There is something exciting about giving a team their assessment results. Suddenly, people have language for things they may have been experiencing but never quite knew how to describe. “That makes so much sense. Now I understand why we keep having that conversation; I never realised we were so different.” That is where the real opportunity begins.
Because the value of an assessment isn't simply in the report.
It is in what the team does with what it has learned. An assessment is a starting point, not the whole story. Assessments can give us valuable insight into strengths, preferences, motivations, competencies and behavioural tendencies. But a profile doesn’t know the context in which those behaviours are playing out. It doesn’t know that a team is under pressure, that roles have recently changed, that two colleagues have worked together for ten years, or that a particular process makes collaboration difficult. This is also reflected in more recent research. A 2024 meta-analysis by Han et al. (2024) examining personality and team performance found that the relationships were generally modest and varied according to factors such as team tenure and the type of performance being considered. In other words, an assessment result may tell us something useful about a team, but it does not tell us the whole story. People don’t bring their assessment results into a vacuum; they bring them into a system.
And that system matters. A team might discover, for example, that people have very different approaches to decision-making.
The interesting question isn’t simply
Who are the fast decision-makers and who are the cautious ones?
It is:
What happens when those differences meet in our team?
Do they create better decisions because different perspectives are considered? Do they slow the team down? Do some people feel rushed while others feel frustrated?
Suddenly, we’re no longer just talking about assessment results. We’re talking about how people work together. Don’t let insight become a label. There is a risk that once teams understand their profiles, they start using them to explain everything. “She’s just like that, or he’s not naturally detail-oriented”. Assessment language is useful when it creates curiosity. It becomes limiting when it creates certainty. A preference can influence behaviour without determining it. Someone may naturally prefer to move quickly, but they can still slow down when the situation requires it. Someone may prefer time to process, but they can still contribute spontaneously.
The goal isn’t to put people into boxes. It is to give teams a better understanding of the different ways people approach their work, and create more intentional choices about how they work together. When we think of what happens after the debrief, this is where I think organisations at times miss opportunities. The team completes the assessment, they have the workshop, they have the conversation, and then everyone goes back to work. What if, instead, the assessment became part of the team’s everyday language?
A team might be able to say:
“Are we hearing enough different perspectives here?”
“Are we rushing this decision?”
“Are we relying on the same person to get this over the line?”
“Are we avoiding the difficult conversation because we want to keep everyone happy?”
Those conversations don’t require another assessment. They require the team to remember what they learned and use it when it matters. That is when assessment moves from an HR intervention to a practical team tool.
The real test for me is that the ultimate test of an assessment isn’t whether everyone enjoyed the feedback session. It isn’t even whether the results felt accurate.
The question is:
Does the team work differently because of what they learned?
Do they listen differently?
Do they challenge each other differently?
Do they understand their recurring tensions better?
Do they use each other's strengths more intentionally?
Do they have a shared language for talking about how they work together?
If the answer is yes, then the assessment has become more than a report.
It has become part of how the team works. An assessment can tell us a lot about the people sitting around the table. The conversation is what helps us understand what that means for the way they work together.
