Communication instrument · Dual-axis assessment

Communication
Field Profile

Seven dimensions of communication style — rated twice. Once for how you naturally operate. Once for how your organisation operates. The gap between the two is often where the real difficulty lives.

42
Items
7
Dimensions
2
Axes per dimension
~18
Minutes
← All instruments What it is

A map of how you communicate — and how your organisation does

Most of what organisations describe as communication difficulties are not problems of skill or intention. People are not failing to communicate because they lack the ability. They are failing because they are communicating in fundamentally different ways — and neither party can quite see it.

The Communication Field Profile maps seven dimensions of how people communicate and function in organisational life: how explicitly meaning is conveyed, how directly difficult things are named, how authority shapes who speaks and what can be said, how trust is formed, how disagreement is handled, how structure shapes interaction, and where decisions are made and communicated.

Each dimension is rated twice — once for how the individual naturally operates, and once for how their current organisation actually functions. The result is two profiles on the same map: the person's formation and the organisation's operating reality. The gap between them, across each dimension, is where communication breakdown most often lives — not because anyone is doing something wrong, but because two different communication systems are meeting without realising it.

The dual-axis design

Formation and Organisation — rated separately

Every item in the CFP is rated twice. First for Formation — how you naturally communicate, the style that feels native to you, the pattern formed through experience and early relational context. Then for Organisation — how your current organisational environment actually communicates, as you observe and experience it.

This dual-axis design is the instrument's distinctive contribution. A single-axis communication profile tells you where someone sits. The CFP tells you where they sit, where their organisation sits, and the size and direction of the gap between them. That gap is not merely interesting. It is the lived experience of communication misfit — and one of the most common sources of friction, exhaustion, and disengagement in organisational life that goes unnamed because both parties assume the other is communicating the same way they are.

Seven dimensions

What the CFP measures

Explicitness
Explicit ↔ Contextual
Where meaning lives — whether it is stated directly or carried in shared context, relationship history, and what is understood without being spoken.
Directness
Direct ↔ Indirect
How difficult things move through the system — whether hard truths, criticism, and uncomfortable observations are handled directly or managed around.
Authority
Flat ↔ Layered
How hierarchy shapes communication — who speaks, what can be said, and what never gets said in the presence of authority.
Trust Formation
Task-based ↔ Relational
What needs to exist before real communication becomes possible — whether trust is built through the work or must precede it.
Disagreement
Expressive ↔ Contained
What the system does with conflict — whether disagreement is expressed when it arises or held until it can no longer be contained.
Structure
Structured ↔ Fluid
How form and time shape communication — whether structure enables or constrains what gets said.
Decision Making
Autonomous ↔ Authorised
Where decisions are made and communicated — whether the right to act belongs to the person closest to the work or must be granted from above.
Theoretical background

What it is built on

Primary framework
Communication culture theory
Drawing on intercultural communication research — Hall's high/low context distinction, Hofstede's power distance, and the accumulated evidence base on how communication style shapes organisational function and dysfunction.
Organisational lens
Systems Psychodynamics
The insight that communication style in organisations is never merely personal — it is shaped by the anxiety, authority structure, and relational field of the system itself. The CFP holds both the person and the system simultaneously.
Design principle
The gap is the data
The most clinically useful finding from the CFP is rarely the absolute position on any dimension. It is the size and direction of the gap between Formation and Organisation. Large gaps are where friction, misread signals, and exhaustion live.
Report generation
AI narrative
The individual report includes an AI-generated narrative that reads the seven dimensions as an integrated profile — naming the combinations that carry most significance and the gaps that are likely to cost most in the current context.
The report

What you receive

CFP
The Communication Field Profile Report
Emailed immediately on completion · AI-generated narrative
01
Visual profile
Seven dimension scales showing your Formation (F) and Organisation (O) positions, with the gap between them highlighted
02
Dimension interpretations
What each dimension score means — for Formation and Organisation separately, and for the gap between them
03
Integrative narrative
An AI-generated reading of the profile as a whole — the combinations that matter most, the gaps most likely to cost, and what they suggest about the current communication context
04
Questions for reflection
Grounded in your specific profile — not generic communication questions

Access through the practitioner portal

The CFP is available to registered practitioners through the Inner Authority Suite portal. Register or sign in to add clients and send instruments.

How to read this report

Look first at the dimensions with the largest gaps between your Formation and Organisation scores. These are the dimensions where your natural communication style and your organisation's operating culture are furthest apart — and where friction, misread signals, and quiet exhaustion most often live.

The gaps do not mean something is wrong. They mean two communication systems are meeting without realising it. The most useful question is not who needs to change — it is what each party assumes the other understands, and what has never been made explicit.

This report was generated by AI from your responses. The integrative narrative reads your Formation and Organisation profiles together, identifies the most significant gaps, and opens the questions most worth bringing into your facilitated session.