An assessment is kind of like a diagnosis. It can lead to improvement or it can cause harm.

Assessments reveal distinctive aspects of a person's identity, such as discovering your strengths or realizing why other people communicate differently than you do. A diagnosis validates why something about your body or mental health is off. Each produces insight and a sense of relief because a vague experience suddenly has definition.

The way that assessments and diagnoses cause harm is when they draw the wrong conclusions or when the conclusion hampers growth and constrains identity. Labels used in assessments like a "personality type" or labels used in diagnoses like "diabetic" run this risk, which is why in medicine, person-first language doesn't label someone as "diabetic" but refers to them as "a person with diabetes."

Creating an assessment or giving someone a diagnosis involves ethical choices, not just scientific rigor. These ethical considerations shaped the design of the Anchor Relationships assessments, reports, and training programs. Getting the conclusions right requires a methodical validation process, which is underway. And ensuring that the information generated doesn't limit anyone's growth or skew their sense of identity requires designing a human-centered tool.

Below are five ethical guardrails that guide this body of work:

1. NO LIMITING LABELS

One of the first decisions that shaped these assessments was the determination not to create profiles or labels that limit anyone's understanding of what a relationship is and what it can be. Instead, the goal is to surface behavior in a way that gives people choice: a map of what's working and what isn't. As a result, people can decide whether to strengthen a relationship or rely on it less.

The Anchor Relationships framework shows how a relationship performs across three qualities: how each person supports the other's growth, strengthens their self-efficacy, and helps them access and act on their values. Within each of these qualities are three specific dimensions, creating nine measures of relationship quality.

People discover how their choices and their partner's choices contribute to each person's well-being or undermine it. Then they can decide whether they want to invest more in that relationship or less. In the process, most people realize they have more choices about each workplace relationship than they previously knew was possible.

2. WORKPLACE ONLY

Relationships are complex and diverse. Romantic relationships and platonic friendships carry nuanced cultural norms and boundaries. Therefore, the Anchor Relationships assessments are workplace-only and that constraint is managed through design.

The very first question in each assessment asks people to choose a relationship to assess and offers three choices: 1) a relationship with someone who has greater authority than you; 2) a relationship with a peer; or 3) a relationship with someone who has less authority. This single question ensures that each person is only assessing a workplace relationship and it captures whether an imbalance of authority is part of the relationship structure.

3. WORKING WITH A TRAINED EXPERT

Individuals are not able to purchase an assessment directly from the site unless they are enrolled in an Anchor Relationships training program or working with a coach. There are many reasons for this but the most important reason is ethical: ensuring that this information doesn't harm an individual or anyone they work with.

Assessing any relationship is inherently complex. People bring different aspects of themselves to each relationship and sometimes one person is more invested than the other. Analyzing what's happening below the surface can make a vague sense of unease uncomfortably clear. Likewise, an assumption that a relationship is going well might be proven wrong with objective data.

For these reasons and others, all Anchor Relationships assessments are administered by an expert who can help people make the most productive use of what they discover.

4. FACE-VALID AND BEHAVIOR-BASED

While a trained coach administers the assessment, it's still important that everyone can make sense of the findings. Therefore, assessment questions and reports are designed to be face-valid, meaning that the information makes sense on the surface and you don't need to be a scientist to understand it.

Behavior-based means that the majority of questions and insights stem from how each person behaves toward the other. Behaviors can often be observed and improved, which gives people a sense that they have some degree of control over their relationships.

5. PROMOTING RELATIONAL LITERACY

The language most people use to discern relationships is surprisingly simple: they use words like good or bad, positive or corrosive. These terms are opaque, meaning that they don't expand or deepen anyone's knowledge of what's happening in a relationship and what their choices are.

The most widely known relationship language comes from attachment theory, which says that the amount of felt security people experience in their earliest relationships shapes their ability to form healthy bonds with others. But it doesn't explain what relational behaviors to look for, build, and invest in to create these healthy bonds.

Relational literacy is language that informs meaning-making. It creates knowledge that can be used to discern which relationships to invest in and how to make those investments work.

Each of these five guardrails is designed to widen a person's sense of what's possible, expanding their vocabulary and knowledge of the choices they bring to each relationship. The goal isn't to oversimplify relationships but to create choice through clear, actionable data.

Work gets done through relationships. Each one is different and requires something different from the people in them. Providing choice without judgment gives each person power to create connections that amplify well-being for themselves and for their partner.