Free Coaching Assessment Tools to Use with Clients

CoachPro Tools has 15 free online coaching exercises, no sign-up needed, and nine of them work as assessments: your client scores or picks, and the tool gives back a reading. They are the Wheel of Life, the personal values hierarchy, 360 feedback, the Johari Window, personal strengths, the Wheel of Emotions, Dilts' Logical Levels, the Life Timeline and the start and end assessment.

You'll find them all on the free coaching tools page. Below, each one gets its own section: what it measures, what it asks of your client, and what to do with the result, which is the part most templates leave out.

Which free coaching assessments are there, and what does each one measure?

The "what it asks" column helps you plan session time. Tapping eight boxes is not the same as ranking ten values head to head.

Below they're grouped by the point in a coaching engagement where each one fits best.

Which assessments work best at the start of an engagement?

Wheel of Life

This is the quickest of the nine. Your client scores eight areas from 1 to 10: home, career, health, money, personal growth, family and friends, love, and fun. Once all eight are in, the free Wheel of Life shows the range and the average and tells you whether the wheel is unbalanced, which it flags when the gap between the highest and lowest score is 5 points or more. It also names the highest area, the lowest one and two questions to continue with the lowest.

What to do with the result. Don't jump straight to the lowest score. Ask which area matters most to them right now, because it's sometimes a different one. Use the highest area as a resource: "What do you do for your health that you could bring to money?" Take a screenshot. You'll want it when the engagement ends.

Personal values hierarchy

Your client picks 5 to 10 values from a list of 40 (and can add missing ones), ranks them in head-to-head pairs ("which matters more to you?") and scores from 1 to 10 how present each of their top five is in their life today. The pairs force trade-offs. The free personal values exercise returns a podium, a radar chart that crosses importance with how much each value is lived, and the biggest gap.

What to do with the result. Start with the gap. If their number-one value is lived at a 4, you have material for several sessions. The question the tool suggests works well: "What decision this week would change if you made it from your number-one value?"

Life Timeline

Your client writes 5 to 7 moments that shaped them, with their age at the time, and drags each point up or down depending on how they experienced it. The tool draws the curve and marks the highest point, the lowest point and what repeats. It's the most personal of the nine, so save it for when there's trust.

What to do with the result. Ask what they did to climb out of the lowest point. You'll often find resources there that they aren't using today.

Which assessments show how others see your client?

360 feedback

It compares how your client sees themselves with how their manager, peers and team see them across eight skills: communication, leadership, teamwork, decision-making, time management, listening, adaptability and conflict resolution. Each one gets a score from 1 to 5 from "Me" and from at least one other group. In the free 360 feedback tool, other people's scores are typed in by hand, based on feedback received or on how your client thinks they're seen; the tool itself notes that a real 360 should collect them anonymously. The result is an overlaid radar chart and a map that places each skill as a recognized strength, hidden strength, area to improve or blind spot.

What to do with the result. Open with the hidden strengths, which are easier to accept, then move to the blind spots. The Center for Creative Leadership notes that leaders who rate themselves higher than their raters do are seen as more at risk of derailing than those who underrate themselves (CCL on what 360 results mean). For a step-by-step version of that conversation, see the 360 feedback debrief guide.

Johari Window

Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham created the model in 1955 (EBSCO Research Starters). In the online version, your client picks 5 to 8 adjectives that describe them from a list of 40, then marks the ones chosen by up to three other people. The free Johari Window builds the four areas (open, blind, hidden and unknown), with panes that grow with the number of words in each, and tells you how much of the window the open area takes up.

What to do with the result. The blind area gives you a question: "What do they see in you when they say that?" The hidden area gives you a task: what will they share this week, and with whom. As with the 360, other people's picks are entered by hand; in the original exercise each person chooses on their own.

Personal strengths

It crosses two axes: how well your client does something and how much energy it gives them. They choose 6 to 10 abilities from a list of 24 (or write their own) and drag them across a board. Each one lands in a zone: real strength, potential, delegate or trap. Then they write down a specific moment when they used each real strength, and how they'll use the top one this week.

What to do with the result. Look at the trap zone: things they do well that drain them. That's often where an unexplained tiredness comes from. Ask which task in that zone they could cut back or hand off.

Which assessments help when a client is stuck?

Wheel of Emotions

It's based on Plutchik's wheel, with eight emotions at three intensities. Your client describes a situation, picks up to three emotions with their intensity (two neighboring emotions show their combination), marks on a body outline where they feel them and writes what each one is asking for. What comes out describes how they are in that specific moment, which is what you need for that session.

What to do with the result. Use it when a client says "I feel bad" and can't put it any other way. The tool's suggested question is a good opener: "If this emotion could talk, what would it say you need?" The tool also makes clear it's no substitute for psychological support.

Dilts' Logical Levels

There are six levels: environment, behavior, capabilities, beliefs and values, identity, and purpose. At each one your client answers a question and rates from 1 to 5 how clear they are about it. The tool flags the level with the lowest score as the block.

What to do with the result. Check it in conversation. Sometimes the low score sits in behavior, but the brake comes from identity ("I'm just not the kind of person who…"). The pyramid tells you where to start asking.

How do you measure progress at the end of an engagement?

Start and end assessment

You name the six areas of your client's engagement, and they drag two bars per area: where they were at the start and where they are today, from 1 to 10. The start and end assessment shows where they moved most, where they moved least and the overall progress.

What to do with the result. What counts is what your client says when they look at both numbers side by side. Ask what they did differently in the area that improved most. If you used the Wheel of Life in the first session, run it again now and put the two wheels next to each other.

Is there a free DISC assessment among them?

No. DISC isn't one of the fifteen free tools. To interpret it and use it in a session, read the guide to the DISC test in coaching. Inside CoachPro Tools there are three versions of the DiSC assessment, one of them in the classic forced-choice format with 28 groups of four words.

What else is in the free section that isn't an assessment?

The other six are for working with whatever an assessment turned up. Use them right after one, when it's time to act:

• GROW model: goal, reality, options and will.
• SMART goals: the goal letter by letter, with steps up to the deadline.
• Eisenhower Matrix: the week's tasks, dragged into four quadrants.
• Decision matrix: up to four options compared against weighted criteria.
• Personal SWOT: the four quadrants with weights and cross strategies.
• Limiting beliefs: the belief, tested against evidence and rewritten.

What are the limits of the free versions?

• Two uses per browser. You can use each tool freely twice. From the third visit, and for 30 days, you see your last result in read-only mode.
• Nothing is saved per client. The last result stays in your browser. With several clients, you'll need to take screenshots.
• The 360 and the Johari Window are filled in by hand. Your client types in other people's views.
• The readings are indicative. Every tool says so. None of them claims to be a diagnosis.

How do you use these assessments with clients in CoachPro Tools?

The fifteen free tools are a sample. The platform's Diagnosis and Assessment category has 36 tools, and you can see a selection on the diagnostic tools for coaches page. The difference is in client work: you send each tool through an individual link with an expiry date, your client answers without creating an account, you get an email notification, and the result is saved to their client record. The Wheel of Life also has a radar comparison of up to four measurements.

Frequently asked questions

Related resources: The 15 free coaching tools · Diagnostic assessment in coaching · Diagnostic tools for coaches