How to Read Your Communication Ability Results: What Each of the 11 Dimensions Actually Tells You

Communication ability isn't one thing. The CommStyle Communication Ability Assessment measures 11 distinct dimensions, each reflecting a different aspect of how effectively you connect, influence, and collaborate with others.

This guide explains how to interpret each dimension, what the combination of your scores reveals about your communication profile, and where your highest-leverage development opportunities are.

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How to Read Your Scores

Higher scores are generally better, but context matters, since effective communication is always contextual and what serves well in one situation may be less effective in another. Your score profile is most useful as a map of relative strengths and development areas, not as an absolute ranking.

And the dimensions interact, since no dimension functions in isolation, high logical thinking with low empathy can produce technically correct communication that fails relationally, while high influence with low self-expression can produce effective persuasion that lacks authenticity.

Interpersonal Anxiety and Self-Expression

Interpersonal Anxiety measures the degree to which anxiety about social evaluation interferes with your communication.

Lower scores indicate you communicate relatively freely in most social situations; higher scores indicate that social evaluation concerns are a meaningful constraint in at least some situations, which is more common than most people assume, with research estimating that approximately 40 percent of adults experience significant communication anxiety in at least some social contexts.^[1] Development direction: cognitive-behavioral approaches, cognitive restructuring combined with gradual behavioral exposure, have the strongest evidence base for reducing interpersonal anxiety.

Self-Expression measures your ability to express thoughts, feelings, and perspectives clearly and authentically.

Higher scores mean others receive an accurate picture of your perspective; lower scores mean your views and reactions remain unclear to others, or communicate something different from what you intend.

Development direction: practice sharing one layer more of your genuine reaction than feels automatically comfortable, starting in lower-stakes relationships.

Listening, Nonverbal Communication, and Empathy

Listening Ability measures the quality of attention and comprehension you bring to others' communication.

Higher scores mean people tend to feel genuinely heard when talking with you; lower scores mean you may be more focused on what you'll say next than on fully receiving what's being said, one of the most common communication weaknesses and one of the highest-leverage development areas.

Development direction: practice "listening-first" responses, summarizing or reflecting what you heard before offering your own perspective.

Nonverbal Communication measures your awareness and management of nonverbal signals, facial expression, tone, pacing, body language, and your ability to read these in others.

Higher scores mean you're attuned to nonverbal channels and use them congruently with your verbal communication; lower scores mean you may rely primarily on verbal content and be less aware of how your nonverbal signals are received.

Development direction: video recording of practice conversations makes visible things that are invisible from inside the interaction.

Empathy and Perspective-Taking measures your ability to understand others' perspectives, feelings, and frames of reference accurately.

Higher scores mean you're skilled at understanding how situations look and feel from another person's position, underlying effective listening, conflict resolution, and relationship maintenance; lower scores mean you may tend to stay more closely anchored in your own perspective.

Development direction: practice "perspective-taking pauses," before responding in significant conversations, asking yourself what the situation looks like from their side.

Logical Thinking, Persuasiveness, and Influence

Logical Thinking and Structure measures your ability to organize and present ideas in a clear, coherent, followable sequence.

Higher scores mean your communication is clear and well-organized, a significant professional asset; lower scores mean your ideas may be clear to you but harder for others to follow, a common and highly trainable gap.

Development direction: practice explicit signposting, telling your listener the structure before delivering the content.

Persuasiveness measures your ability to move others toward your position through legitimate means, evidence, reasoning, narrative, and interpersonal credibility.

Higher scores mean people find your communication compelling and credible; lower scores mean your communication may be clear but not particularly influential.

Development direction: research on persuasion identifies reliably effective principles, reciprocity, social proof, authority, and consistency, that can be incorporated intentionally without manipulation.^[2]

Influence and Impact measures the accumulated effect of your communication over time, the standing you develop that determines how much weight your communication carries.

Higher scores mean people pay attention and are genuinely moved by your communication over repeated interactions; lower scores mean your communication, however individually competent, doesn't accumulate into standing that shapes outcomes.

Development direction: influence builds through consistent quality of communication over time and genuine understanding of others' interests, not through isolated technique.

Flexibility, Assertiveness, and Conflict Management

Flexibility and Adaptability measures your ability to adjust your communication style to different audiences, contexts, and situations.

Higher scores mean you naturally modulate your language, tone, and approach to fit the person you're communicating with, one of the most broadly useful communication competencies; lower scores mean your communication style may be relatively consistent across contexts, effective with some audiences and less so with others.

Assertive Communication measures your ability to express genuine opinions, needs, and limits clearly and directly, without aggression or excessive self-suppression.

Higher scores mean you express yourself directly and confidently; lower scores mean you may tend toward over-accommodation, agreeing when you disagree or staying silent when you have something important to say, which research consistently finds associated with higher stress and lower relationship satisfaction.

Development direction: assertiveness is a learnable behavioral skill, combining cognitive work challenging the beliefs that suppress assertive expression with behavioral practice starting in lower-stakes situations.^[3]

Conflict Management Communication measures your ability to engage with disagreement in ways that address the issue, maintain the relationship, and work toward resolution.

Higher scores mean conflict gets addressed and resolved in ways that strengthen rather than damage relationships; lower scores mean conflict either escalates or goes unaddressed, both of which accumulate costs over time.

Development direction: research on conflict communication finds that the manner of engagement, not the presence of conflict, determines whether relationships survive and thrive, and specific patterns like soft startups and genuine listening predict stability.

Reading the Balance: What Your Profile Reveals

The most informative part of your results isn't any single dimension score, it's the relationship between dimensions. Strong logical structure combined with lower listening quality produces communication that's clear but not connecting.

Strong empathy combined with lower assertiveness produces relationships that are pleasant but where important things go unsaid. Reading your profile as a whole, identifying which combinations are most characteristic, points directly toward your highest-leverage development priority.

The goal isn't to maximize every dimension simultaneously, but to identify the specific gap that most limits your effectiveness in your most important communication contexts.

This article was developed with oversight from a Certified Public Psychologist (Japan). It's intended for informational purposes and doesn't constitute clinical advice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which dimensions have the biggest impact on professional success?

Research on communication competency in professional contexts most consistently identifies logical structuring, listening quality, and assertiveness as the dimensions with the broadest professional impact.

However, the highest-leverage dimension for any individual is typically the one where current skill is lowest relative to the demands of their specific role and context.

Is it realistic to develop all 11 dimensions?

Not simultaneously. The most effective development approach is sequential: identify your two or three lowest-scoring dimensions, determine which has the most impact on your current situation, and focus on that dimension for four to six weeks before moving to the next priority.

Trying to develop all 11 at once tends to produce diffuse effort with limited visible progress.

My anxiety scores are high. Does that mean my communication is poor?

Not necessarily. High interpersonal anxiety affects communication quality in some situations but not others, and many people with significant communication anxiety are highly effective communicators in most contexts.

Anxiety and communication ability are distinct, you can have one without the other, and developing either independently produces benefits.