Sometimes, both surveys and interviews are used to gather quantitative data from a larger group and more in-depth qualitative information from a smaller, targeted group.

How Do I Select My 360 Sources?

The most important rule about selecting your sources for 360 feedback is that you make the final selection. In the end, if you are not ready and able to accept the feedback you get as valid and representative, it is useless to collect it. Since 360 feedback is usually merged from all your sources (either all together or in subgroups by level (up, down, across, outside), even one unacceptable person will give you the out to dismiss any piece of feedback since you will be able to attribute it to that one unacceptable source. You should talk with your coach, your boss or board, your HR professional, mentors, and others you trust to get ideas on sources. Consider their suggestions seriously and then work with your coach to select the most appropriate sources based on the following criteria:

People whose feedback you will accept as valid
People who have first-hand experience with you in the areas on which you want feedback
A good balance of people with whom you do well and those with whom you may have difficulties
A good diversity of people regarding relevant characteristics (gender, age, tenure, experience level, level of authority, race and/or cultural background, style, etc.)
People who can be trusted to maintain confidentiality about your 360 within your organization
People who can and will be open, candid, and specific about what you do, situations in your organization, and how you might be able to improve your effectiveness and help your organization to achieve its objectives

How Do I Handle Confidentiality On 360's?

The appropriate degree of confidentiality for a 360 should be determined by your unique situation. If 360's are common in your organization and the people with whom you interact are relatively open minded and supportive, you probably don't need to impose a lot of confidentiality precautions. If the people being surveyed believe that what they say will be seen by your superiors, go into your file, and impact your performance review, they are probably less likely to be honest with their feedback. If, on the other hand, they believe their feedback will only be given to you and their anonymity will be maintained, they are more likely to give you more candid, more useful information. A good guideline for you, your boss, your coach, and your HR professional, is to inform only those people you will survey that they are being surveyed, not let them know who the other people being surveyed are, and ask them to keep the survey confidential. An exception to this rule is if your entire organization conducts 360's. Even then, the more the details of the survey group are kept confidential, the more likely the participants will keep the experience to themselves.

As soon as you identify the sources for your 360 feedback, contact those people to ask them to participate. Tell them about the confidentiality and anonymity guidelines, how the survey will be conducted, and that you will appreciate their candid responses. Be sensitive to contacting each person individually and directly rather than go through voicemail, email, administrative assistants, or other people or media. The more personal and direct your requests, the better response you are likely to get. Once you have OK's from all the people participating, give your coach contact information so that he/she can contact them to make the necessary arrangements.

What Kinds of Reports Might I Get for My Assessments and 360's?

The content and format of reports for assessments and 360's vary greatly depending on the specific instrument, the methods used and the coach or assessment company compiling the report. Your coach should spend time reviewing your results with you and helping you understand how to interpret them. If your coach gives you a verbal report of your results, he/she should also provide you with a written summary. Some written reports provide only raw data along with comparative norms, working under the assumption that you and your coach will draw your own conclusions. Others provide only the conclusions and interpretations. Almost all assessment reports provide explanations about the theoretical bases of the instrument and the practical implications of your results to help you interpret them. Many reports also give you one or more validity scores which tell you the degree to which you can rely on your results as valid based on the way in which you responded (honestly, consistently, etc.).

Many coaches and assessment professionals will prepare an overall assessment report, giving you an interpretation based on all of the assessments you completed rather than give you separate reports for each instrument. Since each assessment instrument has its own strengths and weaknesses, such an overall report helps you look at the overall pattern of all of your assessments, screening out the individual assessment results which are not cross-validated or can not be relied on independently. There is no one best way to prepare reports. If you do not receive this kind of overall report, you need to work with your coach for you to write your own summary by carefully reviewing all of your individual reports, looking for consistent patterns, and pulling out the themes.

Reports for 360 written surveys may include any or all of the following components:

• An introduction explaining the overall survey and how it is built, administered, prepared, formatted, and can be interpreted
• A description of your data collection: How many people were surveyed, how many completed and returned the survey, their relationships to you, who was included, the completeness of the responses, the number of comments, etc.
• An overview/summary of your results
• The details of your results (areas of perceived, greatest and least effectiveness, areas of greatest and least perceived importance, comparison of how you rated yourself with how others rated you, comparison of your scores to those of your peers, etc.)
• Comments provided by the people completing your surveys
• A summary of the results of surveys completed across your organization
• The patterns or results to which you should pay special attention
• Worksheets to review your results and record your impressions and action items

 

Reports for 360 Interviews

360 interviews can be conducted in many ways. Those methods will greatly determine what is included in your report and how a report is formatted. For example, if it was agreed that all comments would remain anonymous, comments are usually sorted randomly to maximize their anonymity. If individual comments are to remain confidential and not reported to you, the report will only include summaries of themes across several or all of the people interviewed without any specific comments listed. If the data is to be provided broken down by the groups from which they were obtained (superiors, peers, direct reports, etc.) then the results will be reported accordingly.

Similar to assessment reports, some 360 interview reports give you all of, or a sample of comments from individual interviews, relying on you to screen out one-off comments, find the patterns, and draw your own conclusions. Other reports do the screening for you and report only the frequent patterns and themes. If you are someone who needs to be in control and tend to dismiss feedback you do not discover yourself, it is probably better for you to get the raw data and prepare your own report with the help of your coach (if this option is possible and available). If you are more open and willing to take conclusions prepared by others at face value, the summary report of themes may be more helpful to you.

What Do I Do with Assessment Reports Once I Get them?

An assessment report is only data. It is actionable if the data is valid, reliable, current, specific, relevant, and complete. The first thing to do with the report is to spend time reading it on your own. After reading through all of the data, go back and pull out the information that stands out for you. Make notes of the frequency of results and record the patterns that are consistent and important to you. Cull out the patterns and themes from which to build your coaching goals. Work with your coach to decide which of those goals are achievable, how they can be best achieved, and what plan you and your coach will use for implementation. Prepare a summary of what you have learned and present that summary to the people involved in your coaching (boss, HR professional, mentor(s), etc.). Ask for the support you need to have the greatest success in your coaching. Be sure to work with your coach to document the conclusions from your assessments and 360 for reference during and after your coaching. We all have selective memories and your notes about your assessments and 360's can help you remember things you may otherwise forget but need to remember. When all is said and done, your assessment and 360 is conducted primarily for you to better understand yourself and how you could improve. Work with your coach to make it valuable for you and help you decide what you want to work on, track your progress, and evaluate your success.