What the data says is just the beginning.
An assessment produces insight. Development takes coaching: the instrument is a starting point, and the work is what happens around it.
Most executives have done the assessments. The CliftonStrengths debrief. The 360. The DiSC workshop at the offsite. There was a moment of recognition (yes, that's me, that's exactly what happens), and then the report went into a drawer and not much changed.
That is not a failure of the instruments. It is a failure of what surrounds them.
Insight is the first necessary step toward development. What closes the gap is a sustained, skilled coaching relationship that turns a moment of awareness into meaning-making and active learning. That is what changes things.
Assessment results become useful when a coach works through them with the leader, over time, in the work the leader actually does.
The meaning belongs to the leader. Getting there is the coach's work.
Assessment literacy as a coaching competency.
Working skillfully with assessment data is a specific and advanced capability. It means holding what a report reveals inside a sustained coaching relationship, and synthesizing what the data shows against what is actually happening in a leader's professional life, in real time, in conversation.
SPARC founders hold International Coaching Federation (ICF) Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credentials alongside Gallup CliftonStrengths certification, Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) practitioner certification, and the Academy of Executive Coaching (AoEC) Advanced Practitioner Diploma with Merit. They are EMCC Accredited Coaches at Senior Practitioner level. That combination (doctoral-level practitioners, globally accredited coaches, certified in the instruments most consequential for executive leader development) is rare.
When assessment data enters the coaching conversation at SPARC, it is held by coaches with the depth to know what questions it opens, the skill to ask them well, and the presence to stay with what emerges. They create the conditions in which the leader can make meaning of the data for themselves, and then act.
The leader does the work of making meaning. The coach makes that work possible.
The instruments we use, and the ones you bring.
SPARC coaches use a variety of instruments in executive coaching, including assessments we have developed ourselves, like Grounding and Foundations, as well as licensed assessments like CliftonStrengths® and the Leadership Circle Profile®. Many leaders also arrive with results from assessments their organizations have already used, and we work with those too.
Each instrument looks at a different part of self-awareness: how you tend to think and act, how others experience you, what your body registers under pressure, and how a team or board works together. Research on adult development, going back to Robert Kegan's work, finds that leaders grow by seeing more of themselves, more clearly and in the moment. This is often called vertical development: growing a leader's capacity to take in and handle more complexity.
10 instruments · swipe to see them all →
Grounding Profile
SPARC's role: We developed it, and we read the results with you.
Foundations Profile
SPARC's role: We developed the report, and we read the results with you. Your scores are compared with more than 600,000 adults.
Holding (for teams)
SPARC's role: We developed it, and we work through the results with the team. The team leader sees the team's results, never one person's named answers.
Board Assessment
SPARC's role: We interpret the results and lead the debrief with the board chair and executive director. Individual answers stay confidential.
CliftonStrengths®
SPARC's role: Gallup-Certified Coaches. We hold the debrief as a coaching conversation about what the results mean for you now.
Leadership Circle Profile®
SPARC's role: LCP Certified Practitioner. The report opens the work; the coaching relationship sustains it.
DiSC
SPARC's role: We fold your prior DiSC debrief into the live coaching conversation, connected to what you are carrying now.
MBTI
SPARC's role: We work with what you have. Some regard the instrument as dated, and the conversation it opens can still be useful.
Hogan
SPARC's role: We integrate Hogan results when they exist, especially the derailer profile, which often clarifies what a leader is protecting under stress.
Enneagram
SPARC's role: We work with Enneagram material as a developmental lens, a way into what drives a leader's reactive patterns.
CliftonStrengths®, StrengthsFinder®, and Gallup® are registered trademarks of Gallup, Inc. The Leadership Circle Profile® is the intellectual property of Conscious Leadership, LLC. DiSC, MBTI, Hogan, and Enneagram are referenced here for educational purposes; SPARC does not administer these instruments and makes no claim to their trademarks. Full trademarks & licensing →
When the work is organizational.
Assessment-informed coaching serves individual leaders. When the question shifts (from how do I develop as a leader to how do we lead together, what kind of leadership team do we need to become), the work becomes team coaching.
That is our leader and team development practice, where CliftonStrengths and the Leadership Circle Profile serve a team's collective capacity: building the shared language, the honest self-knowledge, and the leadership culture that outlasts any single engagement.
For some leaders, what begins as team development opens a deeper question about their own leadership. That is where our executive coaching work often deepens.
If something resonates, let's have a conversation.
If you are exploring what assessment-informed coaching might open for you, we would welcome the conversation.
Start the ConversationIf the question is organizational.
When the work is about how a leadership team develops together (what kind of team they need to become), that work lives in our leader and team development practice.
Explore Leader DevelopmentThe non-Gallup information you are receiving has not been approved and is not sanctioned or endorsed by Gallup in any way. Opinions, views and interpretations of CliftonStrengths, Clifton Youth StrengthsExplorer or BP10 results are solely the beliefs of SPARC LLC.
Dr. Mathew Johnson and Dr. Shannon O'Neill are Gallup-Certified CliftonStrengths Coaches. CliftonStrengths®, StrengthsFinder®, and Gallup® are registered trademarks of Gallup, Inc.