Professional Development

Develop Your People With Better Insight

Professional development assessments help individuals understand how they work, what motivates them, how they manage emotions, which skills they have developed, and how they make decisions.

TTI Success Insights combines five science-based assessments, DISC, 12 Driving Forces, Emotional Quotient (EQ), DNA, and Acumen, to give individuals and organizations a more complete picture of professional development.

Rather than putting people into a single category, TTI's multi-science approach examines the different factors that influence workplace performance and development. The result is actionable insight that can help employees build self-awareness, strengthen skills, improve relationships, navigate career transitions, and reach their professional potential.

What Is a Professional Development Assessment?

The goal is not simply to identify a person's strengths or assign them a label. A useful professional development assessment provides insight that can be translated into specific development goals and actions.

For example, an assessment might help an employee understand:

• Why certain workplace situations energize or frustrate them
• How their communication style affects colleagues
• What motivates them to perform at their best
• How effectively they manage emotions and relationships
• Which professional skills are highly developed and which need attention
• How they tend to evaluate people, tasks, and systems when making decisions
• How they may need to adapt as their responsibilities change

Professional development assessments are most effective when the results are interpreted through a qualified debrief and connected to real workplace goals. The assessment provides insight; the development process turns that insight into change.

Why Use Assessments for Professional Development?

Without meaningful insight, development plans can become generic. Employees may be told to "communicate better," "build leadership skills," or "improve collaboration" without understanding what specifically needs to change.

Assessments can help organizations and individuals move from broad development goals to targeted action.

Professional development assessments can help you:

• Build greater self-awareness
• Identify strengths and development opportunities
• Understand communication and behavioral preferences
• Discover what drives workplace engagement
• Develop emotional intelligence
• Strengthen critical workplace skills
• Improve collaboration and working relationships
• Prepare employees for expanded responsibilities
• Support emerging leaders and high-potential employees
• Create more personalized development plans
• Navigate career and role transitions
• Give managers better insight into how to support employees

The key is to start with the development question, not the assessment.

TTI's Five Professional Development Assessments

TTI's professional development assessments measure different dimensions of the individual. Each provides a distinct perspective, and they can be used individually or combined through TTI's multi-science approach.

Together, these assessments provide a broader view of the individual than any single assessment can provide.

DISC: Understand How You Work and Communicate

DISC measures observable behavioral style, including how individuals tend to approach communication, work, decision-making, pace, and their environment.

DISC helps employees understand their natural behavioral preferences as well as how they may be adapting to the demands of their current environment.

DISC can help answer questions such as:

• How do I naturally communicate?
• How do others prefer to communicate with me?
• How do I respond to change?
• How do I approach tasks and people?
• How might I behave differently under pressure?
• Where might my natural style help or hinder my effectiveness?
• How can I adapt my communication without losing authenticity?

For professional development, DISC can provide a practical foundation for improving communication, collaboration, adaptability, and interpersonal effectiveness.

12 Driving Forces: Understand What Motivates You

Behavior explains how someone tends to work. Motivators help explain why.

TTI's 12 Driving Forces assessment measures the underlying forces that influence an individual's interests, engagement, and approach to work.

Understanding motivators can help employees recognize what makes work meaningful to them and why they may be energized by some responsibilities while feeling drained by others.

12 Driving Forces can help answer:

• What motivates me at work?
• What types of responsibilities are most engaging?
• What workplace conditions support my performance?
• Why do certain tasks feel more meaningful than others?
• What might cause disengagement?
• How can I better align my work with what drives me?

For managers, this insight can also support more personalized approaches to employee development, engagement, recognition, delegation, and career conversations.

Emotional Quotient: Develop Emotional Intelligence

Professional success depends on more than technical knowledge or job-specific skills. Employees also need to understand and manage themselves while navigating relationships with others.

TTI's EQ assessment measures emotional intelligence across five dimensions: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, social awareness, and social regulation.

EQ can help individuals develop:

• Self-awareness
• Emotional self-management
• Understanding of others
• Empathy
• Interpersonal effectiveness
• Relationship management
• Communication during difficult situations
• The ability to respond rather than react

EQ development can be particularly valuable for employees moving into roles that require greater collaboration, influence, customer interaction, conflict management, or people leadership.

DNA: Identify and Develop Professional Skills

DNA measures 25 personal skills and reports them by development level, helping individuals and organizations understand which capabilities are already developed and which may benefit from additional focus.

Unlike an assessment focused primarily on behavioral preference, DNA provides a way to look directly at personal skills and development opportunities.

DNA can help answer:

• Which skills are already well developed?
• Which skills could limit my effectiveness?
• What capabilities should I strengthen for my current role?
• What skills will I need for my next role?
• Where should I focus my professional development efforts?
• How can my development plan become more specific?

DNA can help turn a broad goal such as "become a better leader" or "improve my effectiveness" into a more targeted development plan based on specific skills.

Acumen: Understand How You Make Decisions

Professional development is not only about behavior, motivation, or skills. It also involves how people perceive situations, evaluate information, and make decisions.

TTI's Acumen assessment, based on the work of Robert S. Hartman and formal axiology, examines three dimensions of thought:

• Intrinsic: How a person evaluates people and individual worth
• Extrinsic: How a person evaluates tasks and practical situations
• Systemic: How a person evaluates systems, structures, and rules

Acumen can help individuals recognize how their perspectives influence judgment and where they may have potential blind spots.

This can be particularly useful when professional development involves decision-making, problem-solving, leadership, strategic thinking, or navigating complex situations.

Why TTI Uses a Multi-Science Approach

Behavior tells you how someone tends to operate. Motivators help explain what drives them. Emotional intelligence examines how they manage themselves and relationships. Personal skills show what capabilities are developed. Acumen provides insight into how they perceive and evaluate situations.

TTI's multi-science approach brings these perspectives together.

Rather than asking, "What type of person is this?" a multi-science approach asks a more useful question: "What insights can help this person become more effective?"

Combining assessment sciences can reveal relationships between different dimensions of professional development that may not be visible through a single assessment.

For example, an employee may have a behavioral preference for moving quickly, be strongly motivated by autonomy, have a developing skill in patience, and tend to evaluate situations primarily through a systemic lens. Looking at those factors together can create a much more actionable development conversation than a single behavioral label.

Which Assessment Is Right for Professional Development?

The goal isn't to use every assessment in every situation. The goal is to select the measurements that provide the insight needed to address the development opportunity.

Professional Development Across the Employee Lifecycle

Professional development isn't limited to leadership programs.

Employees need opportunities to develop throughout their careers, from onboarding and early-career growth to new responsibilities, role changes, and advanced leadership positions.

Early-Career Development

Help employees understand their behavioral style, motivators, emotional intelligence, and developing skills as they establish their professional foundation.

Career Development

Give employees greater clarity about their strengths, interests, skills, and development opportunities so they can take a more active role in their career growth.

Emerging Leader Development

Prepare high-potential employees for increased responsibility by identifying the behavioral, interpersonal, decision-making, and personal skills that will become increasingly important.

Leadership Development

Help leaders understand how they influence others, what motivates them, how they manage emotions and relationships, which skills they need to strengthen, and how they approach complex decisions.

Role Transitions

When employees move from individual contributor to manager, take on a new function, or assume broader responsibilities, assessments can establish a development baseline and identify the areas that may require the most attention.

Ongoing Professional Growth

Development doesn't end when someone reaches a particular position. Assessments can support continued self-awareness, skill development, and intentional growth throughout an employee's career.

From Assessment Results to a Development Plan

To turn assessment insights into meaningful professional development:

Professional Development Assessments vs. Performance Assessments

Professional development assessments and performance evaluations serve different purposes.

A performance assessment generally focuses on how effectively someone is performing against established expectations.

A professional development assessment focuses on understanding the individual and identifying opportunities for growth.

TTI's behavioral and motivator assessments are designed to describe individual preferences rather than rank employees against one another. They should not be treated as standalone promotion or selection tools.

The purpose of professional development assessment is to help people understand themselves and identify ways to become more effective, not to reduce an individual to a score.

How TTI Assessments Support Professional Development

TTI assessments can support development initiatives including:

• Employee development
• Career development
• Leadership development
• Emerging leader programs
• High-potential development
• Coaching
• Executive coaching
• Communication training
• Team development
• Emotional intelligence development
• Skills development
• Career conversations
• Role transitions
• Succession development
• Individual development plans

Because the five assessments measure different dimensions of the individual, organizations can select the combination that best fits their development objectives.

Frequently Asked Questions About Professional Development Assessments

What is a professional development assessment?

A professional development assessment is a structured assessment that provides insight into an individual's behaviors, motivators, emotional intelligence, personal skills, or decision-making patterns. The results can be used to build self-awareness and create more targeted professional development plans.

What assessments are used for professional development?

Common professional development assessments measure areas such as behavior, motivators, emotional intelligence, personal skills, strengths, and decision-making. TTI Success Insights uses five primary assessment sciences: DISC, 12 Driving Forces, EQ, DNA, and Acumen.

What is the best assessment for employee development?

There is no single best assessment for every development goal. The right assessment depends on what you want to understand or develop. DISC can provide insight into behavior and communication, 12 Driving Forces into motivation, EQ into emotional intelligence, DNA into personal skills, and Acumen into perception and decision-making. A multi-science approach can combine these perspectives for a more comprehensive view.

How can assessments help with career development?

Assessments can help employees understand their behavioral preferences, motivators, emotional intelligence, skills, and decision-making patterns. This insight can help them identify development priorities, prepare for new responsibilities, improve workplace effectiveness, and have more productive career conversations.

Can professional development assessments identify skill gaps?

Yes. TTI's DNA assessment measures 25 personal skills by development level, helping identify skills that are more developed and those that may benefit from further development. Other TTI assessments can provide additional context about the behavioral, motivational, emotional, and perceptual factors surrounding those skills.

How do professional development assessments support leadership development?

Leadership requires more than a single set of traits. Leaders need to understand their behavior, what motivates them, how they manage emotions and relationships, which skills they have developed, and how they evaluate complex situations. TTI's five assessment sciences can provide insight across these dimensions and can be combined through a multi-science report.

Should professional development assessments be used to make promotion decisions?

Development assessments should not be treated as standalone promotion decisions. TTI's behavioral and motivator assessments are ipsative, meaning they compare an individual's preferences against their own rather than ranking them against a population. Development data and selection data serve different purposes and should be used appropriately.

How often should employees take professional development assessments?

The timing depends on the assessment and the development objective. Personal skills can change through deliberate practice, while behavioral preferences and motivators tend to be more stable. A meaningful change in role, responsibilities, or development goals may be a better reason to reassess than simply repeating an assessment on a fixed annual schedule.

What is a multi-science assessment?

A multi-science assessment combines multiple assessment perspectives into one broader view of an individual. TTI's multi-science approach can bring together DISC, 12 Driving Forces, EQ, DNA, and Acumen to examine behavior, motivation, emotional intelligence, personal skills, and perception.

Are professional development assessments only for leaders?

No. Professional development assessments can be used with employees at every stage of their careers. They can support early-career development, career growth, emerging leader programs, leadership development, coaching, role transitions, and ongoing professional growth.