The Science Behind Impact IQ

Your nervous system has a built-in safety detector. It constantly scans for danger and decides how you respond — before you even think about it. Dr. Stephen Porges called this “neuroception.”

When you feel safe, you can connect, listen, and collaborate. When your brain senses a threat, it shifts into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode. These responses are automatic. They are not personality flaws — they are survival strategies.

Impact IQ maps these nervous system responses into workplace patterns. Understanding your default stress response is the first step to changing it. When you know your pattern, you can catch it early and choose a different path.

Carl Jung introduced the idea that people fall into recognizable psychological types. William Marston created the DISC model to explain how people behave in normal situations. Lewis Goldberg and others developed the Big Five model — the most widely validated personality framework in psychology.

Impact IQ builds on all three. Our 6 archetypes — The Reactor, The Strategist, The Absorber, The Executor, The Connector, and The Visionary — combine decades of research into profiles that are easy to understand and easy to use.

Each person has a dominant archetype (their default mode) and a supportive archetype (their backup style). This creates 30 unique combinations, each with its own strengths and blind spots.

Daniel Goleman's research showed that emotional intelligence matters more than IQ for success at work. His studies found that EQ accounts for up to 90% of what sets top performers apart from average ones — especially in leadership roles.

Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves took this further. Their data from over 500,000 people showed that leaders with high self-awareness are 32% more effective. But self-awareness is not just knowing your strengths. It means understanding how you react under pressure, what triggers you, and why.

Impact IQ focuses on the EQ skills that matter most at work: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and social skills. Your archetype profile shows exactly where you are strong and where you have room to grow.

Impact IQ was not built in a lab. It was built in the field. Pivot Training & Development created this framework through years of coaching leaders, facilitating team workshops, and working inside organizations of all sizes.

The assessment has been tested and refined with hundreds of professionals across industries — from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Each question was carefully written to capture real workplace behavior, not abstract theory.

The scoring model uses weighted response mapping across all 22 questions. Each answer contributes to multiple archetype scores at once. This creates a nuanced profile that captures your full behavioral range, not just your strongest trait.

The Impact IQ assessment asks 22 questions about how you handle real workplace situations — pressure, conflict, decision-making, and collaboration. There are no right or wrong answers.