This month we will review an assessment that guides coaches and their clients in career choice.  This assessment is the MAPP.  I know of one coach who said she likes what the MAPP shows about her clients enough that she uses it for all of her clients, whether they are looking for a new career or not.

This is the ninth in the Insights series on assessments.  For an index of assessments already reviewed and a list of assessments yet to be described, see the end of this article.

Assessment:  MAPP (Motivation Appraisal of Personal Potential)

Description:  The MAPP is an online career assessment that coaches use to help their clients reach their greatest career and personal potential, based on their motivations. The MAPP Assessment provides insight into how the individual's own traits can be used to guide them into vocations and careers that best fit their own motivational profile.

The MAPP consists of 71 questions.  In each, the client picks a most preferred, a least preferred, and a middle-preferred choice from among three phrases.  Most of the phrases describe work situations.  For example, one choice is:

• Be primarily involved with people in your work
• Be primarily involved with ideas in your work
• Be primarily involved with procedure in your work

After the client answers the questions, the on-line system generates a narrative interpretation that includes the person’s interest in job content (tasks the person wants to perform), temperament for the job (how the person prefers to perform tasks), attitude for the job, and how the person relates to people, things, data, reasoning, applied math, and language.  The report also includes a ranking of the top 20 career areas that a client might consider (e.g., “sales engineering regarding technical markets and customers” or “training services: human resource development.”)

Depending on which package the client buys, additional tests related to work and career are available.  See the section on Cost of Instrument below.

Assessment.com recommends that coaches use the Executive Level Package as the basis for coaching sessions. This will provide coaches with content for 3-4 billable hours of coaching time to analyze the results and to make suggestions to clients for change and improvement.

Certification:  None is needed.  However, free, one-hour MAPP teleclasses for coaches are offered on Thursdays at 5:00 p.m. ET.   Register by sending an email to success@assessment.com with "MAPP Tele-Class" in the subject line.  Also, for personal assistance, contact Ward Johnson at 952-921-9368, ext. 115, or ward@assessment.com.

Training is also available from Barbara McCarthy, who presented at the September 2006 ICF Orange County meeting, www.advantageconsult.com.

Cost of Training/Certification:

No cost if instruction is obtained through Assessment.com.  Please contact Barbara McCarthy for rates she may charge for training.

Cost of Instrument:

ICF members can take the MAPP for free.  Go to http://www.assessment.com/ICF to initiate the process to take the MAPP for free if you are an ICF member coach.

For clients, the MAPP is also free on-line, at www.assessment.com.  However, the sample report that one receives after completing the free MAPP has only “teaser” results.  To get the actual 15-20 page narrative report a client must purchase at least the MAPP Narrative Special (see below).

If a client takes the MAPP through an ICF member coach who has gone through the process of signing up with Assessment.com, the following prices are discounted 70%.  The following packages are available:

MAPP Narrative Special  $19.95

• 15-20 page MAPP narrative report
• Top 10 jobs

Starter Package $29.95

• 15-20 page MAPP narrative report
• Top 10 jobs
• Matching to 900 job types
• Career Satisfaction Test
• Success Likelihood Test

Career Package $39.95

• Starter Package, plus:
• 72 job tasks ranked by preferences
• Graphical interpretation
• Word (.doc) version of MAPP appraisal
• Teamwork Test
• Optional live interpretation and/or coaching (for additional fees)

Executive Package $129.95

• Career Package, plus:
• Leadership, interpersonal, social, performance, and mechanical factors
• Organization Test
• Leadership Test
• Bound report mailed to client

Assessments Previously Reviewed in Insights:

Assessments to Be Reviewed in Future Issues:

OSI Polaris 360, Cerny Smith Adjustment Index, and Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument.

Glenn Stevenson. Ph.D., is a life coach and career transition coach who specializes in self-confidence, relationships coaching, and helping people find the work that they love.  He specializes in people’s sense of self and their finding satisfaction in who they are and what they do.  He may be contacted at glenn@myselfsense.com, 714-468-9963, www.myselfsense.com