Composing your profile…
Mapping your archetype
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CQ Continuum™
Cultural Intelligence Assessment
Part of the CQ Gap Framework

Who are you
across
cultural difference?

A premium three-layer diagnostic that reveals your complete CQ profile — from capability scores and cultural orientation to pressure patterns, archetype, shadow self, leadership style, and a personalised development roadmap.

Your CQ Archetype Wing & Shadow Profile Leadership Style Team Dynamics Cultural Orientations Pressure Patterns Development Roadmap
~18 minutes  ·  9 archetypes
No account required
9Archetypes
4Capabilities
7Orientations
Nine Archetype Profiles  ·  Three CQ Clusters
Pioneers
The Integrator
The Catalyst
The Strategist
Bridge Builders
The Peacemaker
The Interpreter
The Chameleon
Anchors
The Anchor
The Precision
The Emergent
CQ Fellows — Accredited Cultural Intelligence Fellow
Developed by Timothy K. Buxton, Society of CQ Fellows Thought Leader — a community led by Dr. David Livermore, renowned pioneer of Cultural Intelligence research.
CQ Continuum™
Part of the CQ Gap Framework
About the CQ Gap™ Framework

The CQ Continuum™ is one diagnostic instrument within the broader CQ Gap™ Framework developed by Timothy K. Buxton — a practitioner-designed model for diagnosing, developing, and deploying cultural intelligence in leadership, team performance, and social impact contexts.

timothybuxton.com/cq-gap →

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Contextual Profile
A little about your background
These five questions don't affect your scores — they help us contextualise your profile narrative and make your report more relevant to your actual experience.
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Your CQ Continuum Archetype Profile

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Dominant Wing —
Secondary Wing —
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Layer 1
CQ Capabilities

Your CQ Capabilities score across four dimensions — Drive, Knowledge, Strategy, and Action — forms the foundation of your cultural intelligence profile. These are not fixed traits but measurable, developable capacities. Each dimension captures a distinct aspect of how you engage across cultural difference: your motivation, your understanding, your reflective practice, and your behavioral range. The radar below maps your relative strengths; the scores beside it show where you are and how the dimensions relate to each other.

CQ Capability Scores
Layer 2
Cultural Orientation Profile

Where your capabilities tell you how much cultural intelligence you have, your orientations tell you which direction it points. These seven scales reveal your natural default positions across core dimensions of professional and interpersonal culture — from how you relate to authority, to how you navigate conflict, to how you communicate across difference.

These are tendencies, not fixed traits — they shift with context, relationship, and deliberate development. Your position on each scale is a useful mirror, not a verdict. Use it to understand where your defaults serve you well, and where conscious adaptation may be needed.
Layer 3
Pressure Pattern

Cultural intelligence doesn't fail when things are easy — it fails when they're hard. This section examines how your CQ holds under stress, fatigue, and high-stakes conditions. The pattern that emerges here is one of the most practically important findings in your profile: it shows you the version of yourself that emerges when resources are depleted, and reveals the specific distortions to watch for. Understanding your pressure pattern is not about criticism — it is about preparation.

Distortion Indicators
Archetype in Depth
Profile Narrative
Your Archetype Cluster
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Your Wing Profile
Dominant & Secondary Wings

Your two wings are the secondary dimensions that colour your primary archetype — adding nuance, flavour, and latent capacity to your core profile. The dominant wing is active and present; the secondary wing lies quieter, emerging in specific conditions or through deliberate development.

The Shadow Archetype
Who You Become Under Pressure

The shadow is not your enemy — it is your least-developed self under maximum stress. Understanding it precisely is one of the highest-leverage tools in advanced CQ development. When you can name the distortion as it begins, you have a meaningful window to interrupt it.

Your Growth Direction
Growth Archetype

Your growth archetype is the profile you tend toward when you are at your best — thriving, in your element, or deliberately cultivating your CQ capabilities. It is not who you are today but who you are becoming, and a rich source of insight about the specific practices and qualities most worth developing.

Your Cluster
Your Place in the Continuum

Your archetype belongs to one of three clusters — groups that share a common orientation toward cultural intelligence. Understanding your cluster adds a layer of context to your individual profile.

What You Bring
Primary Strengths
Where to Grow
Growth Edges
Know Your Triggers
Stress Triggers
    Harder Truths
    Cultural Blind Spots
    Where You Shine
    Excel In
      Proceed with Care
      Watch Out In
        How You Work & Lead
        Team & Leadership Profile

        How cultural intelligence shows up in teams and leadership is rarely simple — it depends on your archetype, your cluster, the composition of your team, and the cultural distance between you and the people you work with most closely. This section maps the specific ways your profile shapes how you show up in collaborative settings: what you naturally contribute, where friction is most likely to emerge, how you lead across cultural difference, and what your unique archetype-wing-shadow combination means for how you are experienced by the people around you.

        Your CQ Cluster
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        How You Show Up in Teams
        Team Dynamics
        How You Lead & How You Follow
        Leadership Profile
        Your Unique Combination
        How Your Archetype, Wing & Shadow Shape Your Style

        Your archetype is your primary cultural intelligence signature — but it is never the whole story. Your dominant wing adds texture, nuance, and latent capacity to your core style. Your shadow is the version of you that emerges under pressure. Together, these three layers create a distinctive combination that explains how you are experienced in teams, how you lead across cultures, and where your greatest leverage for growth actually lies.

        For Further Exploration
        The PRISM Framework & CQ Research

        The team and leadership insights in this section are inspired by the groundbreaking research and work of Dr. David Livermore — a pioneer in equipping leaders with cultural intelligence and one of the world's leading authorities on CQ in organisations. His PRISM framework offers a deeper, structured approach to understanding how cultural intelligence operates in teams, leadership contexts, and global organisations.

        For leaders who want to explore these ideas in greater depth — and for organisations seeking to build culturally intelligent teams at scale — Dr. Livermore's CQ Fellows and Global TeamLEAD programs offer world-class, research-grounded pathways for development. These programs represent some of the most rigorous and practically effective CQ development available anywhere.

        Visit DavidLivermore.com →
        Your Development Path
        Development Roadmap

        An assessment reveals where you are. A roadmap shows you where to go next. This section translates your profile — your capability scores, orientation patterns, and pressure responses — into a practical, phased development path specific to your archetype. It is not a generic self-improvement plan; it is designed around the particular configuration of strengths, growth edges, and developmental leverage points that your data reveals. Work through it at your own pace, and return to it as your context evolves.

        For Coaches & Practitioners
        Gateway Questions
        Five high-leverage reflection prompts designed to open productive coaching conversations with this archetype.
          Team Context
          What This Archetype Brings to a Team
          Going Deeper
          Work with a CQ Expert

          The most accurate archetype identification — and the most effective, personalised development roadmap — emerges through a guided discovery process with a trained CQ practitioner. A skilled coach can help you distinguish between the archetype that fits your current context and the one that reflects your deeper, more consistent pattern.

          Explore CQ Coaching with Tim Buxton →
          The CQ Continuum Framework
          Explore All Archetypes
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          Your result is a starting point, not a verdict
          The CQ Continuum captures a snapshot of where you are right now — shaped by recent experiences, your current context, and even how you were feeling the day you took it. Your true archetype may sit closer to a neighbouring profile, or you may find yourself moving between two as you grow. Reading all nine archetypes below is part of the discovery process: notice which ones resonate, which feel uncomfortably familiar, and which describe who you aspire to become.
          Going Deeper
          The Discovery Phase
          An assessment gives you a map. A discovery process helps you find your actual location on it.
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          Share your results with people who know you
          The people closest to you — a trusted colleague, a close friend from a different cultural background, a manager or mentor — often see your cultural patterns more clearly than you do. Share your archetype profile and ask them: which parts ring true, and which parts surprise them? The gap between your self-perception and their observation is frequently where the most important development insights live. Consider sharing with at least two people who have experienced you in genuinely cross-cultural situations.
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          Sit with the neighbouring archetypes
          Your assigned archetype reflects the dominant pattern in your data — but the profiles adjacent to yours are worth reading carefully too. Many people find that one neighbouring archetype describes their best self, and another describes who they become under significant pressure. The interplay between your primary archetype, your wings, and a neighbouring profile is where the richest coaching conversations often begin. There is no shame in recognising yourself in more than one place on the spectrum.
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          Retake in a different season
          Cultural intelligence is not fixed — it develops with experience, deliberate practice, and the right conditions. Your results may shift meaningfully after a significant cross-cultural experience, a period of intentional growth, or simply a change in life circumstances. The CQ Continuum is designed to be retaken every six to twelve months. Tracking movement across dimensions over time reveals the developmental arc that the Roadmap section is designed to support and accelerate.
          About the CQ Gap™ Framework
          The CQ Continuum is one diagnostic instrument within the broader CQ Gap™ Framework developed by Timothy K. Buxton — a practitioner-designed model for diagnosing, developing, and deploying cultural intelligence in leadership, team performance, and social impact contexts. The framework draws on two decades of cross-cultural leadership in some of the world's most complex humanitarian and organisational environments. To learn more, or to explore how the CQ Gap™ Framework can be applied in your organisation, visit timothybuxton.com/cq-gap.
          CQ Continuum · Part of the CQ Gap™ Framework · © Timothy K. Buxton