Behavioral Assessments: Mirror or a Label?

If you’ve gotten far enough along in your career, you’ve taken countless assessments. Depending on the purpose, you might have considered it fun if it were wrapped around team-building activities. On the other hand, it might have been stressful if it were during the hiring process.  Behavioral assessments truly have a purpose across the entire employee life cycle and can be a huge benefit to an organization’s talent management framework, as well as directly to the employees who participate.

When you consider the competencies needed in today’s business environment, what comes to mind? Analytical thinking, resilience, lifelong learning, technological literacy, and self-awareness are all listed in this World Economic Forum article.  You can gain self-awareness in your professional career by participating in behavioral assessments, but it’s important that assessment administrators, managers, colleagues, and participants have clarity on how to use the assessment.

Behavioral Assessments Engage Self-Awareness

Behavioral assessments are most powerful when they increase self‑awareness, not when they put people in a box or assign a particular label. Clark Schaefer Strategic HR is an authorized partner of Wiley to utilize the family of DiSC assessments with our clients. DiSC introduces what they call “corner principles” that clearly state to use the tool as information and not a label or even an excuse for how we behave. Recent literature and this Forbes article emphasize using assessments to facilitate conversations, with empathy, that foster personal development. When leaders and teams use assessments responsibly, they help individuals and teams recognize unique styles, communicate better, and capitalize on each person’s strengths. On the other hand, misusing them to stereotype, limit opportunities, or excuse poor behavior is strongly discouraged.

Ongoing Use of Assessment Results

Use tools like personality, skills, or 360‑degree assessments to start conversations, not end them. People might hesitate when reviewing their personal assessment results because they may have blind spots or find it challenging to face the truth, sometimes reacting harshly and labeling themselves based on what appears in writing. Another common reaction is that people feel their assessment results aren’t accurate, as other concerns in this article also highlight by Anderson Leadership Resources.  You can’t control how participants are going to react, but it is important to remember that receiving assessment results should not be the last step. It’s a launch point. The real value comes from how leaders debrief and coach around the results. We need to spend a little more time connecting insights to day‑to‑day behaviors, development goals, and team dynamics. Assessments should support growth and alignment, not be used as standalone answers or performance judgments.

Action to Take This Week

Assessments are an objective view of your strengths and opportunity areas and provide you with data to inform your next steps.  Results on an assessment don’t define you, put you in a box, or say that you can’t do something.  Describing assessments as a mirror and not a label puts people in the mindset to highlight their natural strengths.  Don’t let opportunity areas scare you; no one is good at everything.  Opportunities you identify simply mean you need to push yourself outside of your comfort zone.

This week, take action to dust off assessment results for yourself or your team and use them as a coaching tool, not a conclusion.

Thank you to Julie Johnson for her contribution to this article.

It can be hard to get dynamically different individuals to work effectively as a team. As an Authorized Partner for Everything DiSC® and other Wiley assessment products, Clark Schaefer Strategic HR can help you to identify and administer the best assessment(s) for your organization’s needs to help your team work better together. Contact us to learn more!