Why Great Coaching Needs More Than Conversation: The Role of Assessment in Leadership Development
Great coaching starts with conversation.
A well-timed question, a moment of reflection, or a new way of looking at a difficult situation can change the trajectory of a leader’s development. As an executive coach, I believe deeply in the power of those conversations.
But conversation alone can only take us so far.
When leaders enter coaching, they naturally bring what they know: the challenges they’re facing, relationships they’re navigating, goals they want to achieve, and behaviors they believe may be getting in their way. Yet some of the most important factors shaping their effectiveness sit outside that field of view.
They may be behaviors the leader doesn’t recognize in themselves. There may be differences between intention and impact. Or there may be motivations operating beneath the surface—powerful drivers influencing choices, reactions, relationships, and satisfaction without ever becoming an explicit part of the conversation.
The coaching conversation begins with what the leader—and the coach—can already see.
That is where assessment can change the coaching equation.
The question isn’t conversation OR assessment. It’s what becomes possible when we bring conversation and assessment together.
The limitation of coaching only what comes into the room
Coaching often begins with some version of, “What would you like to work on?”
It’s a good question, and one I use regularly. But think about what has to happen for that question to lead us to the most important developmental issue.
The leader has to know what the issue is. They have to describe it accurately, recognize the patterns contributing to it, and have enough self-awareness to understand how other people experience their leadership.
That’s a lot to ask of self-awareness.
The very nature of a blind spot is that we don’t know it’s there.
I’ve worked with leaders who entered coaching convinced that one issue was at the heart of their challenge, only to discover through assessment that something more significant was happening underneath it. Their original concern wasn’t necessarily wrong. We simply had more information—and therefore a different conversation.
While conversation can take leaders deeper into what they already know, assessment can reveal something they didn’t know to bring into the conversation in the first place.
From “What do you think is happening?” to “What do you make of this?”
At MRG, our assessments are designed to foster the kind of self-awareness that supports lasting growth. That doesn’t mean handing a leader a report and telling them what it says about them.
Quite the opposite. Assessment gives the coach and leader better material to be curious about.
Instead of spending several sessions trying to identify the patterns that may matter most, meaningful data can be introduced early in the engagement. The conversation shifts from “What do you think might be happening?” to “Here’s a pattern. What do you make of it?”
Two MRG assessments illustrate this particularly well because they illuminate leadership from different directions: the Leadership Effectiveness Analysis (LEA) and the Individual Directions Inventory (IDI).
LEA: Understanding how leadership shows up
Leadership isn’t simply what we intend to do. It’s what other people experience us doing.
The LEA looks at 22 specific leadership practices. These are behaviors—things leaders can modify, strengthen, or add to their leadership repertoire. In its 360-degree application, the leader’s own perspective can be considered alongside feedback from bosses, peers, and direct reports, providing a much broader picture of how that leader is perceived in their current role.
This is often where some of the most productive coaching conversations begin.
A leader may say, for example, “I’m very collaborative. I make sure everyone has a voice.” The data may reveal a more complicated picture. Perhaps peers experience the leader differently from direct reports. Perhaps collaboration is indeed a strength, but the leader relies on it so heavily that it becomes less effective in situations requiring decisiveness or direction.
Now the conversation isn’t about whether the leader is “collaborative” or “not collaborative.” It becomes: Where is this serving you? Where might it be getting in your way? Why might different groups experience you differently? What does this situation require from you?
One of the things I appreciate about the LEA is that it doesn’t treat high scores as good and low scores as bad. Leadership practices can carry both potential assets and liabilities depending on context and how strongly they are used.
The purpose isn’t to tell someone what kind of leader they should become. It’s to make their current leadership patterns more visible so they can make more intentional choices about what to sustain, modify, or develop.
IDI: Understanding what drives the leader underneath the behavior
But behavior is only part of the story. Once we understand what a leader tends to do, an important next question is: What may be driving it?
The Individual Directions Inventory explores motivations and preferences, including the kinds of roles, environments, and approaches that may provide greater or lesser satisfaction. It also gives people an opportunity to consider how those motivations and preferences have affected choices in their professional and personal lives.
This can open a very different level of coaching conversation.
A leader may recognize that they repeatedly step into certain situations, avoid others, become energized by particular challenges, or feel disproportionately frustrated by circumstances that seem perfectly acceptable to someone else.
Without a framework for understanding motivation, those patterns can easily be interpreted as strengths, weaknesses, personality quirks, or simply “the way I am.” Once leaders can better understand what may be driving those reactions, they gain more choice in how they respond to them.
The assessment isn’t telling them how they should behave. It gives coach and client another hypothesis to explore. Behavior tells us what. Motivation helps us explore why.
Assessment doesn’t replace the coach
Some coaches understandably worry that introducing an assessment could make the work too prescriptive. They don’t want a report telling their client who they are.
Neither do I. A good assessment doesn’t replace the coach’s judgment, the client’s experience, or the power of conversation. It makes the conversation better.
A leader can intellectually understand a pattern and continue repeating it for years. Development happens when that insight begins to influence real choices in real situations.
That’s where coaching becomes essential. Where is this pattern helping you? Where might it be limiting you? When is it most visible? How might other people experience it? What could be driving it? What does this situation require from you instead? What would you experiment with changing? How will you know whether the change is working?
The value isn’t assessment instead of coaching. It’s assessment-enabled coaching.
Great coaching doesn’t need less conversation. It needs richer conversation.
The heart of coaching will always be the relationship between coach and client: curiosity, trust, challenge, reflection, empathy, and the ability to ask the question that helps someone see something differently.
Assessment doesn’t diminish any of those skills. It amplifies them.
Some of the most valuable conversations I’ve had with leaders haven’t been about the issue they originally came in wanting to discuss. They’ve begun when something previously invisible became visible—when a piece of data helped us name a pattern, reconcile a disconnect, or understand something that had been confusing for years.
Conversation helps leaders make meaning. Assessment helps give them more to see.
When we bring the two together, we create the conditions for deeper self-awareness, more focused development, and more intentional leadership.
Christine Chassé, M.Ed., PCC.