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How Does Career Decision Coaching Work?

Posted on by by Posted in Achieving Goals, Career Development, Coaching Practice, Self-Assessments

If you’re considering getting help for a career decision, you may wonder what exactly it would look like to work with a career counselor or coach. Here’s a description of the coaching process and tools I often use when I work with clients on a career decision.

Career Decision Coaching:

1. Defining the Problem

The first step for me is to make sure I understand exactly what your needs are, and what you’re hoping to achieve by working with me. For example, you may look for a change in your career, and for help figuring out which direction to take. If you’re hoping to get clarity in a career decision, we’re on a good track and I’ll be confident that my process can help you.

(If you’re looking for something else, I might be able to refer you to one of my colleagues. For example, if you need help searching for specific jobs, tailoring your resume, or improving your interviewing skills, I’m happy to connect you with someone else on our team).

2. Clarifying Criteria

If you want to take your career in a new direction, we usually start with an in-depth clarification of your personal criteria. Career CounselingWhat matters most to you for your next career move? Partly, this will be an open conversation. Sometimes I use image cards to draw out more information about your core values and issues that matter to you personally. Letting you pick images and talk about them can illuminate your values in a way that words alone may not. Then, we may dig into different aspects with several standardized assessments. For example:

  • An assessment of your skills, including those with growth vs. burn-out potential, with the Motivated Skills Card Sort Matrix
  • An assessment of your career-relevant values with the Knowdell Career Values Card Sort task
  • A personality assessment, based on the five factor model of personality with 30 subscales (IPIP-NEO 300: International Personality Item Pool Representation of the NEO Personality Inventory – Revised: NEO PI-R)

How does career decision coaching work?

3. Exploring Options and Strategies

Each of these steps and assessments usually takes at least one session to complete. At the end of each session though, we will always think about possible homework for you, if you’re up for that, so that you can drive the process forward as much as possible in between sessions, if and as much as you choose to. For example:

  • After the Skills Assessment we may think of new search terms you could use when looking for careers. We’ll discuss search strategies for you, such using O*NET or LinkedIn as sources for information (each very limited in their own way, but valuable and complementary).
  • The results of the Skills Assessment can be a terrific starting point to re-think your work history and accomplishments. You can do exercises at home that will help you later craft your resume and talk naturally about your skills and strengths in an interview. You’ll find ways to highlight the skills you most enjoy using and would like to grow more in your future.
  • The Career Values Assessment, as well as the Personality Assessment, can give us new ideas about employers and work environments that would be a good fit for you. You might want to set up informational interviews between sessions, so that you can come back in with new information and new ideas. For most people (not just introverts!) asking someone for an informational interview is not easy. I can help you think about how to reach out and what questions to ask, based on where you’re at in your decision process.

How does career decision coaching work?

4. Deciding on Your Best Strategies and Planning Next Steps

Once we have the results of all the assessments, we will look through all that information and distill your very personal set of your most important criteria. We will use this set of criteria to guide your search for options and information, and to evaluate specific career paths. Visual tools, such as decision tables and trees, can help us determine which strategies are your winners. We can even evaluate your options with weights and numerical ratings, if the decision is still difficult at that point. Or, I can help you think about particularly uncertain options with risk analysis tools, such as scenario trees. Oftentimes however, these formal tools are not even necessary in the end. You’ll probably have gained enough clarity about what direction you want to take, and about your best strategies to pursue that direction.

Once you have decided on a strategy (or on several you want to keep pursuing), I can help you plan your next steps. At that point you’re probably well on your way. Our coaching process could end there, or you might like to get some continued help and guidance from me, as you take next steps and work towards your next goals. Either way, the clarity you’ll have gained from this process, and the knowledge that you’re making the best possible decision, will help you fully commit and take action.

I hope this description gives you a better idea how career decision coaching could work for you! If you’re interested in coaching, here’s more information about the typical setting and fees to work with me. If you want to talk to me on the phone or are ready to come in for a first session, you can schedule a chat or meeting here.

Set up an appointment with Ursina Teuscher

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


Beat Procrastination Habits With A Three-step Intervention

Posted on by by Posted in Achieving Goals, Coaching Practice, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management, Resources, tools, Self-Assessments

Do you want to give your productivity a boost? This three-step intervention can help you diagnose and beat some of your most persistent procrastination habits.

Beat Procrastination Habits: Three Step Intervention

Step 1 – Assessment: Diagnose the Problems

Each person is different. What triggers your procrastination?

Procrastination is at its worst when we’re not aware of it. The first step in this intervention is therefore to increase your awareness of what’s tripping you up. You’ll want to get as much insight into yourself as possible, recognizing any problematic habits, or any patterns in your thoughts and behaviors that are getting in your way.

With that goal, keep a productivity journal to collect some data about yourself. You can download a template here and print it out.

Beat Procrastination Habits - Step 1: Assessment with Productivity Journal

Here is how it works: the night before your workday, write a to-do list and a schedule for the following day. Make sure to schedule realistically, including breaks and transition times.
Next to the planned schedule, have an empty column. As your workday unfolds, write into the empty column what you actually did.

– Warning: this may be painful! –

Throughout that day, take notes of what happened when you did or didn’t stay on track. Were there outside interruptions or emergencies? If not, what caused any deviations from your plans? Were you aware, at any moment, that you were procrastinating? What were your thoughts and feelings in that moment?

Keep this log for at least several days (more is better, but they don’t need to be consecutive days), then start analyzing patterns. Are there things that repeatedly throw you off?

This previous post lists some of the most frequent procrastination triggers I’ve observed in my own practice.

Step 2 – Treatment: Change One Thing

After analyzing your logs and seeking patterns, choose one issue to fix: what is the one thing you could do differently that has a potential of making things better? Choose the lowest hanging fruit first. Try an intervention, targeted at one trigger at a time. See it as an experiment you do with yourself. Whatever you try, do it for at least one week, or better yet, three weeks. Keep journaling throughout this time.

If you like the change you see, stick to it for another two weeks, even if it’s hard, because it takes a while for habits to form. By that time you will likely find it easier and will be able to keep the new habit, if it is making a positive difference in your life. If you find it hard to make the change, keep the mindset of a scientist: how could you make it work?

Step 3 – Repeat: Experiment, Tweak and Practice

Remember that this is an experimental approach. Whatever you try, see it as an experiment that may succeed or fail. Either way, you learned something important that will help you fine-tune your work habits.
After going through Step 1 (Assessment) and Step 2 (Treatment), you will likely observe some changes. If you don’t like them, or if you feel that there could be even more improvement, repeat both steps. If your assessment in Step 1 gave you a lot to work with, you may only need to repeat Step 2 by trying a new intervention, or by tweaking what you tried before, to make it work even better.

Also, remember that it takes a lot of time, grit and practice to become an expert, and to truly master a difficult skill. Managing our time (and yourself!) well is an inherently difficult skill to master, so be patient with yourself and don’t give up if things don’t improve right away. Take on your next obstacle and try the next intervention.

It is also a good idea to do the entire intervention with other people, such as with a friend, in a group, or with a coach. Not only does this give you accountability, which sometimes makes all the difference, but it also adds more creative thinking power to the process. When other people are helping you think about your problems, it will be easier to diagnose your triggers and design new solutions that may work for you.

If you would like my help with any of this, schedule your first coaching session or a brief phone call to discuss options.

Set up an appointment with Ursina Teuscher

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), Portland OR


Common procrastination triggers and fixes

Posted on by by Posted in Achieving Goals, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management, Self-Assessments

What are some of the most common procrastination triggers? Finding out why you procrastinate will help you tackle each of your problems one by one.

Common Procrastination Triggers and How to Beat Them

There are many reasons we procrastinate, and it is important to first figure out what’s tripping you up, before trying to fix it. The problems I’ve encountered most frequently in my coaching experience (and in myself!) are:

Procrastination Trigger #1: Fear
This could be fear of the task itself, or it could be fear of the consequences of doing the task. For example, you might feel anxious about making a phone call simply because you don’t like talking on the phone, or you might be anxious because the phone call could result in failure or disappointment.
You might feel nervous about a presentation because you’re not used to speaking in front of an audience, or you might be afraid that your audience will be critical. You might want to apply for a job, but worry about not getting it –– or about getting it but then hating it or not being good at it. All those fears can hold you back from getting started. The good news is that even just recognizing the fear as such often takes the edge off. Also good to remember: it’s ok to be afraid –– it doesn’t mean we can’t act. Sometimes, reframing fear or nervousness as “excitement” can help us channel our energy into the task. Other than that, different tricks help for different people: some do best if they tackle the scariest thing first thing in the morning, maybe even before breakfast. (Mark Twain may have been of those people – or not.) Others prefer to divide and conquer, starting with the easiest part. If your perfectionism is paralyzing you, first set yourself the goal of writing “just a draft” of an email, for example, instead of the scary email itself.

Procrastination Trigger #2: Uncertainty or confusion about the task
From what I’ve seen, this is not only one of the most common, but perhaps the most under-appreciated procrastination trigger: not having a clear plan of what you need to do next. This uncertainty can lead to a vague feeling of being overwhelmed or anxious, even if there is nothing unpleasant about any of the actual tasks or consequences. What’s worse, we are often not aware that the cause of our reluctance is simply that we haven’t figured out the details of what’s ahead yet. Once you notice the problem, start writing a more specific list of what needs to be done. Schedule “figuring out what needs to be done next” as if it were the actual task – because it is.

Procrastination Trigger #3: Lack of purpose or direction
This problem is more fundamental: you may have doubts about whether you’re on the right track at all, or whether your work will lead to success. Maybe the project you’re working on has stopped making sense to you, or your work lacks purpose, or you don’t see where your career is headed. My advice in that case: reconnect with your values – figure out what truly matters to you in the long term. What are the things that will still matter to you in 30 years? What could make your life as meaningful and “good” (whatever that is for you) as possible? Are you on the best possible track to fulfill your most important values? If not, explore alternatives. Or, why are you doing what you’re doing? Maybe your work, as much as it sucks, is still your best option and you have good reasons to keep doing it. If so, you ARE on the right track. Own it. Even so, explore any options and actions you could take that would add meaning and purpose to your work (here’s a book for that).

Procrastination Trigger #4: Lack of urgency or accountability
Too much freedom with a task can be a big problem, in particular if there’s a lack of accountability, or if the deadlines are too far away. Some things that can help in that case: set earlier deadlines for partial achievements and make those deadlines real by scheduling a rewarding activity at the end of each. If you have a supervisor, talk to them about about your goals and promise results at different stages of a project. Otherwise you can announce your commitments to friends or colleagues, or find a partner to work with, a coach, or an “accountability buddy” who’ll check in with you on a regular basis.

Procrastination Trigger #5: Distractions or interruptions
Outside interruptions such as phone calls or people stepping into your office can be legitimate reasons for not sticking to your plans – they may or may not be avoidable, depending on your work. If you can, shield yourself during your most productive work hours by disconnecting and closing doors. If the interruptions are necessary, recognize that, schedule accordingly and adjust your expectations. Distractions can also come from within though. Being distracted by our own thoughts is a frequent reason to lose focus, whether we’re simply daydreaming, or planning dinner, or adding items to a mental shopping list. If your distracting thoughts are practical and useful (planning, thinking about things you need to do later), write them down to get them out of your head. Otherwise, recognize that staying focused requires practice. Stretch your ability to focus by redirecting your attention back to the task, in the moment that you become aware you’re distracted (as opposed to giving into the distraction and switching tasks).

Procrastination Trigger #6: Competing tasks and activities
Sometimes you’ll find yourself immersed in tasks other than the one you were planning to do – for example because the previous tasks take longer than anticipated, or because you’re held up by unexpected problems. For example, you may find that you write emails during the time you wanted to do something else. If you work from home, you may suddenly find yourself doing chores or running errands, rather than doing the work you intended. And then there’s all the fun stuff: pleasurable or entertaining activities, such as snacking or watching movies. Schedule specific times of the day to do those fun things in your breaks. If necessary, set an alarm clock to remind you when to stop your break. Games, TV series, social media or other kinds of on-screen activities can have addictive qualities and can take up tremendous amounts of time. People are often reluctant to admit even to themselves just how much time they spend with these activities. Start logging those hours, if you’re brave enough to face the truth.

So, the next time you find yourself procrastinating: try to figure out the true and specific reason you’re procrastinating right then. Do you find the reason in any of those triggers I described, or is it something else entirely? Once you’ve figured out what’s tripping you up, you can create a precise intervention to target your problem.

If you’d like me to help me putting these or other tactics into practice, let me know. I’d love to help you figure out where to start, and how to develop your own tricks that work best with your personal style and preferences.

"Get in Touch" Button to Schedule a phone call or coaching session with Ursina Teuscher

[Update – more context and tools in this post: What is procrastination and how can we overcome it?]

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), Portland OR

A shorter version of this post (by Ursina Teuscher, edited by Vicki Lind and Leslie Yeargers) was published 01/26/19 on aPortlandCareer.com


How to Manage Stress at Work

Posted on by by Posted in Achieving Goals, Career Development, Performance, Academic Achievement, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management, Resources, tools, Self-Assessments, Stress Management

If your job is causing you a lot of stress, you’re not alone. In a 2014 survey in the US, almost a third (31%) of the workers reported that they typically feel tense or stressed out during the work day. This number is even higher among millenials (18-34 year old workers) than among any of the older generations.

What are the most common causes for stress at work?

So many issues can cause stress at work. The survey lists the following, with the most commonly experienced stressors on top:

  1. Low salariesHow to Manage Stress at Work: Learn a technique that helps you take control and start tackling your top stressors.
  2. Lack of opportunity for growth and development
  3. Uncertain or undefined job expectations
  4. Job insecurity
  5. Long hours
  6. Too heavy of a workload
  7. Unrealistic job expectations
  8. Work interfering during personal or family time
  9. Lack of participation in decision making
  10. Inflexible hours
  11. Problems with my supervisor
  12. Commuting
  13. Physical illnesses and ailments
  14. Problems with my co-workers
  15. Unpleasant or dangerous physical conditions
  16. Personal life interfering during work hours

Does any of this sound familiar when you think or your own job?

What can you do to manage stress at work?

When you search for “stress management techniques”, you’ll mainly find different versions of relaxation techniques. While being able to relax is a good skill to develop and practice, it only gets you so far. It doesn’t really help with most of the work stressors we’ve found here. Also, since there are so many different causes of stress, there is no one remedy that will help them all. Nonetheless, here is my suggestions for a specific technique that can get you started. I call it the “Sort and Tackle” Technique. All you need to begin with is a stack of index cards.

The “Sort and Tackle” Technique

Keep a stack of index cards nearby at work. Whenever you notice that you’re stressed out or frustrated about something, write it down on one card. Once in a while (you can do this as often as you want), do a “sort and tackle”:

1. Sort the cards. There will be some cards that describe stressors you have no control over whatsoever. For example, you may not be able to negotiate your salary. However other cards will describe issues that you may be able to improve in some way, if you are willing to invest some effort, take some risks, or just try something new. For example, you may be able to resolve a conflict with your co-worker, or change some habits to improve your own time management. Move the cards to the top of the pile that describe something you may be able to change. Move the other cards to the bottom that describe issues out of your control. If there are cards about which you are not sure, leave them in the middle for now. You can revisit them later and give them some more thought.

Extra credit: Use the back of each index card to list all kinds of ideas (even bad ones) of how you could improve each stressor. There’s no need to tackle all your problems at once, but collecting your ideas whenever they occur to you will give you something to choose from, once you’re ready to take specific steps.

2. Tackle one. Once you’ve sorted your cards – with the most hopeful, potentially improvable issues on top – pick just one among your top five cards that you want to tackle next. Make a specific plan about how to deal with this issue. For example, if you want to discuss your workload with your boss, you might start by scheduling a meeting with her, or you might start by asking a friend for advice on how you might approach the issue with your boss. Whatever your next step is, define it specifically as to what you are going to do when. It’s better to have a small next step in your calendar than a big but vague “to do” in your head.

And what do you do with the rest of the cards? For now: nothing at all. Until you can come up with reasons to move them to the top of the pile, that is. As long as you have no idea how you could improve the situation from your end, there is also nothing you need to do about it.

Here’s the beauty of this technique: even though you’re only tackling a small part of your problems at any time, this often has positive side effects on all of your stressors. Namely, knowing that you are taking active steps to improve your situation where you can, will give you more peace of mind about the issues that remain out of your control. It truly helps to acknowledge that there are parts of your work that simply suck. Since you can’t do anything about them, there is no point in worrying about them. So don’t throw any of the cards away – keep the whole pile and add to it whenever something new (or old) comes up that stresses you out. However, focus your active efforts and interventions on the top of your pile: on the issues you might be able to improve and are ready to tackle next.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


Self-Assessment: How Awe-Struck are You?

Posted on by by Posted in Creative Thinking, Self-Assessments

In a earlier post, I wrote about how feelings of awe can affect our decision making. Here you can take a quick self-assessment as to how often you experience awe in your own life.

Note that this self-assessment is not a scientifically normed scale. The items are loosely based on Michelle Shiota and her colleagues’ scales of dispositional positive emotions, where awe is one out of seven positive emotions (the other six being joy, pride, contentment, compassion, amusement, and love). So far, not much research has been done on whether experiencing awe is a stable trait within a person’s personality structure. But regardless of whether some people are more naturally prone to it than others, the feeling of awe is an experience that we can seek out, if we choose to look for it.

Would you like to experience more awe in your life? If so, try to surround yourself more with natural beauty and seek experiences that expand your horizon. Or as one group of researchers put it: look for things that have “perceptual vastness”, to the extent that they might dramatically expand your usual frame of reference. In experiments, the feeling of awe has often been induced with images or videos of stunning landscapes, night skies, or the real experience of nature, such as standing under towering trees. The Greater Good Science Center (SGCC) at UC Berkeley suggests this video as a practice. There are also certain types of music that have been used successfully to induce awe, such as the song Hoppípolla by Sigur Rós.

If you take another look at the self-assessment scale above: on which of the items could you get a higher score with the easiest changes in your daily habits or leisure activities?

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR

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Am I a Procrastinator?

Posted on by by Posted in Achieving Goals, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management, Self-Assessments

Am I a procrastinator?“I know that I am a procrastinator, but taking this survey made me realize just how bad it is!”
– One of my students.

Clarry Lay, a psychology professor at York University in Toronto created the “General Procrastination Scale” as a research tool. While it is not intended for diagnosis, you can still get a general sense of your tendency to procrastinate across a pretty wide a range of situations.

In the interactive form below, you can simply move the sliders around and see your total score at the bottom. The total will be updated as you go along. A lower total score mean less procrastination, from 1, which would mean you don’t procrastinate at all in any of those situations, to 10, which would mean you procrastinate at every opportunity. Only the overall score at the bottom matters, because half of the individual items score in reverse.

A note for those interested in creating interactive forms: I’ve used JotForm for this self-assessment, with an added widget called “Sliders with calculated results”. I’ve searched a long time for a form creator that would automatically calculate results in real-time. This is the best I’ve found so far. I would be even more excited about a form with a submission button that would show results only after you submit your responses. If anyones know something like that, I would appreciate any pointers. Overall, I find JotForm extremely user-friendly and versatile, even the basic free version.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


New Productivity Coaching Group

Posted on by by Posted in Achieving Goals, Career Development, Coaching Practice, Health Decisions, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management, Self-Assessments

Productivity Coaching Group
Time is our most precious resource – are you getting the most out of yours? Or are you ready for a change? 

My next productivity coaching group will come in a new format, starting with one-on-one sessions and an in-depth assessment before the group meetings.

It is a 3-month package that includes:
  • Two individual coaching sessions of 50 min each and an initial in-depth assessment of your goals, your individual style, your situation, and your personality along the Five Factor Model (FFM). A part of the assessment will happen during our sessions together, and a part of it will be homework for you in between our meetings.
  • A copy of the workbook: “Increasing Personal Productivity in Healthy and Sustainable Ways” by Ursina Teuscher. (Look inside and check out the reviews on Amazon.) Based on recent findings in neuroscience and psychology, you will learn how to improve cognitive functioning, make better decisions, and increase focus. The workbook will help you apply these insights to your own work style and needs.
  • Four small-group sessions of 90 min each. After our one-on-one work together, you will join a coaching group consisting of ~3-5 other participants. The group sessions will give you the positive support of others who may face similar or different challenges. Being held accountable to your goals and getting encouraged by others is a very powerful help in this process.
  • Individual phone and online support between sessions as needed. Throughout the three-month period, we will add regular phone check-ins or other personal online support. This may include working with shared online tools, documents or apps, depending on your goals and work style.

Cost: $650.

Location:
522 SW 5th Ave
Portland, OR 97204

 


Where Can You Be Generous?

Posted on by by Posted in Career Development, Coaching Practice, Self-Assessments, Strategic Planning, Business Decisions, Organizational Development

A Different Way to Look at Your “Unique Value Contribution”

In an interview with Chase Jarvis, Seth Godin gave me a lot of food for thought when he suggested that we all ourselves this question:

“Where are you being generous – completely selfless and generous – so that an organization or person is changed for the better? Can you do that again and again and again?” (44m 10s)

Unique Value Contribution

The question is big, and it is very relevant for career coaching and business development. Even without the – perhaps too high – standard of being “completely selfless”, it gives a beautiful angle to the classic and essential question of: “How can you contribute value?”

For example, with a career-coaching client we might explore the question:
“What skills do you already have, or can you acquire, that are valuable to a potential employer?”

Or, when working with a business owner we might ask:
“How does your service, or your product, make a true difference in people’s lives?”
“What niche can you develop, where you can more easily make a bigger difference, and add more value, than anybody else could?”

These more typical coaching questions easily translate into “where can you be generous”, as in:
“Where can you most effectively and genuinely (and therefore sustainably) give more than anybody expects?”
“What strengths (skills, expertise, passion, resources) do you have that set you apart by allowing you to contribute more than others can?”

Here is the full-length interview, worth listening to anyway.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


What Are Your Strengths? Review of Two Self-Assessments

Posted on by by Posted in Book Recommendations, Career Development, Coaching Practice, Leadership, Self-Assessments

I’m featuring two self-assessments here that focus on clarifying what your strengths are: the Clifton StrengthsFinder®, and the VIA Survey.

The Clifton StrengthsFinder® was developed by the Gallup Organization. Based on a lot of interview data, they came up with 34 distinct patterns of strengths, or what they call “talent themes”. The online self-assessment tells individuals which of those “themes” are most pronounced in them. From the perspective of management consulting, the assumption here is that by identifying people’s strengths, an organization’s overall performance can be improved.

The VIA Survey was created by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, well-known researchers in the field of positive psychology. It is designed to identify a person’s profile of character strengths. The inventory informed the Character Strengths and Virtues Handbook (CSV), a counterpart to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) used in traditional psychology. Unlike the DSM, which categorizes human deficits and disorders, the CSV classifies positive human strengths.

So, the two assessments have different origins and purposes, but both are centered on helping people recognize and build upon their strengths.

I took both self-assessments online and read up on the research behind them, and here are my observations on both of them.

The research:
  • There is a technical report on the StrengthsFinder® website that summarizes the development and validation process of the assessment. Several studies with huge sample sizes by research groups both inside and outside of Gallup have tested the reliability and validity of the assessment, and the technical report provides a lot of information about the statistical characteristics of the measures and their usefulness for interventions.
  • The VIA team also provides a nice (shorter) overview of the survey’s psychometrics on their website. Aside from the standard measures that we would expect, such as alpha coefficients, they also present a factor analysis, which reveals a discrepancy between their model and the newer research. This gives me a better impression than if everything looked smooth, which honest research rarely is. While the number of studies that tested the VIA Survey is rather small, they have been conducted by more than one research group (suggesting at least one might be independent from the developers), and have been published in peer-reviewed journals (rather than books or self-published “reports”). The journal that published the factor analysis, “Assessment”, is a high-impact journal.

In addition to the validation of the survey itself, you’ll find an extensive literature overview on the VIA website, summarizing what the research says about character strengths in general.

The money, and what you get for it:
  • For the StrengthsFinder®, you have buy the book first, before you can take the assessment (you’ll need the access code you get in the book). As a result of taking the assessment, you get a report with your top 5 strengths, along with some suggestions for action plans. You would have to pay more for any more detailed reports, including the full rank order of your strengths.
  • The VIA® Institute of Character is a non-profit organization. You can take the assessment for free, without buying a book. As a result of that self-assessment, you’ll get your entire “Strength Profile”, as a rank order, along with a short description of 24 possible strengths. There too, you could pay for more elaborate results.
My subjective experience taking the assessments:
  • I found some of the questions in the StrengthsFinder® very irritating. Here’s one example of a question I wouldn’t possibly know how to answer:ItemSo if I’m somebody who never makes deadlines and don’t deliver what I promised, I get the same score (“Neutral”) as somebody who always makes deadlines and follows through on her commitments? That just doesn’t sound like a good idea.
  • The StrengthsFinder® enforces a time limit to answer each question, which is unusual for personality questionnaires. I don’t know of any research suggesting it would be an advantage to “not think too long” before answering. I suspect the real reason they’re doing this is to prevent people from copying the questions. (I did for example miss the question above, because I spent all my allotted time first scratching my head in disbelief and then taking a screenshot.)
  • The VIA Survey took less time to take, and the questions seemed (very subjectively!) to make more sense.

Overall, they both seem like well-researched instruments: the StrengthsFinder® more commercialized and more widely used, but also with more research history. I personally found that the VIA Survey gave me more bang for my buck (which was no buck at all in this case), and was less annoying to take.

How about you?

I’d love to hear other’s perspectives, and I know many of my readers are very familiar with the StrengthsFinder at least, if not with both instruments.

Did you ever take either of these assessments? Or are using them in your own practice with clients or employees? What has been your experience? (If you’d like me to respond, please don’t forget to include your email address — but I’ll be very interested in reading your comments either way.)

 

by Ursina Teuscher at Teuscher Counseling, LLC

Earlier posts on self-assessments:

 


A Career Development Tool For Academics

Posted on by by Posted in Achieving Goals, Career Development, Self-Assessments, Strategic Planning, Business Decisions, Organizational Development

myIDPContinuing my series about self-assessments, the one I’m reviewing here is for academics:

the myIDP.

The myIDP is an Individual Development Plan for science careers, and is mainly targeted to grad students and postdocs, with the goal of helping them define and pursue their career goals.

It includes a self-assessment part covering skills, interests, and values. Aside from the online questionnaires that show your scores right away, can also download blank skills assessment forms to share with a mentor or colleague. Based on the assessment, it offers a long list of career paths and shows you how well each matches with your interests and skills. As you explore those options, you get suggestions of how to consider your values in those contexts.

After this assessment and exploration part, the website includes a personal planning system for setting your own goals and implementing next steps. For example, you can set skill improvement goals and plan specific activities to reach those. To help define your own skill improvement goals, you get all the information from the skills assessment, but you choose where you want to improve. In my own case, my lowest skill score was in animal research – not an area in which I need to improve given that I have no plans of working with animals in the foreseeable future. However my semi-low scores in “how to negotiate” might be relevant for my life and worth improving.

As is fitting for a target audience of scientists, this tool does not give you easy answers, let alone ONE easy answer. It asks a lot of questions, gives you many answers and a lot of homework, including suggestions of further research to do (not in those exact words…). All the assessments are very transparent, no hidden magic.

The website can be used free of charge. You just need to set up an account, so that your data can be saved, but you don’t need to provide any information other than an email address. It looks like this is really just a service (funded by several educational institutions), not part of a research project or a business.

If you try it, let me know what you think!

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


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