1) How can I use the Motivational Gifts Survey in career and life coaching?
When I use motivational gifts in career coaching, I use it as a starting point. The survey results should not be a shock to anyone. It should validate what a person already knows to be true but perhaps hasn’t been able to explain. If a person’s results seem a bit off or wrong to them, then I assume they are correct.
Many people are in jobs that require behaviors that aren’t their gifting. This will skew their true results. So….here is where the career coaching comes in.
The coach has knowledge of the motivational gifts and can assess whether or not the results are “true” or have been affected by their client’s current occupation or season of life. This is why the survey includes the questions, what is your occupation, what is your desired occupation, and what are your talents? I always obtain this information when evaluating the results of the survey. (You will need this information as it is not included in the test results people receive from gifttest.org). Here is where purchasing a license to reproduce copies of the gifts survey in PDF format can come in handy.
For example, perhaps you are coaching a student with a gift of perceiving or serving. However, their results show a teaching gift as the highest percentage. The student comments that “teaching is not my gift.” Here will be the classic case where the student answered the questions correctly but because most of their behaviors at this time of their life involve study and research, the teaching gift appears as the top score of their results. They aren’t using their serving and perceiving gifts as much during this season of their life (their education). But that does not mean perceiving and serving are not their motivational gifts.
2) What other assessments do you use with the Motivational Gifts Survey in Leadership Coaching and Consulting?
After you can validate your client’s results, I have found it extremely helpful to include personality assessments. The DISC™ or MBTI™ are excellent personality assessments to use in combination with the Motivational Gifts Survey. For example, two people can have the gift of teaching but if one personality is ESFP and the other is INTJ, the teaching gift looks completely different.
In addition, people usually have a mix of gifts (versus only one). In my experience, I have found people usually have three gifts that are dominant. I will often take their top three scores from the survey and create a “gift profile.”
3) What if my client disagrees with the results of the survey/ cannot validate their results?
A common scenario that causes people to receive incorrect results is rushing to complete the survey instead of carefully reading and thinking through each response. When clients do not have time to read each response, they often choose the numbers as answers instead of thinking, “how often do I really do this?” I usually suggest they take the test a second time, reading it differently or even with a spouse, friend, or parent present to give feedback on each question.
The multiple choice numeric responses to the survey questions are based on the frequency of behaviors. The theory behind the survey is: the more often you engage in a behavior, the more motivated one probably is to do those behaviors that are characteristic of a particular gift.
