Ten instruments. Six theoretical traditions. One question.
A score tells you what someone does. It says nothing about why — about the belief system operating beneath the behaviour, or what happens to authority and self-expression when the pressure rises.
The Inner Authority Suite was built to map that architecture.
The most important data in any leadership or coaching engagement is qualitative, contextual, and often invisible — not because it is hidden, but because most tools are not built to surface it.
When a senior leader discovers that a significant portion of their relational energy goes into reading whether the people above them are satisfied — and that this has been true since long before they became a leader — that is data. When a coach sees that someone's Adult function contracts under emotional pressure in ways that produce a certainty that looks like leadership but isn't — that is data. When a team sees, collectively, how each person's schema shapes what they can and cannot bring into the room — that is data.
Numbers can carry these insights, but they do not generate them. The insight comes from the framework through which the profile is interpreted, and from the quality of the conversation that follows. The Inner Authority Suite provides the framework.
"The profile is a starting point for a conversation, not a conclusion about a person."
The suite draws on six bodies of thought that together shift the question from what kind of person is this? to how is this person organising themselves in relation to authority, role, anxiety, and relationship?
No single tradition produces this picture alone. The combination is the framework. Each tradition contributes something the others cannot.
TA gives us the live phenomenology — what is happening in this person, in this room, now. Systems psychodynamics gives us the organisational context that produces and maintains those patterns. Attachment theory gives us the developmental history through which the patterns were formed. Schema theory gives us the specific constructional framework — the twelve belief patterns in the RAP and RSP are schemas in Young's sense: cognitive-relational templates formed through early relational experience, identifiable by their present-day structure, and amenable to change through facilitated reflection. Relational analysis holds all of this within an intersubjective frame — the reminder that what the profile shows is always shaped by the relationship in which it is being interpreted. Culture theory adds the final dimension: the recognition that what looks like an individual's difficulty with communication or authority is often a mismatch between their formation and the cultural field of the system they now inhabit — a gap that Schein and Meyer's work makes visible and nameable.
Together they produce a picture of authority, self-expression, and relational organisation that no single tradition reaches. That is not theoretical eclecticism. Each tradition contributes something the others cannot, and the combination is what the Inner Authority Suite was built to hold.
Maps the patterns that shape how you lead — how you hold authority, care for others, set standards, bring energy, and manage yourself under pressure. The starting point for most practitioners working with the suite. Grounded in Transactional Analysis, the theory of ego states developed by Eric Berne.
The 360 companion to the IAP. Invite colleagues to describe how they experience your leadership — generating a picture of how you land from the outside. Responses are completely anonymous. The gap between how you see yourself and how others experience you is often where the most useful work begins. Uses the same Transactional Analysis framework as the IAP.
Maps twelve patterns that shape how you relate to people at work — particularly around authority, trust, and how you respond when things get difficult. These patterns form through experience and tend to operate below the surface of everyday behaviour. Grounded in schema theory, developed by Jeffrey Young from Aaron Beck's cognitive work.
Ten open questions that bring into view what is harder to see directly — what you react strongly to in others, what you have set aside to function in your role, and where the demands of your organisation conflict with who you actually are. Written responses, qualitative report. Facilitated use only. Grounded in Jung's concept of the shadow — the parts of the self that remain outside conscious awareness.
Completed before a leadership development session or coaching engagement. Participants examine the model of leadership they carry internally, clarify what actually drives them, and identify the patterns in how they lead. Generates a personalised report to bring into the session. Draws on Transactional Analysis, values psychology, and systems psychodynamic thinking.
The companion to the IAP for personal life. Maps the same six patterns — but in the context of close relationships, care, conflict, and how you express yourself outside of work. For use in therapy, coaching, and personal development. Grounded in Transactional Analysis ego state theory, applied to relational and personal life.
A companion to the PAP. The client's partner responds to the same 54 questions — reframed as an outside perspective. Both names appear in every question. The gap between how a client sees themselves and how their partner experiences them is often where the most important relational work begins. Uses the Transactional Analysis framework of the PAP.
Designed for facilitated therapeutic and coaching contexts only. Report goes to practitioner. Not for unsupported use.
Maps twelve patterns that shape how people organise themselves in their closest relationships — around trust, dependency, conflict, emotional needs, and what they expect from a partner. Grounded in schema theory (Jeffrey Young) and attachment theory (John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth); written in plain language.
Most communication difficulties are problems of mismatch — between how someone naturally communicates and what their organisation actually rewards or expects. The CFP maps seven dimensions of communication and shows where your natural style fits your organisation's culture, and where it doesn't. Draws on the culture theory of Edgar Schein and the communication frameworks of Erin Meyer.
Communication difficulties are rarely skill problems. They are fit problems — and fit can be named, mapped, and worked with.
Twelve short scenarios across four pressure types — ambiguity, loss, conflict, and dependency. Reveals what tends to happen when difficulty reaches you as a leader: whether you hold it, absorb it, redirect it, or pass it on. Produces a pressure map and characteristic move. The most advanced instrument in the suite. Grounded in Wilfred Bion's theory of containment and systems psychodynamic thinking.
The suite is designed to be used selectively — one or two instruments matched to the work, rather than all ten applied to every engagement. These groupings are a starting point.
For leadership development programmes where understanding how participants lead — not just how they behave — is central to the design.
For one-to-one coaching where understanding the psychological architecture beneath the presenting issue is the goal.
For coaching and therapy where the focus is on intimate life, close relationships, or personal development rather than professional role.
For OD practitioners and consultants working at a systemic level — with teams, cultures, and organisations under pressure.
For experienced practitioners working with an individual over time — where the surface patterns have been mapped and the work is moving into what drives them.
A short orientation to the suite — what each instrument covers, when to use it, and how to sequence them across an engagement.
Read the guide →The Inner Authority Suite was developed by Hough Associates — a systems psychodynamic practice founded by Trevor Hough, Clinical Psychologist and Organisation Development Consultant, working across leadership development, executive coaching, and organisational change.
The practice works primarily with senior leaders and leadership teams in financial services and complex organisations, and with coaches, therapists, and OD practitioners who want access to a psychodynamically rigorous framework for development work.
houghassociates.co.za ↗The instruments are not self-interpreting. Each profile is designed to be worked with in a facilitated conversation by someone who understands the theoretical framework it draws on. The interpretations open questions — they do not deliver conclusions.
What follows describes how three distinct practitioner groups are using the suite and how it maps onto work they are already doing. If you are a coach, OD consultant, or therapist and want to understand whether the suite fits your practice, this is written for you.
If you work in the Tavistock or group relations tradition, the IAP and RAP will feel like home. The ego state framework and the schema constructs map directly onto what you are already observing in leadership teams — the split between role-as-given and role-as-taken-up, the systemic production of anxiety, the patterns that persist regardless of who holds the role.
The suite gives you a structured instrument where previously you were working purely from observation and consultation. It makes the below-surface legible to clients who need more than a here-and-now interpretation to carry learning back into the organisation.
The IAP and RAP together produce a picture of a leader that most 360-degree instruments cannot reach: not just how they are perceived, but how they are psychologically organised — what is driving the patterns that show up under pressure. The gap between what the IAP shows and what the 360 Mirror shows is often where the most important coaching work begins.
The suite is not a coaching framework. It is data for a coaching conversation — the kind of data that shifts what gets said in the room, because it names what both coach and client could feel but not quite see.
The PAP and RSP were developed in response to demand from practitioners working in personal and therapeutic contexts. The ego state and schema constructs are the same as the leadership instruments — reframed entirely for personal life, close relationships, care, and self-expression.
Practitioners familiar with attachment theory and relational psychoanalytic thinking will find the constructs immediately recognisable. The instruments do not use clinical language; they use phenomenological language that clients can sit with and return to without a therapist present to interpret.
The Inner Authority Suite is not a psychometric instrument in the conventional sense. It has not been subjected to large-scale validation studies. It does not produce normative scores. It cannot tell you whether someone is fit for a role.
It produces a structured map of psychological patterns — designed to generate insight in a facilitated context. The quality of that insight depends on the quality of the framework through which the profile is held, and the quality of the conversation that follows.
This is not a limitation. It is the design principle. The instruments are built around the premise that the most useful data is not a score but a question — and that the right question, asked at the right moment, moves things that a score never could.
Most psychometric instruments bury their ethical positioning in small print. The Inner Authority Suite treats it as a design principle. The decisions about what the instruments should not be used for were made before any item was written — and they shape the instrument at every level, from the items themselves to the interpretations to the reporting format.
These are not disclaimers. They are the conditions under which the suite does what it is designed to do.
All instruments are available now through the Inner Authority Suite practitioner portal. Registered psychologists and registered psychotherapists may begin using the suite within their professional practice immediately. OD consultants, executive coaches, and other practitioners are invited to register and discuss whether the suite fits their theoretical orientation and practice context.
Register as a practitioner →