Form follows function.
That's my philosophy when it comes to which assessment to choose, and even whether to choose any assessment at all.
It all begins with the goal. If a particular assessment can help create movement toward that goal, then it's worth consideration.
I am certified to use, and have extensive experience interpreting, a broad variety of the most in-demand tools for gaining insights.
Hogan Assessments
Hogan measures personality through the lens of how it shows up under pressure, not just on a good day.
It reveals a leader's core strengths, the qualities that can derail them when stress is high, and the values driving their decisions. It's a clear-eyed look at patterns a leader may not fully see in themselves, often the starting point for deeper coaching or an executive development engagement.
Completion time: approximately 45 to 60 minutes.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
MBTI explores four different preferences that blend into 16 unique types, including how someone naturally takes in information, makes decisions, and engages with the world.
It's one of the most widely recognized tools for building self-understanding, giving someone language for patterns they've always sensed about themselves but never had a clear way to name.
Completion time: approximately 35 minutes.
Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI)
TKI explores a person's “go to” approach to conflict, across five styles: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating.
None of these approaches is inherently good or bad, each is most useful in the right circumstances. TKI helps someone expand their toolkit for navigating conflict, letting go of their most comfortable approach in all situations long enough to try on potentially more effective ways to respond in the moment, based on context and conditions.
Completion time: approximately 15 minutes.
EQ-i 2.0
We all tend to believe we know ourselves well, and while that's true for most, all humans have blind spots that make it hard to know how we're showing up to others, despite our intent.
EQ-i 2.0 measures emotional intelligence: the skills that shape how someone perceives and expresses themselves, builds and sustains relationships, and copes with challenges using emotional information effectively. For some, it can explain why technical skill alone hasn't translated into influence or trust. For others, it can reveal the opposite: someone who reads people well and is easy to work with, but absorbs everyone else's stress as their own, and burns out managing emotions nobody asked them to carry.
Completion time: approximately 20 minutes.
Extended DISC
Extended DISC identifies behavioral style across four dimensions: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness.
Most DISC tools measure how someone is currently adjusting to their environment, the version of themselves they've learned to present. Extended DISC additionally measures something more durable: a person's natural, hard-wired style, the behavior that takes the least effort and holds steady across situations, while also showing how much they feel they need to adjust it in their current role. It helps explain why the same message can land well with one colleague and completely miss with another.
Completion time: approximately 10 minutes.
Gallup CliftonStrengths
CliftonStrengths identifies what someone naturally does best, rather than emphasizing weaknesses as gaps to be remediated, ranking all 34 possible talent themes from highest to lowest strength.
For an individual, this reframing of development as a leveraging of one's best talents is a shift that can feel unfamiliar for anyone used to performance conversations built around gaps. It also offers a practical answer for the themes near the bottom of someone's list: rather than forcing effort into a talent that isn't there, a dominant strength can often be redirected to cover the gap. Someone high in Activator and low in Woo, for example, might lean on their Activator drive to push through a new social situation that would otherwise feel foreign.
Completion time: approximately 30 minutes.
Checkpoint 360°
A John Wiley & Sons, Inc. assessment with validation research spanning multiple decades, measuring leadership across eight universal competencies: communication, leadership, adaptability, task management, relationships, production, development of others, and personal development.
Feedback comes from direct reports, peers, supervisors, and others who work closely with the leader, compared against the leader's own self-assessment.
Completion time: approximately 20 to 25 minutes per rater.
EQ-360
The multi-rater companion to EQ-i 2.0, measuring the same emotional and social competencies, but through the eyes of managers, peers, direct reports, and others instead of self-report alone.
It makes the most sense once someone already has a self-assessment in hand and is ready to see how their own perception compares to how they're actually experienced, a comparison that can surface real insight, and occasionally some initial defensiveness before it does.
Completion time: approximately 20 minutes per rater.
Hogan 360
A separate, competency-based survey completed by a leader's managers, peers, and direct reports, benchmarked against the same framework behind the Hogan HPI, HDS, and MVPI, though raters aren't completing those instruments themselves.
It carries a strong emotional intelligence component, reflecting Hogan's own research that the strongest managers consistently show real people skills, not just technical competence.
Completion time: approximately 20 minutes per rater.