Questionnaires

Questionnaires can be used in coaching for a variety of reasons:

• to help the coachee analyse the coaching needs;

• to help the coachee understand his or her personality and its impact upon his or her performance;

• to help the coachee gather information about his or her impact upon others.

Choose the questionnaires that you use with your coachee carefully to ensure that they meet the requirements of the coaching programme. There are many questionnaires available, some of which must be administered and the results fed back by qualified individuals. If you wish to use psychometric tests and are not qualified to do so, contact the British Psychological Society who can provide a list of registered testers or details of appropriate training courses.

Some of the questionnaires and tests that we have found to be useful include (in no particular order):

• Insight Inventory (available from OTL, Worthing). This is a personality questionnaire that does not need to be administered by an individual who has completed psychometrics training. This test offers an individual profile and also has a 360-degree element to it to enable the coachee to gain feedback from colleagues and managers. The inventory highlights the differences between working and personal styles.

• Belbin Team Roles Inventory (available from Belbin Associates). This questionnaire provides information about the role that an individual will take when working within a team.

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This psychometric test must be used by a qualified person. The results of the questionnaire give an insight into where individuals like to focus their attention, the way they like to take in information, the way they like to decide and the kind of lifestyle they adopt.

• PersonalWork Styles Questionnaire (available from Sherwood Publishing). This questionnaire can be used to identify whether your coachee prefers a ˜Hurry Up , ˜Try Hard , ˜Be Perfect , ˜Please People or ˜Be Strong working style.

• Learning Styles Questionnaire (available from Peter Honey). This questionnaire enables your coachee to analyse his or her preferred learning style “ activist, pragmatist, theorist or reflector.