How to design a diagnostic coaching assessment

If you want to measure what your potential coaching client actually knows, a diagnostic assessment is where you start. It works like a photograph of someone's knowledge level at a specific moment, and it gives you the baseline you need before designing any real coaching program.

As industrial engineers like to say, if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. That single idea drives everything about assessment design. You can summarize what you know as a coach all day long, but without a way to measure your client, you're guessing.

What makes a good coaching assessment reliable and valid?

A strong assessment stands on three characteristics, and skipping any of them weakens the whole thing.

• It should be reliable, meaning replicable, precise, and accurate. Run it twice and you get consistent results.
• It should be valid, meaning the results actually represent reality and reflect what's really going on.
• It should be feasible, meaning it's simple logistically, easy to complete, and easy to correct.

Think of these three as a tripod [00:31]. Remove one leg and your measurement falls over. And here's the practical side of feasibility: if you hand someone a horrible list of items that takes two hours to answer, they'll get bored and walk out the door.

What is a diagnostic assessment in coaching? It's a snapshot of a person's knowledge level at a specific moment. It gives the coach a baseline to measure how much a potential client understands before the program begins.

What are the three ways to assess a client's knowledge?

There are many ways to measure knowledge, but three stand out as especially practical [01:29]. You can pick one or combine several depending on how much depth you want.

• Problem-solving. You give your client a specific problem to solve so you can assess how they think, how they process information, and how they present results.
• True or false questions. A simpler, quantitative route. You check which answers are correct and get a clear count of what they know.
• Likert scale. A qualitative approach that assigns numbers to opinion-based answers, so you capture attitude and perception, not just facts.

The problem-solving method is the most demanding but tells you the most about someone's reasoning. The true or false format keeps things quick and countable. And that mix of quantitative and qualitative is exactly where the Likert scale earns its place.

What is a Likert scale? It's a rating system, often five degrees, that turns qualitative answers into numbers. A client rates how much they agree with a statement, so you can score subjective opinions and compare them.

How do you build a Likert scale for a coaching topic?

A Likert scale (yes, Likert with a T) is interesting because it attaches a number to answers that would otherwise stay vague [02:39]. You've probably seen these scales before without knowing the name.

Take the example of conflict management [03:20]. Here are four statements measured on a five-degree scale, where the client rates how much they agree:

• "I hate conflict." The client feels neutral and picks three, undecided.
• "I always win when there's conflict." Not true for them, so they disagree and pick two.
• "I can pinpoint the source of the conflicts I'm in." No idea how, so they strongly disagree.
• "I care about the relationship more than about winning." Totally true, so they strongly agree.

Once the coachee scores each statement, you can read exactly where they stand and where you can help. That's the real payoff: the numbers point straight at the gaps you'll coach them through.

Your challenge: write five assessment questions

Now connect this to your previous work. Remember the topic you built your 50 questions or concept map around? Bring it back and design a short sample assessment from it [05:01].

1. Pick the topic you already explored.
2. Write five questions you'd put in a diagnostic assessment.
3. Choose whichever models fit, one, two, or all three.
4. Post them in the discussion board.
5. Give feedback on other people's questions.

This isn't a real assessment yet, just a sample to practice the thinking. But writing those five questions forces you to decide what actually matters to measure.

So which format will you reach for first: problem-solving, true or false, or the Likert scale? Share your five questions and go amaze the world.