Assessments Today

Use an assessment to coach to the whole person

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Assessments by their very nature look at just one aspect of a human being. Even those that are broad based like those that measure emotional intelligence do not take into account values, motives, instincts.  Nor should they.  However, we don't coach parts of individuals; we coach the individual in his or her totality.

Embracing the Whole: The art of creating meaning with assessments.

This is the title of the article published by choice Magazine. You can read the full pdf on my blog by clicking here.  The title is not the one I originally submitted, but I do like it.  I like it because it focuses on the very thing I think we forget - that we are a complete entity as human beings but we are also a part of a greater system.  While each assessment may not be totally holistic, we as coaches must by both systemic and constantly looking at the bigger picture.

In the article I talk about three kinds of responses and experiences that clients will obtain from an assessment.  Each one takes greater competence from the coach.  Still the last one - wisdom is not guaranteed:

• Learning
• Understanding
• Wisdom

I hope you read and enjoy the article and I would appreciate your feedback.

Leadership issues not being addressed by today's 360 assessments.

Here is my latest article from my ezine last month:

There has been a move in the last 10 years to focus on strengths as opposed to working to improve weaknesses.  It makes a lot of sense to try to leverage what is working well rather than trying to "fix" something that really may not need to be fixed. But there comes a point when even this strategy begins to break down.

What do you do when a leader begins to OVERUSE his or her strengths?

Probably the most listed competency for leaders today is the ability to inspire and communicate a clear vision.  The second  competency mentioned today is trust or trustworthiness. Both are very different skill sets.

What about your leaders who have the trust of staff but not the vision?

What about your leaders who are visionary but do not display the wisdom of objective reasoning?

We talk a lot about results based leadership and look where that has got us.  While the bottom line is important so too are other things.  Which brings us to the move towards values-based leadership. This is something that fits for me much better but I also notice the potential for a misalignment in our global and diverse world. To date, Kouze and Posner's Leadership Practices Inventory is the best to address these issues and their research is global. But something was missing - for me it was about the imperative for collaboration.

So at 1-Focus International we embarked on the development of our own Collaborative Leadership 360 model and assessment to meet the needs of globalization and amalgamations.  Then a friend and colleague showed me the research on the Tilt360.  I recommended it to my business partner.  We decided to adopt this new and very exciting character based system. We are convinced that it, along with coaching, is the best and most innovative way to predict and build leadership today.

1-Focus has become a fellow of Tilt Inc and will be the preferred independent consultant in Europe.  This assessment has coach training that is recognized by the ICF for credit.  If you want to take your leadership or your coaching practice to the next level please contact me.

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