Assessing Talent for Individuals

I use several third-party competency and capability tools as a key part of all my coaching programmes. They assess strengths, resilience, psychological safety, decision styles, leadership, attitude and culture fit and teams insights. They are quick and easy to complete using either mobile or desktop apps, and I am a certified assessor for the resulting reports. 

The assessments include a 90-minute coaching session, and aim to support your career and boost your performance, and to identify areas for development and how this might be achieved. The exercises increase self-awareness, a key skill for leadership. 

See below for an overview of the strengths, resilience and psychological safety exercises. Please contact me if you would like to receive an overview of the Leadership Insights, Decision Styles, Winning Attitude, Culture Fit  or Team assessments.

Strengths:

The individual strengths assessment explores your career and performance focus, interpersonal skills, decision-making processes, leadership and delivery. It enables you to identify your career goals and vision, considering your development in a safe, supportive environment. My clients have found this exercise to be beneficial and thought-provoking, regardless of their career stage.

We explore the impact your preferred way of operating has on your performance, highlighting areas of development and the next steps you should take. We examine the effects of over- or underuse of your strengths, identify any gaps and how these might be filled. These could be areas that are holding you back or affecting your performance or have the potential to do so in the future.

If you are looking to change roles, we can use the report and subsequent coaching session to help you draft your CV and positioning statements.

Some of my clients have chosen to undertake further coaching and have used the strengths exercise to help shape this process, enjoying the following benefits:

• Increased collaboration and effectiveness
• The ability to confidently articulate where they add value to an organisation in interviews, client meetings or appraisals 
• Increased confidence and resilience
• The ability to adapt individual style and behaviours to help improve performance and further their careers.

Resilience:

“Resilience is important for several reasons: it enables us to develop mechanisms for protection against experiences which could be overwhelming, it helps us to maintain balance in our lives during difficult or stressful periods, and can also protect us from the development of some mental health difficulties and issues.”

– Psychologist’s post in the Counselling Directory. 

Resilience is often described as the ability to bounce back, but it involves so much more. It is key to withstanding all kinds of challenges in the workplace and beyond, and enables us to shield ourselves against stress and burnout. It also means embracing setbacks and seeing them as learning opportunities that can improve our performance and broaden our capabilities. 

Resilience is having the self-awareness to recognise our emotions and the impact of these on our behaviours. It’s ensuring we have the support we need. Studies show that building resilience produces tangible results – for example, it:

• Enhances productivity
• Improves alertness and focus
• Protects against mental health problems such as depression and anxiety
• Reduces the likelihood of burnout.

Fortunately, resilience is a skill that can be learned. My resilience coaching is designed for anyone who wants to improve their performance or are about to embark on, or are in the middle of, a period of change. 

Perhaps you cope well under certain pressures but not others. You might feel you’re not reaching your potential and know that you have aimed low to avoid challenges at work. Whatever level of resilience you feel you have, there’s a lot to be gained from a resilience coaching session.

I use a third-party, 20-minute questionnaire designed to identify the nine elements of emotional wellbeing and resilience. It focuses on your emotional response to being under pressure, using self-awareness as a foundation for resilience. This is followed by a 90-minute coaching session. Using the questionnaire report for guidance, we will explore how you react and perform in challenging circumstances, explore areas of development and how these might be achieved.

These detailed insights provide the following benefits: 

• Improved personal awareness
• An awareness of how you work under pressure
• Tools to tackle any emotions that could hinder future success
• A resilient you for your future career.

Coaching is not the end of the journey. With improved self-awareness, new coping mechanisms and the full report, you’ll be able move forward better equipped to cope with problems as they arise, ready to realise your full potential.

Psychological safety:

Are you feeling vulnerable, unable to raise issues that are concerning you, scared to admit to a mistake you’ve made? If so, you could be feeling psychologically unsafe. There can be several reasons for this, some real and some that could be misconceptions. It’s important to understand the difference!

Psychological safety has nothing to do with your personality and everything to do with your environment. There may have been leadership changes, restructures or redundancies in your workplace, and you are frightened to draw attention to the fact that things are not perfect. Or it could be that your organisation has a blame culture – or that this was the case in your previous job, and you are finding it hard to shake off those negative feelings.

I use a third-party assessment tool to develop an understanding of how you feel when working within the team, department or organisation, and how this could be affecting you or your performance. 

Together we will look at whether you feel included and safe. We will create coping strategies and the confidence to raise your concerns so you can work towards improving your working environment. We will also empower you to take acceptable risks, challenge others or raise concerns. 

I generally advise that you complete this exercise after and in conjunction with the resilience assessment. 

Get in Touch

It is essential that you choose a coach who is the right fit for you or your organisation – someone you can trust and who understands the challenges you face. Book a discovery call to find out how I can support you or your organisation. 

If you can’t find a suitable time or would prefer that I contact you, please complete this enquiry form. I will contact you within 24 hours. If your situation is urgent, please state this in the comments section and I will aim to get back to you by return.