The gold standards of personality science are coming to Esperto
Coming soon to a coaching practice near you. Popcorn optional, evidence included.
The Big Five (IPIP-NEO-120) and HEXACO: the two most researched personality frameworks in psychology, rebuilt as clean, coach-ready assessments.
If you are a coach, trainer or HR professional, you know the feeling: type-based tools spark great conversations, but some engagements call for instruments with serious scientific weight behind them. That is exactly what we are building next. Join the waitlist to get early access and an exclusive launch discount when we go live. Your signup also tells us which assessment to ship first, so choose wisely.
You asked for tools you can defend in the boardroom. We listened.
Coaches, trainers and HR professionals keep telling us the same thing: conversation-starter tools are wonderful, but some engagements call for instruments with real scientific weight behind them. So we are bringing the two most respected frameworks in personality psychology to the platform you already know, built the Esperto way.
Bulletproof science
Both assessments build on the International Personality Item Pool, the open scientific backbone behind hundreds of peer-reviewed studies. When an HR director asks "is this validated?", you can answer with a straight face and a reference list.
Depth you can coach with
Facet-level reports written for development conversations, not labels. No four-letter boxes, no good or bad scores. Just an honest, nuanced picture your client will actually recognize.
The Esperto way
Pay-as-you-go, no subscription, no certification gate. Reports land in your portal instantly, data is hosted in the Netherlands, and you stay the strategist in every debrief.
The scientific foundation every coaching toolkit deserves
The Big Five is the undisputed reference model of personality psychology: five broad domains, confirmed across decades of research, cultures and languages. Our implementation builds on the IPIP-NEO-120, an open scientific inventory of 120 items that maps not just the five domains but all 30 underlying facets. Your client completes it in roughly 15 minutes and receives a personalized, percentile-based report written for development conversations. No boxes, no labels, no pop-science shortcuts. Just the model the rest of the industry quietly benchmarks itself against.
The five domains (and the depth beneath them)
Openness to Experience
Imagination, curiosity and appetite for ideas; how a client responds to change, complexity and new perspectives.
Conscientiousness
Discipline, structure and follow-through; how goals get set, pursued and sometimes over-managed.
Extraversion
Energy, assertiveness and social drive; where a client draws energy and how they show up in a room.
Agreeableness
Cooperation, trust and consideration; how a client balances their own agenda with the people around them.
Emotional Reactivity
Also known as Neuroticism; how strongly a client responds to stress, pressure and setbacks, and how quickly they recover.
Unmatched depth: 30 facets
Every domain breaks into six facets. Two clients with the same Conscientiousness score can be completely different coachees; the facets show you exactly how.
What this gives you as a coach
- A defensible answer when a client's HR director asks "is this actually validated?"
- Facet-level nuance: two clients with identical domain scores can need completely different coaching.
- Percentile feedback against research norm groups, not arbitrary cut-offs or invented types.
- Development-first language throughout: no good or bad scores, no labels to argue with.
- A natural pairing with the Enneagram Assessment: motivation from one lens, measured traits from the other.
The missing link for leadership and executive coaching
Most personality science fits comfortably into five factors. Two decades of lexical research across languages say there is a sixth: Honesty-Humility. Sincerity, fairness, modesty and a healthy relationship with status and reward. It is the integrity factor the Big Five never isolated, and in a corporate world of ESG scrutiny, trust-based leadership and ethics on every board agenda, it is the conversation executive coaches keep getting pulled into. Our implementation builds on the IPIP-HEXACO item pool, the open scientific counterpart of Ashton and Lee's HEXACO model, so you can finally bring that conversation a proper instrument.
Six letters. One big difference.
Honesty-Humility
The headline act: sincerity, fairness, modesty and how a leader relates to status, reward and privilege. The dimension boards keep asking about.
Emotionality
Sensitivity, vigilance and need for support; how a leader experiences risk and stays connected under pressure.
eXtraversion
Social self-esteem, boldness and liveliness; how a leader takes space, holds it, and energizes a room.
Agreeableness
Patience, forgiveness and flexibility; how a leader handles friction, criticism and being wronged.
Conscientiousness
Organization, diligence, perfectionism and prudence; how the work actually gets done, and at what cost.
Openness to Experience
Curiosity, creativity and unconventionality; a leader's appetite for the new, the untested and the uncomfortable.
Where it will earn its keep
- Leadership and executive coaching where integrity, ethics and trust are explicitly on the agenda.
- Succession and high-potential development, when character matters as much as competence.
- Founder and board work, where self-awareness about status, ambition and negotiation style pays off fastest.
- As a second lens next to the Big Five, whenever the sixth dimension changes the conversation.
Early access, an exclusive launch discount, and a say in what ships first
Sign up now to get early access and an exclusive launch discount when we go live. Your signup is also a vote: it tells us which assessment coaches want first, and how fast we should be moving. Consider it the most productive thirty seconds of your week.
Early access
Be first through the door when the suite opens, before the public launch and before your competitors have even heard of it.
Exclusive launch discount
A waitlist-only discount on your first assessments when we go live. Our thank-you for backing the build early.
A say in the launch
Tell us whether Big Five or HEXACO should ship first. The waitlist is the roadmap; you are holding the pen.
No spam, and no sequels nobody asked for. Expect a handful of emails around launch. Unsubscribe anytime.
Frequently asked questions
When will the Big Five and HEXACO assessments launch?
Both are in active development. We would rather not promise a date and miss it; what we can promise is that waitlist members hear first, get early access before the public launch, and receive an exclusive launch discount. The size of the waitlist also helps us decide which assessment ships first.
What will they cost?
The same model as every Esperto assessment: pay-as-you-go per assessment, with no subscription and no platform fee. Exact rates are announced at launch, and waitlist members receive an exclusive launch discount on top.
Are these the official Big Five and HEXACO tests?
They are built on the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), the open scientific item bank used in hundreds of peer-reviewed studies. The Big Five assessment uses the IPIP-NEO-120 inventory; the HEXACO assessment uses the IPIP-HEXACO item pool, the open counterpart of the HEXACO model developed by Ashton and Lee. They are not the commercial NEO-PI-R or HEXACO-PI-R, which are proprietary instruments. They are scientifically grounded open alternatives, and that openness is exactly what makes them affordable to deploy at coaching scale.
What is the difference between the Big Five and HEXACO?
The Big Five gives you the deepest picture of personality available: five domains and thirty facets, ideal as the scientific backbone of any coaching engagement. HEXACO reorganizes the trait space into six dimensions and adds Honesty-Humility, the integrity factor, which makes it especially valuable for leadership and executive coaching. Many coaches will use the Big Five as their default and reach for HEXACO when integrity, ethics and leadership character are explicitly on the agenda.
Do I need to be certified to use them?
No. In line with the rest of the Esperto catalog, you will be able to deploy both directly with your clients. Each assessment comes with coach support materials: a crash course, a debrief guide and suggested debrief questions, so you can run a confident first session from day one.
Can I use them with teams?
The reports are individual by design; that is where the depth lives. Many coaches run them across a leadership team or cohort and debrief the results together, which works very well. If you have a specific team use case in mind, reply to any of our waitlist emails and tell us about it; it lands directly with the people building the suite.
In which languages will they be available?
English first. As with our other assessments, additional languages follow demand, so if your practice needs one, let us know when you join the waitlist.
What happens after I join the waitlist?
You get a confirmation, and then silence until there is real news. Expect a handful of emails in total: an early access invitation, the launch announcement with your discount, and possibly one sneak preview of the sample reports. Unsubscribe anytime.
The trailer is over. Reserve your seat.
You have seen what is coming: the Big Five with its thirty-facet depth, and HEXACO with the integrity factor executive coaching has been waiting for. The build is underway, and the waitlist decides the running order. Join now, be first through the door, and keep your exclusive launch discount ready for opening night. Prefer to talk it through first? A discovery call works too.