How to Use the Communications Styles Quiz to Enhance Coaching Effectiveness
- Kris Abesamis
- Mar 5
- 6 min read
As a coach, your impact grows when you understand not just what your clients say, but how they say it. Talent Transformation’s Communication Styles Quiz gives you a rich, multidimensional view of how your clients express themselves, manage impressions, process emotions, and engage in conversations. This guide will help you explore six core dimensions of communication, each with specific behavioral indicators that reveal your clients’ underlying patterns. By integrating these insights into your coaching sessions, you can empower clients to strengthen relationships, navigate conflict more effectively, and communicate with greater authenticity and confidence.
Why Focus on Communication Styles?
Focusing on communication styles allows you to help your clients better understand how they express themselves, interpret others, and build meaningful influence. The Communication Styles Quiz explores six core dimensions: Expressive, Precise, Verbally Aggressive, Questioning, Emotionally Expressive, and Manipulative, each offering insight into how your clients connect and communicate with others.
By guiding your clients to recognize these patterns, you empower them to refine their messaging, regulate emotional responses, and communicate with greater clarity and confidence. This awareness reduces misunderstandings and fosters more intentional, adaptable conversations, thereby strengthening relationships in both personal and professional settings.
Understanding the Communication Styles Framework
Each communication dimension reveals distinct ways your clients interact with others. Exploring these areas together can deepen self-awareness, enhance adaptability, and foster personal and professional growth.
Expressive
This dimension shows how energetically and openly someone engages in conversation.
Talkative: Speaks frequently and with ease
Humorous: Brings wit and levity to interactions
Conversation-Dominant: Tends to lead or steer discussions
Casual: Prefers a relaxed, informal tone
Coaching insight: Help more expressive clients strike a balance between speaking and listening. Encourage quieter clients to strengthen their verbal confidence.
Precise
This dimension reflects clarity, depth, and logical organization in communication.
Organized: Structures ideas clearly
Reflective: Thinks carefully before speaking
Substantive: Focuses on relevant, meaningful content
Clear-Spoken: Communicates ideas efficiently
Coaching insight: Guide clients who struggle with structure to organize their thoughts. Support detail-oriented clients in shifting fluidly between specifics and broader themes.
Verbally Aggressive
This area reflects how strongly someone asserts ideas and emotions during communication.
Irritable: Quick to express frustration
Forceful: Pushes personal viewpoints strongly
Critical: Tends to offer sharp or diminishing remarks
Detached: Rarely offers encouragement or empathy
Coaching insight: Help more intense communicators reflect on how their tone impacts others. Help gentler communicators find their assertive voice without losing warmth.
Questioning
This dimension reveals how much a person seeks understanding and challenges ideas.
Nonconformist: Questions norms and expectations
Curious: Eager to explore and learn
Debater: Enjoys exchanging and testing ideas
Deep Thinker: Drawn to abstract or philosophical topics
Coaching insight: Help curious clients channel their explorations purposefully. Encourage those less inclined to question to practice inquiry and broaden their perspective.
Emotionally Expressive
This area captures how feelings shape communication.
Heartfelt: Open with emotional expression
Anxious: Frequently expresses concern
Apprehensive: Appears tense in conversations
Reactive: Sensitive to feedback or perceived slights
Coaching insight: Normalize the role of emotions in communication and offer strategies to navigate emotional reactions constructively.
Manipulative
This dimension examines how intentionally someone manages how others perceive them.
Approval-Seeking: Aims to please or gain favor
Charming: Uses magnetism to sway others
Guarded: Keeps thoughts and motives hidden
Selective: Shares information strategically
Coaching insight: Invite clients to explore whether their approach stems from strategy, protection, or habit, and reflect on the impact these choices have on trust and authenticity.
Preparing to Use the Quiz
Take the Quiz Yourself: Learn about the quiz process and report format by taking it yourself. This firsthand experience will help you better understand how to guide your clients and use the report effectively.
Introduce the Quiz to Clients: Explain the quiz's purpose, emphasizing that there are no right or wrong answers. Encourage honest responses to ensure the most accurate and helpful results.
Access Client Reports: Clients can share their reports directly with you or through the Access Client's Quiz Reports feature (https://www.talenttransformation.com/access-clients-quiz-reports-user-guide). Use these reports as a foundation for deeper conversations.
Integrating the Quiz into Your Coaching Practice
Integrating a Communication Styles Quiz into your coaching practice is a powerful way to enhance your client’s interpersonal effectiveness and self-awareness. By approaching this process with care and integrity, you foster trust and empower clients to express themselves more authentically and connect with others more meaningfully.
Start by exploring each client’s unique communication patterns and preferences. The quiz provides valuable insights into their tendencies across six dimensions: Expressive, Precise, Verbally Aggressive, Questioning, Emotionally Expressive, and Manipulative. Thoughtfully weaving these insights into your coaching helps clients recognize their strengths and blind spots, adjust their style to different contexts, and build more impactful relationships. With personalized and ethical guidance, you can help clients apply what you have learned to thrive in both personal and professional interactions, strengthening their confidence and your coaching partnership.
Discuss Preferences to Tailor the Session
Before diving into the communication styles report, begin by asking your clients what they’re most curious to explore. This initial conversation helps clarify their goals—whether they want to understand how they’re perceived, strengthen their influence, or improve key relationships.
Some clients may be responding to specific feedback they’ve received, while others might want to explore how their communication style impacts team dynamics or leadership presence. Inviting them to co-create the agenda not only fosters collaboration but also encourages them to take active ownership of their growth. For example:
A client preparing for a leadership role may want to examine how verbal aggressiveness or impression management shapes their impact on others.
A client navigating personal challenges might focus on emotionality or expressiveness to better understand how they connect with others.
This early dialogue ensures the session focuses on what matters most to the client, making your coaching more relevant and impactful. It also reinforces the idea that coaching is a partnership—supportive, personalized, and client-led.
Personalize the Session Through Dialogue
Begin by inviting reflection:
“Which communication behaviors in your report stood out to you?”
“Have you received feedback—positive or constructive—on any of these behaviors in your work or relationships?”
These questions foster a non-judgmental atmosphere and encourage clients to explore their self-awareness.
Connect Traits to Real-World Impact
Help clients consider how their communication style plays out in everyday interactions:
How might derogatory or non-supportive language affect collaboration or morale?
Do charm and concealing build rapport or create distance and mistrust?
Does argumentativeness come across as confident or combative in different contexts?
Use reflective questions, real-life examples, or role-play to deepen the conversation and uncover patterns.
Set Growth Goals Aligned with Communication Tendencies
Support clients in translating insights into action:
A client high in emotionality might focus on emotional regulation and resilience.
Someone with a low attention to detail may excel at structuring clear and concise communication, especially in writing.
A client scoring high on manipulativeness might aim to develop greater authenticity and transparency in their leadership presence.
By aligning goals with communication patterns, you help clients create sustainable changes that improve both confidence and connection.
Frame Results Positively
When reviewing the Communication Styles Quiz results, it’s important to present each dimension—Expressive, Precise, Verbally Aggressive, Questioning, Emotionally Expressive, and Manipulative—as a source of insight, not as a label or judgment. Emphasize that there are no “good” or “bad” results, only communication tendencies that can be more or less effective depending on the context. For example:
Being highly Expressive can foster enthusiasm and engagement, while a strong Precise style contributes to clear and organized communication.
Traits such as being Verbally Aggressive or Manipulative don’t define a person but highlight patterns that, when recognized, can be shaped into more constructive and intentional interactions.
A strong Questioning style may drive innovation, while being Emotionally Expressive can strengthen empathy and connection.
By focusing on awareness and adaptability, you help clients understand how to use their natural tendencies to enhance communication, strengthen relationships, and achieve greater impact in both personal and professional settings.
Maintain Ethical Practices
When using assessments, it's essential to approach the process thoughtfully and responsibly. Keep these ethical principles in mind:
Respect Confidentiality: Reassure every client that their information will remain private unless they explicitly grant permission to share it.
Avoid Stereotyping: Treat results as starting points for exploration, not fixed labels. Recognize each client's individuality.
Stay Within Your Scope: Remember that quizzes are not diagnostic tools or predictors of success. Results are not to be used for hiring decisions, medical judgments, or value assessments.
Acknowledge Personality Evolution: Reinforce that one can evolve. Encourage clients to see these results as tools for insight and growth.
How Not to Use Quiz Results
To maintain ethical and impactful coaching, do not misuse the quiz results or the personalized guidance reports. Specifically:
Do not label or stereotype clients based on their scores.
Do not make high-stakes decisions such as hiring or promotions.
Do not judge someone’s worth; these concepts are neutral and context dependent.
Do not diagnose mental health conditions, which require professional expertise.
Do not force behavior changes that go against a client's core values.
Do not ignore context and situational factors that influence behavior.
Do not determine compatibility or relationships in rigid terms.
Do not measure skill or competence, which is separate from what this quiz is intended to measure.
Takeaways
The Communication Styles Quiz serves as a powerful mirror, enabling clients to recognize their communication patterns and begin building more effective habits. As a coach, your role is to transform that self-awareness into meaningful growth. By incorporating this tool into your practice, you can:
Foster deeper empathy and self-understanding
Uncover and address blind spots that contribute to miscommunication
Support clients in developing greater influence, clarity, and connection
Used with intention, this quiz becomes more than an assessment—it becomes a catalyst for stronger relationships, better leadership, and greater emotional and interpersonal intelligence.
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