My favourite coaching tools: Positivity ratio

Caveats:

Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, author of the book Positivity: Groundbreaking Research to Release Your Inner Optimist and Thrive provides an online and free lab-tested tool to assess an individual's positive emotions versus negative emotions. According to her research a 3-to-1 positive ratio leads people to the tipping point where they become resilient to any adversity and effortlessly achieve their dreams/private thoughts/musings.

A coachee who does not achieve such a high and healthy ratio has a lot of scope for seeing things differently, if they acquire the right skillsets and knowledge - with support from the coach and others of course. This tool can be quite emotionally challenging for people, so use it wisely, only with those who can cope well enough beforehand as you might not the right person to help take them from where they are now, to where they should be...a lot of the negativity might be outside work context, and if it is in the work context, you certainly have a lot of work to do.

Again this is a scaling test, so mood and environment are big - HUGE - influences on the results.

Requirements:
Internet access
Quiet space and 5 minutes

Step 1:
Provide Barbara's Positivity Test to the coachee. I suggest doing the assessment at the beginning of the day, before work really begins.

Step 2:
Discuss the results with the coachee. If the coachee wants to improve their positivity ratio, keeping an effective diary, other tools available on Barbara's website, and books like Stephen R Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People are good places to start, as well as of course whatever tools you as coach already have. You can once again set some goals and assist creating a coaching plan to achieve them!

My favourite coaching tools: Free strength finders test

Caveats:
Some people like to identify natural weaknesses and then work really, REALLY hard to try to overcome or diminish the effects of those weaknesses. Some people like to identify natural strengths and then work to improve those - basing the argument that there is a higher Return On Investment (ROI) on the time invested to take a good skill/behaviour to great. It is also far more enjoyable, and hence becomes a self-fulfilling cycle of improvement, and naturally diminishes the amount of time spent on doing weaker strength things. Success breeds success, and failure breeds something else.

This is another scaling assessment so I believe mood and environment affect the results. I learned from doing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment every 3 years or so, that my type shifts around. And this is sensible in my opinion as by knowing yourself better, setting some goals and working on different behaviours and attitudes, it is good to have the long-term confirmation that you are changing!

Possibly this strengthsfinders free online test is similar to a more comprehensive test which comes with a workbook - Strengthsfinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now Discover Your Strengths  (or co.uk) which sounds great! I have not looked into it.

Required:
Internet access
Quiet space
10-15 minutes

Step 1:
Give this link to the coachee: RichardStep Strengths and Weaknesses Aptitude Test (RSWAT). Again I think the best time to do the assessment is in the morning, before work really starts.

Step 2:
When the assessment is complete, you will have the "top 5" strengths (again, statistician George EP Box's "all models are wrong, some are useful" applies!). And a list in strength order of the other 29 the test apparently covers. There is some alignment between the MBTI and this RSWAT. And with this test you get a ranking order of 28 small types/aspects of the personality, so useful, in my opinion

You now have material again to either focus coaching goals and plans on making more use of the top 5, or making less use of the bottom 1, or improving skillsets around the bottom. All up to the coachee and your understanding and guidance!

My favourite coaching tools: The free online Myers-Briggs [personality] Type Indicator [assessment]

Caveats:
I feel you can use this tool with anyone, and definitely yourself too. There's enough useful information about Myers-Briggs on wikipedia here: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I received a professional evaluation a couple of years ago and as far as I remember there were a few more questions asked, and there was also confirmation of type strength after the assessment with the professional. All of my favourite coaching tools attract George EP Box's "all models are wrong, some are useful", and this 1 especially receives this treatment before I request coachees to undertake it. One of the issues with the MB test is that its results vary depending on the mood and environment of the person completing the assessment.

Required:
Internet access
Quiet room and time - I usually suggest the morning, before the work day really begins

Step 1:
Coachee completes the questionnaire at: http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/mmdi/questionnaire/
It is possible to only collect the free report - which requires either screenshots or saving the individual pages as PDFs, or to pay for the full the report. Usually the free is enlightening enough and to have a good conversation around.

Step 2:
Provide the coachee with the MBT detailed page, found off the high-level page here: http://www.personalitypage.com/html/high-level.html

Step 3:
Discuss the accuracy of the type and preferred leadership style with the coachee and see what insights are generated by discussion alone.

Step 4:
To develop more self-awareness, ask the coachee to think about the type of their spouse, family members, friends, favourite managers. I like to use the phrase my mother taught me: "birds of a feather, flock together" and another that Robert Cialdini's insightful psychology book (UK) (or US) taught me "we like those who are like us" at about this point.

Step 5:
To develop even more self-awareness, ask the coachee to think about the type of people they've had problems with in the past, their least favourite colleagues, least favourite managers. I like to use the phrase "oil and water don't mix, without effort".

Step 6:
At this point, it is possible to identify either a strong or weaker area and thus supporting skillset and behaviours that can be even further explored and/or improved on with confidence - especially if the coachee is for instance in different kind of organisational culture that is in opposition to their natural style.

* Interesting - or for more confirmation in my own experience - for certain roles in some organisations I have deployed this in, it was possible to collect several results from a number of people and begin to see similarities that must stem from the hiring decisions and career path management. Great insight! And really, not bad for a few minutes of a free tool!