Great coaching starts with great understanding. While intuition and experience are invaluable, structured assessments provide objective data that can reveal patterns and insights even seasoned coaches might miss.

Stronghold's assessment engine offers 750+ data points across 12 comprehensive modules. This guide will help you understand each module and how to apply the results in your coaching practice.

Why Assessments Matter in Coaching

Before diving into specific modules, let's understand why assessments are so powerful:

  • Baseline Measurement - Establish where clients are starting so you can track progress
  • Blind Spot Detection - Reveal patterns clients may not be aware of
  • Session Focus - Identify the highest-impact areas to address
  • Objectivity - Remove bias and provide data-driven insights
  • Client Buy-In - Help clients see their own patterns clearly

The 12 Assessment Modules

1. Empathy Assessment

Measures both cognitive empathy (understanding others' perspectives) and emotional empathy (feeling others' emotions). Low empathy scores often correlate with relationship difficulties and leadership challenges. Use results to develop empathy-building exercises.

2. Attachment Styles

Based on attachment theory, this module identifies secure, anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment patterns. Understanding attachment helps explain relationship behaviors, fear of intimacy, and communication preferences.

3. Conflict Styles

Reveals how clients typically respond to conflict: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, or accommodating. Particularly valuable for couples coaching and leadership development.

4. Communication Patterns

Analyzes preferred communication modes, listening skills, and common communication barriers. Results help tailor your coaching communication style to match client preferences.

5. Stress Response

Identifies how clients respond to stress: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Understanding stress responses helps develop coping strategies and recognize when clients are triggered during sessions.

6. Emotional Regulation

Measures ability to identify, understand, and manage emotions. Low scores suggest emotional intelligence development as a coaching focus.

7. Self-Awareness

Evaluates internal self-awareness (understanding own values, goals, reactions) and external self-awareness (understanding how others perceive them).

8. Values Alignment

Identifies core values and measures alignment between stated values and actual behavior. Misalignment often explains feelings of dissatisfaction or inauthenticity.

9. Goal Orientation

Assesses goal-setting patterns, follow-through ability, and obstacles to achievement. Helps structure accountability and milestone planning.

10. Boundary Setting

Measures ability to establish and maintain healthy boundaries. Low scores correlate with burnout, resentment, and relationship issues.

11. Trust Patterns

Evaluates propensity to trust others and ability to be trustworthy. Important for both personal relationships and professional leadership.

12. Growth Mindset

Based on Carol Dweck's research, measures fixed vs. growth mindset orientation. Fixed mindset clients may need reframing before other coaching interventions take hold.

Best Practices for Using Assessments

When to Assess

  • Onboarding - Send core assessments before the first session to hit the ground running
  • Quarterly Check-ins - Reassess to measure progress and identify new areas
  • When Stuck - If coaching feels stalled, an assessment can reveal hidden obstacles
  • Couples/Teams - Compare assessments to identify compatibility and friction points

Presenting Results

Assessment results are most powerful when presented thoughtfully:

  • Frame results as information, not judgment
  • Highlight strengths before areas for growth
  • Connect results to client's stated goals
  • Let clients respond and add context
  • Collaboratively identify 2-3 focus areas

Integrating with Sessions

Use assessment data throughout your coaching engagement:

  • Reference specific scores when relevant patterns emerge
  • Design exercises targeting identified growth areas
  • Track score changes over time as evidence of progress
  • Share reports with clients for their own reflection

Getting Started

Ready to transform your coaching with assessments? Here's how to begin:

  1. Add a client to Stronghold (or select an existing client)
  2. Go to their profile and click "Assessments"
  3. Select the modules most relevant to their goals
  4. Send the assessment link via email or SMS
  5. Review results in the client profile when complete

Most clients complete assessments in 15-30 minutes, and results appear instantly in your dashboard with AI-generated insights and coaching recommendations.