Most professionals have a sense of what is working in their exchanges — and a sharper sense of what is not. The TQ Diagnostic gives that instinct a name. In about five minutes, you will have a clear picture of where your attention naturally lands, what tends to be avoided, and what that pattern does to the transactions that matter most.
Free · No prerequisites · Five minutes
Before you start
If the word “transactional” lands wrong — if it carries the feeling of something cold, calculated, or extractive — that feeling is worth pausing on. Because what it is describing is not the nature of transacting. It is the symptom of its absence.
What people call “transactional” — cold, calculated, manipulative — is not the nature of transacting. It is the symptom of its absence.
High TQ is what makes exchange feel genuine, reciprocal, and human. The Diagnostic does not diagnose a flaw. It maps a pattern — your natural position in the Transaction Cycle™, what you are instinctively good at, and what the cycle tends to require from you that you are not naturally inclined to give.
It is aspirational to want High TQ. The Diagnostic is where that aspiration begins.
Transactional Intelligence identifies four characteristic ways of moving through the Transaction Cycle. Each has a natural position in the cycle, a home narrative, and a specific pattern that emerges when the transaction approaches unfamiliar ground. The Diagnostic locates you within that methodology — not as a final verdict, as a starting point.
Your TQ orientation
Where attention and energy naturally flow in any consequential exchange.
Your avoided exchange
The stage in the Transaction Cycle that your pattern tends to sidestep.
The name of your loop
The specific breakdown pattern your orientation produces under pressure.
A first signal
What the cycle tends to require from you that you are not yet providing.
TQ is a structured methodology for navigating the hidden layer beneath every conversation — the human exchanges that produce every outcome. TQ makes those exchanges visible, so you can move through them consciously rather than be ruled by forces you cannot see.
That layer has a defined structure. It has a sequence, specific requirements at each stage, and predictable failure modes when those requirements are not met. Most professionals have never been taught to see it. The Diagnostic is where that education begins.
The Diagnostic gives you an orientation. TQ Navigator™ is where that orientation becomes a practice. TQ Navigator is a two-day in-person working session. You bring a real transaction — something with real stakes, currently in motion. You work it in real time, with practitioners doing the same. The methodology meets the room. Things that were abstract become navigable.
Next step
Learn about TQ Navigator →Influential U®
Together, Kirkland Tibbels and John Patterson have delivered Transactional Intelligence to practitioners across more than twenty countries. The methodology originates in Kirkland’s ongoing doctoral research on the philosophical foundations of transactionalism and John’s decades of practitioner work. Influential U® is the organizational home for all TQ methodology, including Fundamentals of Transactional Intelligence™.