Social:Communication quotient

Communication quotient, communication intelligence, or CQ is a theory that communication is a behaviour based skill that can be measured and trained. CQ measures the ability of people to communicate effectively with one another. In 1999 Mario de Vries was the first to present a theory on the measurement of CQ at the Preput conference at Texas University, Fort Worth and later at the Henry Stewart DAM symposium in Amsterdam 2006. The first scholarly article referring to CQ was by Robert Service in CQ: the Communication Quotient for IS professionals. The article was published in 2005 in the Journal of Information Science. In 2010 at TED Women, Clare Munn spoke about the importance of our Communication Quotient in an increasingly digital world.

History

The development of CQ as a theory and a concept can be traced back to the challenging of IQ as fully explaining cognitive ability in 1983, by Howard Gardner with his Theory of multiple intelligences. In Gardner's view, traditional types of intelligence, such as IQ, fail to fully explain cognitive ability. The development of CQ is part of the trend to analyse and fully understand human intelligence, a trend led by Daniel Goleman's emotional intelligence and social intelligence. As explained by Mario de Vries: one can be very intelligent, if you can not explain it it's worthless; one can be very emotional, if you can not explain it it's useless. Hence, you need CQ to activate your IQ and EQ. They only have impact in the relation to others.

Definition

The Times of India in 2005 , in an article entitled A Shift from IQ, referred to CQ as an ability multi-national corporations were testing for amongst Indian graduates. In 2005 Craig Harrison in Improving Your Communication Quotient described CQ skills specifically in terms of workplace communication. In 2007 Clare Munn defined CQ as "Expressive & Receptive Intelligence" the communication bridge between IQ and EQ. In 2011 Alistair Gordon and Steve Kimmens in The CQ Manifesto defined CQ as "saying the right thing in the right way to the right people at the right time in a such a way that the message is received and understood as it was intended".

In Robert Service’s 2005 article he presented the communication quotient as a measurable and improvable type of intelligence, specifically for IT and IS professionals. Service argues that the improvement of communication ability will allow individuals the opportunity to move up in the organisational ranks. The article presents two models to explain communication, the first is the model of two-way communications and the second is the CQ measurement and improvement matrix.

In 2020 Mario de Vries finished a 2,5 years research into the distinctive factors of communication at HAN University of Applied Sciences in Arnhem, The Netherlands. Concluded is that all communication models are rather frameworks than models, because they do not have an underlying calculation system. Furthermore these frameworks are nothing more than visualisations of information flows. De Vries defined more than forty communication competences in seven different layers. The result is a proven test system to measure someone's CQ, the same way one's spatial awareness is measured in an IQ test. Unlike definitions in other publications De Vries says that communication competences are different from communications skills, like being a good presenter. Competences can be taught in a learning program, skills need to be trained. His definition of CQ is the following: The Competence and Creativity to Communicate Content in the Context of the Consumer to maximise the Capacity of that information. His insights are published in the book: CQ: The Discovery of a Communication Code (self published: dutch version 2020, english version 2021).

See also

• Intelligence quotient
• Emotional intelligence
• Theory of multiple intelligences