Assessment Tool
The Time Communication Assessment is an online tool consisting of 18 statements that gauges pattern of thought and quickly defines habitual preferences on how your brain processes information and therefore how you communicate:
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- How you manage time
- How you handle conflict
- How you build relationships
- How you lead
- How you apologize
- How you provide and receive feedback from others
- How you eat, drive, and dress
Basically, how you function within YOUR individual world. We are built to survive based on emotional safety. As we grow through adolescence into adulthood our decision-making skills are solidified based on both genetic and environmental influences. As our brains develop, we create natural coping mechanisms and preferences to meet the perceived needs of our environment. These preferences become our instinctual “comfort zones.”
Genetic vs. Life Experience
The Assessment Tool measures and ranks four (4) processes based on genetics and life experience.
Genetic processes: How you perceive the world around you
1. Focused – you see what’s right in front of you with a laser focus
2. Diffused – you take in the entirety of the environment around you
Life Experience processes: How you view life events
3. Continuous – creates relational connections between individual events
4. Discontinuous – disconnects individual events without necessitating relevance
Analysis Report
The Assessment analyzes and quantifies individual outcomes utilizing a 0 – 45 point spectrum for each process and builds a quadrant map based on four primary Communication Styles: Producer, Teamist, Imaginist, and Analyst. Each person has access to the entire spectrum, with natural tendencies to fall into a “comfort zone”. An Analysis Report is created and includes the individual’s quadrant map with a breakdown of their scores in each style, a customized summary of their primary communication style(s), and a summary of combination tendencies based on their scores.
According to the polyvagal theory, shifts in your autonomic nervous system produce three elementary states: rest-and-digest (social and safe), fight-or-flight (mobilization), or shutdown (immobilization). ILD’s Assessment Tool further evaluates results based on your “relaxed” state (your natural at-ease state free from tension and anxiety) vs. your “pressure” state (how you adapt to your environment when under time pressure) to determine your Communication Style shifts based on the polyvagal theory.
Sample Report
Backed by Brain-Science
ILD’s proprietary Assessment Tool, Time Communication Assessment, is backed by brain science and has been vetted by Dr. Christian A. Meissner Ph.D., Behavioral Research Psychologist and Professor of Psychology at Iowa State University. Widely published and funded by the National Science Dr. Meissner has conducted research in facial recognition and interrogation techniques. He has trained law enforcement, military, and intelligence personnel in behavioral psychology for more than 15 years. Dr. Meissner worked with ILD to assess reliability and validity on ILD’s Time Communication Assessment Tool and confirmed the results to be 95% reliable and valid.
About Dr. Christian A. Meissner, Ph.D.
Christian Meissner is Professor of Psychology at Iowa State University. He holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive & Behavioral Science from Florida State University and conducts empirical studies in applied cognition, including the role of memory, attention, perception, and decision processes in real world tasks such as eyewitness identification, forensic interviewing, deception detection, legal decision making, and comparative forensic sciences. He has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and his research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security. From 2010-2012, he served as Program Director of Law & Social Sciences at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Meissner is currently President of the Society for Applied Research in Memory & Cognition, and is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Psychonomic Society.
Everyone Is a JERK to Someone, Every Day
Painless Ways to Improve Communication with Individuals and Teams
Written by Rebecca M. Rhodes
Who Sounds More Like a Jerk to You?
Someone who hangs up before you are done talking.
Someone who stares out the window when you are speaking.
Someone who won’t let you forget your past mistakes.
Someone who justifies everything in response to a question.

We tend to judge ourselves by our intentions, while judging others by their actions. This often leads us to one thought... “Jerk!”
In Everyone Is a Jerk to Someone Every Day, communication expert and ILD President, Rebecca Rhodes, uses the Breakthrough Communication Model to explain how perceptions lead to misunderstandings that can be easily avoided.