13 Authenticity Coaching Tools: Assessments, Scales & Worksheets

Authenticity means being true to yourself and living in line with your values and beliefs. It is central to mental wellbeing and plays an important role in effective leadership and personal growth.

While hostile environments and controlling people can suppress authentic behavior, coaching can restore connection and create productive interactions between the person and their surroundings (Jackson, 2019).

This article examines how coaching can support authenticity through assessment, feedback, and carefully chosen interventions (Susing, Green, & Grant, 2011). It also provides a practical toolkit of exercises, worksheets, and assessments that coaches can use to help clients reconnect with their authentic selves.

Before you continue, you may wish to download our five positive psychology tools for free, which include science-based exercises to identify sources of authentic happiness and strategies for increasing wellbeing.

Authenticity Coaching Explained

Authenticity is increasingly acknowledged as an essential component of leadership and a key contributor to psychological health (Susing et al., 2011). Definitions vary: some emphasize being faithful to personal standards and inner values, while others emphasize authenticity as a relational quality—honoring strengths and vulnerabilities across relationships (Jackson, 2019).

In coaching, the relational view is particularly important because the coaching alliance depends on trust, openness, and transparency. Coaches can create a holding environment that helps clients explore who they are and how they show up with others (Jackson, 2019).

Research directly examining how coaches cultivate clients’ authenticity is limited. Most studies focus on authenticity inside the coaching relationship itself—respect, absence of pressure, presence, and honest feedback (Jackson, 2019).

Jackson’s work on women in the workplace highlights how context shapes authenticity. Key environmental factors include:

• Degree of trust
• Power dynamics and organizational politics
• Level of challenge
• Whether assumptions are questioned
• Courage to risk failure or difference

Coaches can help clients understand, reframe, and negotiate these aspects of their environment. As one interviewee put it, a coach is “someone to reflect with… who helps me clarify the issue and decide what I can do” (Jackson, 2019).

Psychologists also note that authenticity feels natural early in life—“we are born authentic”—but socialization and context can erode that state (Joseph, 2019). Coaching supports clients in recovering balance between self-expression and relational responsibilities, helping them move toward self-actualization.

How Can We Find Our Authentic Self?

According to Joseph (2019), coaching for authenticity focuses on increasing self-knowledge and ownership so people can live more genuinely. Living authentically is not about avoiding hardship; it’s about being present, self-aware, and aligned with your values even when things are difficult.

A practical approach involves reducing environmental blockers and spending more time in supportive contexts. The following three steps, adapted from Joseph (2019), guide that work:

1. Know yourself
   Explore internal and external barriers that restrict authenticity. Identify actions to remove or lessen these obstacles.
2. Own yourself
   Accept responsibility for your thoughts, feelings, choices, and behaviour—past and present—so you can make intentional changes.
3. Be yourself
   Experiment with lived expressions of your values and strengths; practice new ways of being that reflect who you truly are.

As Martin Seligman (2011) argued, authentic happiness grows when you identify core strengths and use them regularly across work, relationships, play, and parenting.

Sally Jackson (2019) summarizes authenticity as congruence between values and actions and suggests authentic relationships are mutually respectful and non-exploitative. In short, authenticity is being true to yourself within the reality of your relationships and environment.

Download 3 Free Happiness Exercises (PDF)

These practical, science-based exercises can help you or your clients explore authentic happiness and build subjective wellbeing. Use them to practice awareness, identify values, and strengthen daily habits that support authenticity.

9 Questions to Ask Your Clients

Self-reflection is a core skill for authenticity and for strengthening self-knowledge (Fleming, 2021). Coaches can use questions in sessions or as homework to prompt reflection about how clients think, feel, and act.

Below are practical prompts adapted from Joseph (2019) to help clients explore authenticity.

Relationship authenticity

Ask a client to pick three significant relationships (partner, parent, child, colleague). For each relationship, ask:

• Is this relationship meaningful and valuable to you?
• Did you choose to be in this relationship freely?
• Can you truly be yourself in this relationship?
• Do you feel respected and valued here?

Answers can reveal which relationships support authenticity and which may be toxic or limiting.

True to yourself

Invite the client to reflect on moments when they feel most authentic with questions such as:

• When do you feel most true to yourself?
• When do you feel you cannot be real?
• What would you like to do more or less of to feel more authentic?

These reflections guide practical adjustments to daily life and priorities.

The five reasons

Have the client think of a recent situation that went poorly. Ask:

• Why did it go badly?

Then repeat, asking “What other reasons are there?” until you reach five reasons. This iterative probing often uncovers underlying patterns, assumptions, or fears and points to actionable changes.

Top 6 Authentic Self Exercises & Worksheets

There are many evidence-informed exercises that help people reflect and practice authenticity. Below are six practical tools you can use in coaching.

Visualizing Future Events to Build Authenticity

Visualization helps clients rehearse upcoming interactions so they can remain true to their values rather than reacting automatically. Running through scenarios in advance highlights potential pressures and enables a plan for authentic responses (Joseph, 2019).

Writing Your Mission Statement

Creating a personal mission statement clarifies what matters most and provides an anchor for decisions and behavior. A useful template is:

I will [action] for [audience] by [skills] to [desired result].

For example: I will create insightful podcasts for people curious about psychology, using evidence-based content to help them apply science to daily life.

How Joined Up Is Your Life?

This worksheet helps clients map how much of their time is devoted to activities they love and whether they’re using their strengths. The goal is to align daily life with sources of meaning and energy.

Friendship Expectations

Healthy, empathic relationships support authenticity. The Friendship Expectations worksheet helps clients identify the qualities they need in friends and spot relationships that pressure them to be inauthentic.

Relationship Authenticity Checklist

An audit of how honestly a client treats themselves and others can reveal gaps between values and behavior. The checklist encourages courage and practical steps toward more genuine relationships (Joseph, 2019).

Relationship Audit

This worksheet reviews a specific relationship for signs of authenticity, helping clients decide whether to repair, reframe, or reduce contact in relationships that inhibit their true self.

Positive Psychology Toolkit

The Positive Psychology Toolkit© includes hundreds of science-based exercises, assessments, and worksheets designed for practitioners. It is updated regularly and intended to support evidence-informed coaching and therapy.

Authenticity Assessments, Questionnaires, & Scales

Assessment can give useful direction for coaching by highlighting where change is needed.

Authenticity Scale

Susing et al. (2011) note that few instruments measure authenticity directly. The Authenticity Scale (Wood et al., 2008) assesses three core dimensions:

• Self-alienation
• Authentic living
• Accepting external influence

The scale contains 12 items rated on a 7-point Likert scale from 1 (does not describe me) to 7 (describes me very well). Sample items include:

“I think it is better to be yourself than to be popular.”
“I don’t know how I really feel inside.”
“I am true to myself in most situations.”
“I feel out of touch with the ‘real me.’”

The full questionnaire and scoring guidelines are available in the published literature and are useful for both self-report and peer-feedback applications.

How happy/authentic are you?

Joseph (2019) offers a 12-item wellbeing questionnaire that indicates how closely someone’s life aligns with feelings of contentment and autonomy—factors linked with the capacity to be authentic. Responses are scored to indicate current wellbeing levels; lower scores may suggest areas where coaching can support greater authenticity and life satisfaction.

Statement	Scoring
I felt dissatisfied with my life.	Never (3), Rarely (2), Sometimes (1), Often (0)
I felt happy.	Never (0), Rarely (1), Sometimes (2), Often (3)
I felt cheerless.	Never (3), Rarely (2), Sometimes (1), Often (0)
I felt pleased with the way I am.	Never (0), Rarely (1), Sometimes (2), Often (3)
I felt that life was enjoyable.	Never (0), Rarely (1), Sometimes (2), Often (3)
I felt that life was meaningless.	Never (3), Rarely (2), Sometimes (1), Often (0)
I felt content.	Never (0), Rarely (1), Sometimes (2), Often (3)
I felt tense.	Never (3), Rarely (2), Sometimes (1), Often (0)
I felt calm.	Never (0), Rarely (1), Sometimes (2), Often (3)
I felt relaxed.	Never (0), Rarely (1), Sometimes (2), Often (3)
I felt upset.	Never (3), Rarely (2), Sometimes (1), Often (0)
I felt worried.	Never (3), Rarely (2), Sometimes (1), Often (0)

Scores below certain thresholds may indicate current difficulties; higher scores suggest stronger wellbeing and a greater likelihood of feeling able to be oneself. Joseph (2019) treats this as an indicator of wellbeing linked to authenticity rather than a direct authenticity measure.

17 Exercises To Increase Happiness and Wellbeing

This collection contains validated exercises designed to boost purpose, meaning, and positive emotion—useful resources for helping clients pursue authentic happiness.

PositivePsychology.com’s Useful Resources

Our site offers many downloadable worksheets and exercises to help clients deepen self-awareness, clarify values, and set goals aligned with their authentic selves. Examples include:

• Self-Awareness Worksheet for Adults — 15 prompts that explore capabilities, traits, and life experiences.
• Who Am I? — Exercises that consider identity from different perspectives and time frames.
• Your Core Values Worksheet — A guided activity for identifying the values central to one’s identity.
• Setting Valued Goals — Tools to help clients translate values into practical, motivating goals.

If you want additional evidence-based exercises, consider collections of validated happiness and wellbeing activities to support authentic living and purposeful action.

A Take-Home Message

Being authentic is essential to mental wellbeing but not always easy. External pressures, workplace cultures, and unhealthy relationships can push people away from their true selves (Susing et al., 2011).

Recovering and strengthening authenticity requires self-knowledge, courage, and consistent practice. Coaching supports that journey by clarifying values and goals, providing reflective space, and helping clients navigate environments that either enable or block authenticity (Jackson, 2019).

Measures, exercises, and reflective worksheets can guide clients to reconnect with their values, reduce protective façades, and build deeper, more genuine connections. With practice, authenticity fosters greater fulfillment, healthier relationships, and increased wellbeing.

We hope you found this article useful. For practical tools, you can download our five positive psychology tools for free.