Kelsey Klausing, Director of Hogan's Solutions Partners Team, on helping clients see their impact more clearly

Coaches often help clients make sense of patterns they cannot fully see on their own. A leader may understand their intentions, values, and goals, but still struggle to recognize how others experience their behavior. This is where assessment-based coaching can be especially powerful.

When used well, assessment does not replace the coach’s expertise, intuition, or partnership with the client. It strengthens the coaching relationship. Validated personality data give coaches and clients a clearer starting point, a shared language, and a more focused path from insight to action.

Hogan Assessments are especially useful in the coaching process to reveal the personality patterns that shape how people lead, communicate, build trust, respond under pressure, and make decisions. For coaches, the Hogan assessments provide a practical way to help clients better understand not only how they see themselves, but also how others likely see their impact.

What Is Assessment-Based Coaching?

Assessment-based coaching uses scientifically validated tools to guide the coaching process. Rather than relying on the client’s self-perception, stated goals, or current challenges, the coach can incorporate assessment data to create a more complete picture of the client’s strengths, motivations, development needs, and potential risk areas. This often makes coaching more personal. 

Assessment data give the coach and client something concrete to explore. They can uncover behavioral patterns that may not be obvious in a traditional coaching conversation, especially when those patterns involve reputation, interpersonal impact, stress responses, or values. 

Assessment-based coaching helps the coach move from broad themes to specific, actionable insight. For example, the client might want to communicate more effectively. Through Hogan, the coach may discover insights beyond communication style. The client may be too cautious, highly skeptical, or prone to withdrawing under pressure. Each of those patterns would lead to a different coaching conversation and development plan.

The Role of Psychometric Assessments

Psychometric assessments are designed to measure characteristics such as personality, values, motives, and behavioral tendencies in a reliable and valid way. In coaching, this matters because self-awareness is often incomplete.

People tend to interpret their behavior through their intentions. Others experience them through their impact. A leader may intend to be direct, but others may experience them as abrupt. A leader may intend to be careful and discerning, but others may experience them as skeptical or hard to convince.

Psychometric assessments can surface behavioral patterns in a structured, objective way. They give the coach a framework for asking meaningful questions, and they give the client language for understanding behavior that may have previously felt confusing, frustrating, or hard to change.

A Mirror, Not a Label

An important principle in assessment-based coaching is that personality data should never be used to label or limit the client. Results on the Hogan assessments do not tell the client who they are forever. Instead, results identify tendencies, patterns, and likely reputation.

From there, the coach helps the client explore what those patterns mean in context. How is this tendency serving them? Where might it be creating unintended consequences? What could they practice so they keep the strength while managing the risk?

For coaches, this is one of the most valuable uses of assessment. The assessment itself is not the answer. It is a mirror that helps the client see their impact clearly.

How Hogan Strengthens Assessment-Based Coaching

Coaches might use many types of assessments in practice. Hogan is distinct because it focuses on personality in the context of work, leadership, and reputation. Hogan helps coaches explore three important questions with clients.

> What motivates this person?

Values and motives influence what the client finds rewarding, energizing, or meaningful and can explain why certain roles, organizational cultures, relationships, or goals feel more natural than others.

> How does this person typically show up at their best?

This includes day-to-day behaviors, interpersonal tendencies, and work styles that shape how the client approaches leadership and relationships.

> Data-driven personality insights help coaches move clients beyond general self-awareness

Hogan creates a practical conversation about leadership impact: what helps the client succeed, what may limit effectiveness, and what choices they can make to lead with greater intention.

How Hogan Supports the Assessment-Based Coaching Process

Hogan can be integrated throughout the coaching engagement, from the discovery process to development planning and long-term behavior change.

> Start with the client’s context

Hogan results become more meaningful when interpreted through the client’s real-world environment. Before delivering feedback, the coach needs to understand the client’s role, relationships, pressures, and organizational expectations. Context ensures Hogan results connect to real challenges and goals.

> Build understanding with assessment and feedback

Once the client completes the assessments, the coach uses the results to help the client understand their personality patterns, values, and potential derailers. The coach may also incorporate stakeholder interviews, 360 feedback, performance context, or organizational goals. Together, these inputs create a fuller picture of leadership impact.

With Hogan, feedback is about choice, not judgment. The client can begin to understand personality patterns not as fixed limitations but as tendencies to manage.

> Turn insight into a development plan

Translating insight into a focused development plan is where assessment-based coaching becomes practical. Rather than setting broad goals, such as “communicate better,” the coach can help the client define specific behaviors tied to their Hogan results and leadership context. A development plan should include clear goals, specific behaviors, opportunities for practice, and ways to measure progress. Hogan gives the coach and client a sharper understanding of what to focus on and why it matters.

> Support behavior change through practice

Insight alone does not create change. Clients need opportunities to practice new behaviors, reflect on performance, and adjust over time. The coach helps the client notice patterns in real time, prepare for challenging situations, test new approaches, and build accountability between sessions. Hogan gives the coach a useful reference point throughout this work.

> Evaluate progress and sustain growth

Personality data can remain useful after the initial feedback session. Clients can return to their results as they encounter new roles, pressures, or leadership challenges.
The coach can use Hogan language to revisit development goals, evaluate behavior change, gather feedback, and identify opportunities for growth. This helps keep the work grounded in practical, observable behavior.

Hogan as a Guide on the Coaching Journey

The coaching relationship remains the heart of the work. The coach brings presence, skill, curiosity, and partnership to support and challenge the client. Hogan is a guide within that process, offering a reliable map of the client’s personality patterns and potential impact. In our work with coaches and leaders and in resources such as Coaching the Hogan Way, we have seen how powerful this combination can be. 

For coaches who want to bring Hogan into their practice, certification provides the foundation for interpreting assessment results ethically, accurately, and effectively.

By integrating Hogan, coaches help clients move beyond general self-awareness and toward a clearer understanding of their leadership impact. The result is assessment-based coaching that is more focused, practical, and connected to the behaviors that shape success at work.

To learn more about Hogan Assessments, click here.

About Kelsey Klausing, Director of Solutions Partners, Hogan Assessments

Kelsey is the director for Hogan’s solutions partners team. She is responsible for assisting in the growth, delivery, and support of Hogan’s partners in their journeys to leverage personality assessments in their talent management strategies. Kelsey plays a key role in delivering projects and driving continuous value in partner relationships and identifying new opportunities to implement assessments to enhance partners’ talent management services. She joined Hogan as a senior consultant, responsible for overseeing effective vendor partnerships with a number of Hogan’s partners.

Prior to joining the Hogan family, Kelsey was the senior manager, assessment and measurement at Macy’s Inc., where she led the research, design, and implementation of pre-hire assessment tools to identify the best external talent. She built and secured assessments, interview guides, and case studies. She also conducted ongoing scientific analysis of tools to ensure effectiveness and minimize risk.

As an external consultant with Talogy, Kelsey helped hundreds of clients integrate science into the art of hiring and development. She led client-facing projects involving job analyses, competency modeling, structured interview guides, assessment recommendations, and validation studies. Partnering with dozens of assessment vendors in the industry, she maintained the catalog of offerings and ensured the accuracy of assessment overviews, reports, and versions.

Professional Experience

• Practice Manager, Hogan Assessments

• Senior Consultant, Hogan Assessments

• Senior Manager, Assessment and Measurement, Macy’s Inc.

• Talent Measurement Consultant, Talogy (formerly PAN, a PSI business)

Degrees and Institutions

• Master of Science – Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Indiana

• University - Purdue University Indianapolis

• Bachelor of Arts – Psychology, Ball State University