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Self-Assessment

The Art of Knowing Yourself

During your coaching sessions, your coach will probably recommend various questionnaires designed to help you build a more complete picture of your current strengths, preferences, and development needs; and your visions and goals for the future.

The support of a coach helps you look at who you are today - the 'work you' and the 'personal you'. What motivates you? What preferences do you have? What are your competencies, and your transferable skills? When you've decided on who you are in the here-and-now, you can start to focus on your visions and goals for the future.

Self-Assessment Materials

Clients of e-coaches and Clare Howard Consultants have access to questionnaires designed to help you to understand yourself better - your work values, your competencies, your preferred style of learning, and your transferable skills. If you complete the questionnaires systematically, you will finish with a much clearer awareness of the sort of person you are. Armed with that knowledge it is easier to see the best way forward.

All the self-assessment questionnaires your coach gives you will have a bearing on how, why, and whether you pursue certain development activities. You need to be realistic in your answers, and committed and motivated in your attitude towards self-assessment, if you are to pursue your development successfully.

Does it Work?

Understanding ourselves is a huge undertaking. Our minds are complex, and our moods and attitudes are constantly changing. Can simple techniques like questionnaires really help us to know ourselves? More to the point, are we any good at judging our own capabilities?

We believe they can, and we are; or at least that self-assessment is an important part of the development process. Research has shown that, for most people, self-assessment is very reliable. A comprehensive review of self-assessment techniques recently concluded that:

'Self assessment has a lot more to offer than has been realised. It compares favourably with other approaches...when the appropriate conditions for its use are met. People can, and will, assess aspects of their ability, performance and personality accurately, given the right encouragement to do so!'

While a major concern is that we might overestimate our own skills and competencies, studies have shown that this is unwarranted. In fact, the reverse is more likely to be true. British people in particular tend to underestimate their own skills and competencies.

The Human Machine

Some people tend to resist any kind of self-examination on the grounds that there is something self-indulgent about it: 'We should be looking outwards for our development, not turning in on ourselves.' Any attempt to investigate the human machine is dismissed as 'contemplating your navel', or being 'wrapped up in yourself'.

But this machine is our total existence - our means of seeing the world and interacting with it. We owe it to ourselves - and to everybody around us - to keep an eye on its running, and make sure it works as cleanly and efficiently as possible. To this end, self-assessment is a valuable tool. It gives us insight into the mechanics of what is going on inside ourselves, and allows us to fine-tune a few dodgy components!

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness - being aware of the effect you have on other people - is a vital aspect of self-assessment. A useful way of understanding yourself is to look at yourself as if through a window with four different panes - a concept known as the Jo-Hari Window.

You can develop yourself most easily by reducing the size of the Unknown Area. This means:

To start you on the self-assessment road to self-awareness, think about employing the following two techniques in your daily life:

Like what you've seen? Contact Us to get started on your own self-assessment programme today.