Assessments and evidence‑based tools

 I don’t lead with tools. I start with your context and the outcomes that matter for you and your organisation.

When it is useful, I draw on a small number of well‑validated assessments and diagnostics to deepen insight, create a shared language, and support better conversations with leaders and teams. Used well, these tools help people see themselves and each other more clearly, and make better decisions together.

Why use assessments?

Assessments are never the whole answer, but at the right moment they can be extremely helpful. They can:

• Create a shared language for strengths, preferences, conflict and relationships.
• Surface blind spots and patterns that are hard to talk about directly.
• Give structure to reflection for busy leaders and teams.
• Support difficult conversations about roles, expectations and ways of working.
• Track aspects of resilience and culture over time, rather than relying solely on anecdote.

The point is not to label people, but to open up better thinking and better choices.

CliftonStrengths

CliftonStrengths helps leaders and teams understand their natural patterns of talent and how to use them more intentionally. It is particularly useful when you want to:

• Help leaders operate from their strengths under sustained pressure.
• Build a more strengths‑aware leadership or project team.
• Move beyond generic development plans to something more personal and practical.

Typical ways I use CliftonStrengths include:

• Top 5 or Full 34 profiles for senior leaders.
• Leadership and manager reports focused on how strengths show up in real decisions.
• Team strengths sessions to understand how a group can operate at its best.
• One‑to‑one debriefs that connect strengths to the real context and demands a leader is facing.

MBTI (Myers‑Briggs Type Indicator)

 MBTI offers a structured way to explore personality preferences: how people take in information, make decisions, and respond under stress. It is most helpful when you want to:

• Improve communication and collaboration in senior teams.
• Understand different approaches to decision‑making and risk.
• Help leaders manage their energy and stress more deliberately.
• Support individuals at key transition points in their careers.

I typically use MBTI in:

• Leadership and executive development work.
• Offsites and team days where understanding difference really matters.
• One‑to‑one work where leaders want a deeper, more reflective look at how they show up.

TKI (Thomas‑Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument)

 TKI focuses on how people approach conflict: the patterns they default to, and the options they may be under‑using. It is particularly valuable when:

• Conflict in a leadership or project team has become stuck or avoided.
• Important issues are not being surfaced because people fear “rocking the boat”.
• Different conflict styles are clashing in unhelpful ways.

In practice, I use TKI to:

• Help individual leaders understand their own conflict habits.
• Design and facilitate team sessions that work directly with real tensions.
• Support teams that need to move from avoidance or escalation to more constructive patterns.

FIRO‑B

FIRO‑B explores interpersonal needs: inclusion, influence and closeness. It helps explain why some working relationships feel easy and others feel hard, even when everyone is well‑intentioned. It is useful when:

• Relationships at the top of the organisation are under strain.
• Leadership teams need deeper trust and more honest conversation.
• You want to understand the interpersonal dynamics underneath performance and culture.

I use FIRO‑B to:

• Help individual leaders understand how their needs and behaviours land with others.
• Work with leadership teams on the “under the surface” patterns that affect delivery.
• Support boards and executive teams navigating complex, long‑term work together.

Diagnostics for leadership, team and knowledge resilience

Alongside the established tools above, I use diagnostics focused on leadership resilience, team resilience and knowledge resilience. These are designed to help you see:

• How resilient key leaders and teams are under current conditions.
• Where the real vulnerabilities lie in relationships, information and know‑how.
• What needs to be strengthened now to reduce risk later.

These diagnostics are usually embedded within wider advisory work, rather than offered as one‑off “tests”. They are a way of bringing rigour and structure to questions you may already be asking about resilience and continuity.

How assessments fit into my wider work

 Most of the time, assessments and diagnostics are woven into broader engagements such as Executive Renewal, Superteam, Knowledge Resilience and other advisory work. The starting point is always your context and the decisions or changes you are trying to make.

In some cases, organisations also commission more focused assessment work – for example, a series of CliftonStrengths or MBTI debriefs for a group of leaders, or a conflict and resilience review for a particular team. Where that makes sense, we design it together so it supports your wider strategy, not just a stand‑alone exercise.

If you are exploring the use of these tools for yourself, your team or your organisation, the most useful place to start is a conversation about your context rather than with a menu of tests.

Discuss assessment options

If you would like to explore how these tools might support the work you are doing, you can share a little about your context and we can decide together what, if anything, would be useful.