Assessment Tools

The following tools are provided to help you assess yourself in diverse areas of your life and character. Many of them will also help you to evaluate your ministry effectiveness as well. You may find it helpful to return to these assessment tools as you review and update your PDP in the future. Some of the tools are available directly from the PDP tool while others require web access.

Self Assessments 

Motivation Style – Conner (PDF) This is a basic tool to help you evaluate what motivates you or draws you toward something.  

Learning Style – Conner (PDF) This is a basic tool to help you evaluate your preferred learning style.  

Motivational Gifts Survey – (Online or PDF) Click here for the PDF version.. Based on the gifts in Romans 12:6-8, this survey can help you learn more about yourself and identify areas that match your abilities and interests where you will feel most comfortable, effective, and satisfied. It will take about 15 minutes online and 25 minutes with the manual version.

Team Roles (Word File) – Learn about your unique gifts and the part you will best play on a team by taking this inventory.

Personal Growth Self-Assessment Tool (PDF) – This is a broad ranging tool that will help you explore five main areas one at a time or altogether by asking key questions for you to reflect on.

Ministering Cross-Culturally Lingenfelter & Mayers–  Due to copyright restrictions, we cannot provide the questionnaire to evaluate your basic cultural values. If you are able to get a copy of the book, the questionnaire is in Chapter 2, ‘A Model of Basic Values.’ It will take about 30 minutes to complete. Alternatively, here is a related resource that will help you get a general sense of some of the primary ways in which cultures can differ, and how to be sensitive to those differences in ministry: Ministering Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model for Personal Relationships.

Once you understand your own cultural values it will help to compare them to the host culture among which you minister. Where are they similar? Where do they clash? What can you work on to be more effective in your host culture?

Now, Discover Your Strengths – This resource helps to understand your areas of primary gifting. It is based on the book of the same name by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. Due to copyright restrictions, to use this assessment tool you will need to purchase the above book or a slightly newer version, Strengths Finder 2.0, by Tom Rath. Both books contain a unique access code that you will need to take the test. The results give your top five signature themes (talents). Others in AIM who have used Strengths Finder found it quite accurate and helpful.

Harvard Business Review’s ‘How to Play to Your Strengths’ – On the Step 1: Reflection page, you were encouraged to speak to friends, family, and others who know you best about your passions, strengths and weaknesses. This resource from Harvard Business Review, almost another PDP in itself, suggests what to do with that knowledge, and how to use it to your best advantage.

LivStyles Analysis 

Why take the LivStyles Analysis?

  • While you may have used other personality assessments in the past, this assessment provides features you won’t find combined anywhere else.
  • There are nine distinct personality dimensions built from one set of questions. No other personality assessment gives you as much depth and breadth as LivStyles.
  • Team overlays are available that show how you interact with up to three other coworkers. This exclusive feature is only found in MinistryStyles Personality Assessments, and is a powerful way to visually represent the synergies of your team.

The LivStyles assessments have been designed to give insight into who you are as a person and the way you interact with the people around you. After completing a LivStyles assessment, you’ll have a better idea of:

  • Your natural and adaptive personality when under pressure
  • How you process information
  • Your pace and process of making decisions
  • Your fundamental needs and what demotivates you
  • Your conflict management style
  • Understanding yourself and others better

Check it out here.

Why take the Prepare & Enrich Marriage Assessment (P&E)?

  • Marriages are put under strain when working overseas
  • This assessment identifies your marital strengths and growth areas from nine different categories
  • Relationship dynamics linked to stress, sense of closeness -vs- flexibility, and personality blends

Find out more here.

Why take the Periodic Assessment of Team Health (PATH)?

  • Being on a team can be amazing or it can also be incredibly painful
  • Similar to your own physical body health, one doesn’t notice it until there is unhealthiness
  • This assessment identifies the health status of the overall team based on individual team member responses
  • These are the seven areas: Team Commitment, Diversity, Communication, Conflict Resolution, Leadership, Decision Making, Trust/Openness

See a sample individual report here.

If you are interested in taking any of these assessments or being coached, please contact AIM’s Coordinator for Training & Leadership Development, Rod Kraybill, at training.io@aimint.org.