Character Strengths Survey Form Template
Professional development, career coaching, and academic advising are highly effective when tailored to an individual’s unique strengths and goals. When coaches and talent developers start sessions without structured client backgrounds, valuable time is spent gathering basic context. This character strengths survey template provides an organized, welcoming way to collect client self-assessments, core personal motivations, and growth goals ahead of your first meeting.
Gathering client data early ensures that coaching sessions are focused, helping individuals identify how to apply their strengths to overcome challenges and reach their goals.
Complete Client Background and Strength Data Collected
This survey is designed to guide clients through a thoughtful self-reflection, gathering essential development data:
- Client Profile: Collects the participant’s name, email, and current life or career stage to provide basic background context.
- Strength Awareness and Instincts: Tracks client familiarity with development frameworks, and identifies which core strengths they feel come most naturally.
- Target Growth Priorities: Helps clients select which specific personal or professional strengths they are most excited to develop further.
- Real-World Application: Identifies the daily environments where their strengths show up most clearly and measures usage frequency on a clean scale.
- Overcoming Challenges: Features a deep-dive field where clients can share a personal story of how their strengths helped them navigate a past challenge.
- Focus Areas and Support: Identifies which areas of life the client is most excited to strengthen right now, and tracks interest in receiving personalized development tips.
Best Practices for Coaching Intake Workflows
To build a strong collaborative relationship, send this survey to clients after their initial session booking, but before your first official meeting. This gives clients the space to reflect on their skills and priorities, resulting in much more detailed and thoughtful submissions.
Because reflecting on personal strengths can feel complex, the form uses simple multiple-choice groupings and clear step-by-step progress, ensuring clients can complete their self-assessment easily on any device.
Connecting Strength Data to Development Plans
Once a client has submitted their survey, review their answers ahead of your kickoff call. Use their shared personal stories to help guide goal-setting discussions. If a client identifies curiosity as a major strength but notes they rarely use it in their current role, work together to design daily tasks or learning projects that incorporate this strength, showing them that their development plan is fully customized to their needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a character strengths survey?
A character strengths survey is a developmental self-assessment tool used by career coaches, educators, and HR teams to help individuals identify their core personal strengths, motivators, and career priorities.
How does this survey help professional coaches?
It acts as an intake brief. Reviewing client strengths, goals, and past challenges in advance ensures coaches can skip basic questioning and show up to the first session with a tailored development plan.
Can we customize the strengths listed in this template?
Absolutely. You can easily update the multiple-choice lists to align with your organization’s specific coaching values or recognized professional development frameworks.
How can we use the personal stories collected in the survey?
Reviewing how clients have successfully overcome past challenges provides valuable insights into their problem-solving styles, giving coaches excellent context for goal-setting discussions.