Self Assessment Tools vs. Life Coaching
Whether it’s Myer’s Briggs, Enneagram, Strengths Finder, or which superhero you are most similar to, self-assessment quizzes can be fun and enlightening. I personally enjoy seeing what category each assessment places me in and to learn about what other categories others may fall into as well. There is something comforting about knowing my approach to life, my challenges, and my style are part of a human sub-set, because then I know that if I ever get stuck that there are others who likely have decent advice - or tools that can point me in a direction to find resolution.
However enjoyable these assessments are, can they truly be helpful in understanding self, and if so, how does relying on them compare to working with a life coach?
Types of Self Assessment Tools
If you have a question about it, there is a self assessment tool out there to help you tailored to provide you with insights into influences of the past, who you are today, who you can become, and how to become. You can use them to get a glimpse into your strengths, aptitude, blind-spots, values, passions, learning style, personality type, habits, risk aversion, communication styles, what kind of dog you should get, where you should live next, relationships, and hidden gifts, just to name a few!
Self Assessment Tools Overview
Let’s take a look at some of the more popular ones, in no particular order. In the scientific community, a test is valid if it meets four standards of reliability, validity, independence, and comprehensiveness.
Myers-Briggs - created for training and career development, often used for team dynamics, but not meant for hiring or self-assessment. Based on a theory that was not tested before wide-spread use. Later tested it has been proven to slightly meet two standards and not meet the other two standards at all. The four scales that make up the four-letter acronym assigned in results are often misunderstood. For example being an introvert does not mean you are shy or that you don’t like people.
Strengthfinder - a tool created by Gallup, assesses talents defined as a naturally repeating thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied. It can identify strengths that you may not know you had, or think that everyone has so therefore isn’t special. It emphasizes what is going well and individuality. This means that culture and background can play a factor in results. Because you are identifying your own strengths results could be bias. The test is complicated and has it’s own language and is hard to analyze oneself.
Keirsey Temperament Sorter - groups people into four categories: guardian, artisan, idealist, and rational. Temperament is described as a configuration of observable traits. The temperament categories come from a four-quadrant matrix that have how we communicate and how we act on the two axes. For each category a set of traits is assigned. If you believe how the temperaments are organized and what traits are assigned to each one are accurate this test can provide interesting results, but some have criticized it for not have clear categories.
Potential Pitfalls to Misusing Self-Assessment Tools
Reputable Source - If the assessment is not done by a reputable source then the test should not be considered valid. Self-assessment tests are a lot like scientific research. Who does it, what their motives are and whether they welcome 3rd party analysis are three big things to look for when choosing a test to do.
Metrics - Unless the test is measuring what you want to know more about, the results might not be usable for the information you seek. Instead of providing a cause and effect, they might just be referencing things that are related. If it overs blanket statements using words like ‘all,’ ‘every,’ ‘never,’ or ‘absolute,’ it is likely that the results of the test are skewed as nothing, especially human characteristics or actions are so consistent.
Biases Impacting Answers - How self-aware are you? How invested are you in getting a certain outcome. Sometimes, even though intentions are pure, we end up being dishonest with ourselves about who we are and what we want. To be able to get somewhat accurate results you are going to need to have some level of self awareness already.
Biases Impacting Result Analysis - How you interpret words may be different than how the words are used in the test or in the results. Furthermore, your impression of who you already are or who you want to become may sway how you interpret the results.
Incomplete Data - No test can gather all of the data needed from you, in a multiple choice format, to be able to assess what makes you, you - or how you should change. These kinds of decisions should only come from you after careful contemplation.
Time - Many things change over time, including values, personality, preferences, biases, prejudices, mood, and mental health to name a few. Any of these factors could shift how you answer and interpret tests.
When Self Assessment Tools Come in Most Handy
With all the potential pitfalls, self-assessment tools are still popular, and when used well, can add value and insight. Here are a couple of instances when they can be useful:
They are administered by a professional who has been trained in how to administer and analyze them.
You plan to use the analysis as a single data point to consider in relation to all the other ones that inform your self-awareness. A great way to do this is to journal about the results to ponder them with curiosity instead of viewing them as a diagnosis.
You are just having fun!
Here are my top 3 simply because I enjoy them and they have provided me with an interesting lens to consider:
Enneagram: The first time I took this one, I will admit, I wanted so badly to be a 1 or a 3. I’m not. I’m a 7. None of the 9 categories are bad but because of what values I held at the time (some of which were not serving me anymore), I just thought one of those sounded more acceptable. Can you guess what happened? I got a 1. Then I took it again and I got a 3! I was obviously trying to be honest with my answers to the questions used to assess my number, but sometimes we don’t know when we are not being honest with ourselves. Years later, after having done much work on myself, I tested again as a 7. I must say 7 makes sense to me. I don’t use being a 7 to inform any choices in my life but it’s interesting none the less.
Big Five: This one, if completed in an unbiased way can lead to some interesting insights into parts of how I see myself, how I engage with the world, and how I believe the world perceives me. The metrics it analyzes are: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Some of these categories like extraversion I’m fairly familiar with, but it was fun to find out how I rated on the conscientiousness, and neuroticism scales. First and foremost I would never want to classify myself as neurotic due to the stigma that is associated with that word, so did not take the results very seriously since I knew my answers to the questions would inherently be a bit bias. But my results did lead me to reflect on how agreeable I am and how important that value is to me to later determine through coaching work how I wanted to better align to what that value means for me.
What Dog Breed Should I Get: A series of questions that gauge what I need, what I want, what I’m willing to put up with, what are the deal breakers, and what are the must-haves. This one helped me a lot because it was a fun way to learn about what traits are most present in which breeds; something I know a little about but not enough to explore such a large population of options. Despite taking this test and be given a top three list of best suited breeds, I ended up getting a dog that supposedly would be incredibly ill-suited to me but I couldn’t be happier with her. So much depends on each individual dog’s personality and it turns out that because I am a highly adaptable person, I likely would have ended up fine with most choices.
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