Tara Miller

The Online Coach Assessment

Soon, CoachNet will roll out the new Online Coach Assessment. The 360-degree coach assessment – which has the ability to provide feedback from a wide range of perspectives – is a research-based assessment developed around CoachNet's nine core coaching competencies. Learn more about this new tool...

Our The Online Coach Assessment is an effective way to get quick, accurate feedback on a person's ability to coach from four different perspectives:

• His/her own

• Someone s/he has coached

• Someone who has coached him/her

• A Peer

Taking in the full "360-degree" range of perspectives yields a useful, balanced snapshot of a coach's ability to operate in nine core competency areas.

The assessment is done completely online. Participants can take the survey in 20 minutes, enter contact information for others who are willing to provide feedback, and when all the responses are submitted, they’ll receive the results.

The Online Coach Assessment results consist of how you assess yourself compared to how others assess you. All participants receive a standard printout of scores based on the nine coaching competency areas, which provides a quick overview of your own rating and how other people rated you. Additionally, participants receive a graphical representation of the feedback on an x/y axis: nine competencies across bottom with ratings from 0 to 5 on the vertical axis. This graph allows you to see your line and other’s lines at one glance on an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper.

The 360 assessment tool will be available to anyone – CoachNet members and nonmembers alike. Any coach who wants an objective assessment can go online and purchase the tool. To make this tool accessible to as many coaches as possible – and to make it feasible option for teams – we are keeping costs low. Our goal is to provide an assessment tool that gives objective feedback to let coaches know how they're doing.

To ensure the validity of its data, a research pool of more than 200 coaches, along with their supervisors, coaches and peers, participated in a pilot survey over a three-month period. Here are three sample questions the test-version of the assessment included:

• Coach makes use of open-ended questions (questions without yes-no answers)...response options: to a very great extent, to a great extent, to an average extent, hardly, not at all, not answered

• Coach honestly identifies his/her own areas of strength and weakness... response options: to a very great extent, to a great extent, to an average extent, hardly, not at all, not answered

• Coach talks to someone about emotional, spiritual, and physical readiness to be able to coach...response options: to a very great extent, to a great extent, to an average extent, hardly, not at all, not answered

The assessment tool is simple, powerful, quick, and affordable. With only a 20-minute investment of your time, you can take the survey and have a tool you can work with to further your own development as a coach.

Tara Miller lives in Denver (USA). She is on staff with CoachNet International Ministries and serves as a writer and editor. For more information on the Online Coach Assessment please contact NCD International (office@ncdnet.org).