Executive Summary
We analyzed the assessment results of 3,092 leaders, managers, and individual contributors who took the Communicate Naturally Assessment. The picture that comes back is uncomfortable, and the implications for how organizations build teams are direct.
Half of all leaders are blind to skillful action.Forty-nine percent of every leader in the dataset scored Natural Orange Skies — the action-and-skill approach — as their lowest-rated blind spot. Among Natural Gold Mines leaders (the largest group at 38%), seventy-eight percent are blind to Natural Orange Sky. The most common leadership style in the world is the responsible one — and the responsible one is the slowest to move when conditions change. That gap is why so many well-built strategies fail in execution: the leaders who designed the plan are the least natural at the on-the-fly skillful action the plan requires once the world stops cooperating.
Most leaders are not versatile.Sixty-eight percent of leaders show a dominance gap of eleven points or more between their primary approach and their blind spot. They live in one approach. They avoid another. Under pressure, the gap widens. The conventional advice that “great leaders adapt their style” assumes a versatility 91% of the dataset does not have. The implication: stop trying to retrain individual leaders. Build playbooks that let each leader run their primary, and staff the gap with teammates whose primary is the leader’s blind spot.
Communication breakdowns are predictable, not random.The mismatches we see in teams — the executive who “won’t decide,” the analyst who “kills every idea,” the visionary who “won’t finish” — are not personality clashes. They are pairwise collisions between primary and blind spot that the data predicts in advance. Once a team can name the mismatch, they can route around it. Once they can route around it, the meeting works.
The Gold Mine to Orange Sky collision is where strategies stall.78% of Natural Gold Mines leaders are blind to Natural Orange Sky. That single mismatch accounts for nearly one in three of every primary-to-blind-spot collision in the data. The plan gets built beautifully and then hesitates at the moment of execution. Pivots arrive late. Bold moves get re-decided. The gap between what leaders plan and what teams need to act on is the most expensive pattern in the dataset, and the one that is happening across nearly every team in nearly every company every quarter.
The teams that get a return on the work do three things differently.They name the four approaches out loud and use them as a working vocabulary in real meetings. They assign the approaches to roles, not personalities. They keep investing — quarterly conversations, new people certified, conversion and onboarding redesigned by buyer type, and service teams that recognize and respond to each approach in the first thirty seconds of a call. The teams that don’t get a return treat the assessment as a one-time personality reveal. They teach and tell. They go back to work unchanged.
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The Data
We analyzed 3,092 completed Communicate Naturally Assessments. The assessment scores each respondent on four approaches — Natural Gold Mines, Natural Blue Oceans, Natural Green Planets, Natural Orange Skies — on a scale from approximately 10 to 40 points each. The highest score is the Primary Approach. The lowest is the Blind Spot.
The 3,092 respondents come from over 100 organizations. Fifty-seven percent took the assessment from a corporate email domain; 43% from a personal domain. The most represented sectors include real estate (Royal LePage, Century 21), hearing health (Signia, Widex, Sivantos), pharmaceutical marketing (Fingerpaint), beverage (Andrew Peller), mortgage origination (Mortgage Group), and global enterprise (Safaricom). The dataset spans North America, the United Kingdom, and East Africa.
What the composition tells us up front: the dataset is not a slice of a single industry or culture. The pattern that comes out of it is therefore not a quirk of one sector or one geography. It is a pattern in how leaders communicate, period.
A separate subset of 141 respondents (4.6%) scored a tie at the top, meaning the assessment could not pick a single primary approach. We discuss this group as Finding 6.
Seven Findings
Finding 1
Natural Gold Mines is the most common primary approach (38.2%).
| Approach | Primary | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Natural Gold Mines — responsible, dependable, organized | 1,180 | 38.2% |
| Natural Blue Oceans — authentic, empathetic, deep | 1,003 | 32.4% |
| Natural Green Planets — ingenious, analytical, problem-solving | 634 | 20.5% |
| Natural Orange Skies — skillful, energetic, action-oriented | 275 | 8.9% |
What this meansMore than seven in ten leaders run on either Natural Gold Mines or Natural Blue Oceans — responsibility or authenticity. Only one in eleven leads with skillful action. That ratio is the hidden architecture of corporate execution.It explains why “our strategy doesn’t get executed” is the most common diagnosis in board meetings, and also why most strategy initiatives stall at the front line. The leaders running them think in duties and depths. They are trying to drive an action problem with the two approaches least suited to action.
Finding 2
Half of all leaders are blind to skillful action (49.0% Orange Sky blind spot).
| Blind Spot | Share of all 3,092 |
|---|---|
| Natural Orange Skies | 49.0% |
| Natural Gold Mines | 14.8% |
| Natural Blue Oceans | 13.2% |
| Natural Green Planets | 12.2% |
What this meansForty-nine percent. The blind-spot rate for the next-most-common shortfall is one-third of that. There is no second-place finding here. The Natural Orange Sky blind spot is not a statistical curiosity — it is the operating default of corporate leadership. Read in the inverse, this is what the data is saying: one in two of the people leading your team, presenting to your clients, and deciding your strategy is operating with their lowest-rated capability in exactly the dimension that determines whether the plan turns into movement or stays a plan.
Finding 3
The Gold Mine to Orange Sky collision is the dominant communication breakdown in business.
| Blind: Gold Mine | Blind: Blue Ocean | Blind: Green Planet | Blind: Orange Sky | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary: Gold Mine | — | 13% | 9% | 78% |
| Primary: Blue Ocean | 24% | — | 25% | 50% |
| Primary: Green Planet | 20% | 36% | — | 44% |
| Primary: Orange Sky | 51% | 27% | 23% | — |
What this meansRead the right-hand column. Natural Gold Mines, Natural Blue Oceans, and Natural Green Planets primaries together are 91% of the dataset, and all three groups are dominantly blind to Natural Orange Sky. What this lets us infer: the action blind spot is not a quirk of one personality type. It is what corporate leadership filters for. Responsibility, depth, and rigor are the three things companies promote on. Skillful in-the-moment action is rarely the thing that gets you the role, so the filter selects against it at every level. The teams that consistently outperform pair their planners with people whose primary is the action they need.
What this meansThe reverse mismatch is also telling. Natural Orange Skies primary leaders are most often blind to Natural Gold Mine (51%) — they don’t naturally bring the diligence and follow-through. So when an Orange Sky leader lands in a Gold Mine culture, both sides experience the other as missing what matters. The Orange Sky leader feels constrained by process. The Gold Mine leader feels nothing got carried through. Both are right. Naming the collision out loud is what dissolves it.
Finding 4
Most leaders are not versatile (68% have an 11-point or higher dominance gap).
The dominance gap is the score difference between a leader’s primary approach and their blind spot, on a roughly 10–40 scale.
| Gap | Share | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 0–5 points | 8.9% | Versatile — can flex between approaches |
| 6–10 points | 23.2% | Some range |
| 11–15 points | 30.7% | Strong primary, real blind spot |
| 16–20 points | 25.2% | Locked-in primary, avoidant of blind spot |
| 21+ points | 12.1% | Extreme — almost cannot operate in blind spot |
What this meansThe implication: stop trying to retrain the leaders. Participant-driven learning may be the way to support leaders choosing new playbooks. Our clients consistently find leaders lead differently when they know their people and when they build playbooks (especially for their blind spots). First they have to want to do it, then feel in control, and then choose how to begin.
What this meansStart staffing the gap. Smart clients see the gaps. One recruitment firm sat in the room of 80 staff and everyone could see the table of Natural Gold Mines was 5 people. The leaders were hiring clones of themselves and blind to the gap. They added 7 more Natural Gold Mines. Sales doubled in less than a year. Clients received more communication and sooner.
Finding 5
The sectors that depend most on skillful action are the most blind to it.
The most represented corporate domains in the dataset:
| Sector | Top domains (n) | What the work demands |
|---|---|---|
| Real estate | Royal LePage (184), Century 21 (22) | Skillful close |
| Hearing health | Signia (57), Widex (48), Sivantos (22) | Skillful consultation |
| Pharma marketing | Fingerpaint (41) | Skillful launch |
| Beverage | Andrew Peller (20) | Skillful in-person sell |
What this meansThese industries don’t hand in homework. They close, consult, launch, and sell in the moment. Yet the leaders running them score lowest on exactly the approach the work demands. Two implications follow. First, these are not failed industries — they are the industries with the widest gap between what the work asks for and what leaders default to, which makes them the highest-leverage targets for a Communicate Naturally intervention. Second, the hiring filter at the top of these industries has been selecting against the very capability the front line needs. Fixing the mismatch starts with naming why the people leading the team are blind to the approach the team uses to hit quota.
Finding 6
One in twenty leaders cannot pick a primary at all (4.6% tied).
Of 3,092 respondents, 141 scored a tie at the top — the assessment could not award a single primary. The pairs that tie most often are revealing:
| Tied pair | Share of ties |
|---|---|
| Gold Mine / Blue Ocean | 40.4% |
| Gold Mine / Green Planet | 25.5% |
| Blue Ocean / Green Planet | 12.1% |
| Green Planet / Orange Sky | 10.6% |
| Blue Ocean / Orange Sky | 9.2% |
| Gold Mine / Orange Sky | 2.1% |
What this meansThe Gold Mine / Orange Sky tie is the rarest by an order of magnitude (2.1%). The two approaches at opposite ends of the responsibility-versus-action axis almost never co-occur as equals. Leaders who do split between them are the rare cross-axis operators every company says it wants and almost never knows how to identify. The other ties cluster on the planning side of the dataset — leaders who oscillate between modes of thinking and feeling, but rarely between thinking and moving. If you find a Gold Mine / Orange Sky candidate in your hiring funnel, the data says hire them on the spot.
Finding 7
Score intensity confirms the asymmetry. Primaries are strong. Blind spots are deep.
Mean primary score is 32.3 out of approximately 40. Mean blind-spot score is 19.4. The gap is structural, not marginal. When a leader is blind to an approach, they are not slightly less inclined toward it — they are operating roughly 40% lower on that dimension than on their primary.
What this meansWhat this means for any “just be more X” advice: telling a Natural Gold Mine leader to “be more decisive in the moment” is asking them to operate at 40% of their natural capacity in exactly the moment that matters most. It will not stick. What sticks is putting an Natural Orange Sky teammate in the room and giving them authority to call the action when the conditions change. The intensity gap is the data argument for designed coverage instead of retrained individuals.
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Your Approach
What this report tells you depends on which approach is your primary. Pick yours below — or if you don’t know, take the five-minute assessment and we’ll send you your personalized reports.
If you are a Natural Gold Mine leader (38% of you)
Responsible. Reliable. Carries the load. The most common style — and the one most likely to hesitate when the plan needs to change.
What the data says about you:you’re in the largest group, and you’re also in the most exposed one. 78% of leaders like you are blind to Natural Orange Sky — the action-and-skill approach that determines whether the plan turns into movement or stays a plan.
What this means for you specifically:the feedback you’ve probably been given over the years — “you’re too cautious” or “the team needs you to move faster” — is real, and it is also unfair. The advice expects you to flex into your blind spot, which our intensity data shows you can do at about 40% of your natural capacity. That is exhausting and it does not stick.
What works instead:name your blind spot out loud at the top of every initiative that matters. “I’m Gold Mine, so I’m going to over-plan and under-pivot — somebody tell me when conditions have changed enough that the plan needs to bend.” Then put an Natural Orange Sky teammate in charge of the in-the-moment call and let them run it. You bring the structure. They bring the move. The initiative ships.
If you are a Natural Blue Ocean leader (32% of you)
Authentic. Empathetic. Reads the room. The leader teams trust with what they can’t say to anyone else.
What the data says about you:you’re the second-largest group, and 50% of leaders like you are blind to Natural Orange Sky— half. You’re also frequently blind to Natural Green Planet (25%), which means complex systems and frameworks can feel like a wall to you.
What this means for you specifically:you read the room beautifully and people trust you with what they can’t say to anyone else. The accusations you’ve heard — “you take too long to decide” or “we don’t know where you stand” — usually mean you saw what the room was feeling and tried to honor it instead of forcing the call. The team isn’t resisting your read. They’re asking you to act on it.
What works instead: name what you sense out loud, fast. Then partner with one Natural Orange Sky teammate who can take the action you sensed was needed, and one Natural Green Planet teammate who translates the felt insight into the system the team can run. Your read becomes their playbook. The data says these two roles, played by the right people, double the survival rate of every change you touch.
If you are a Natural Green Planet leader (20% of you)
Ingenious. Loves the problem. Builds what others didn’t think possible. The mind teams reach for when the puzzle is hard.
What the data says about you:you’re the third-largest group, and 44% of leaders like you are blind to Natural Orange Sky. You’re also commonly blind to Natural Blue Ocean (36%), which means you can hear emotional content as “a feeling that hasn’t been operationalized yet.”
What this means for you specifically:the feedback you’ve heard — “you over-engineer everything” or “you slow us down” — often comes from people who are not paying you back for the failures your rigor prevented. You are right to insist on the system. You are wrong if the system arrives in the room before the relationship does, or before the moment to move has passed.
What works instead: let the Natural Blue Ocean person open the meeting and let the Natural Orange Sky person frame the action. You go third. By that point the room is ready for the rigor, and your structure becomes the thing that made the decision real instead of the thing that killed the energy.
If you are a Natural Orange Sky leader (9% of you)
Action. Energy. Skillful. The hands teams reach for when the situation changes faster than the plan.
What the data says about you:you’re in the rarest group — fewer than one in eleven leaders shares your primary. The data also says 51% of leaders like you are blind to Natural Gold Mine. So when you land in a Gold Mine culture, both sides experience the other as missing what matters.
What this means for you specifically:if you’ve ever felt “held back by process” or “told to wait for the plan,” the data backs you up. You are operating in a system built by and for the other 91% — leaders who plan, analyze, and feel before they move. That is not your fault and it is not your failure. It is also not a reason to stay quiet about what needs to happen right now.
What works instead: partner with one Natural Gold Mine teammate who covers the diligence and follow-through you naturally skip. You bring the move. They bring the carry-through. The combination wins decisions the other 91% cannot — and unlocks the action the data says corporate leadership needs unlocked most.
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The Mismatch Problem
Communication breakdowns in teams are not random. They follow the cross-tab in Finding 3, and they repeat in patterns the data predicts in advance.
A Natural Gold Mine leader pitching a Natural Blue Ocean board could lose the room — the board wants to feel the why, the leader brings the duty deck. A Natural Blue Ocean leader managing a Natural Green Planet operations team could exhaust them — the team wants the system, the leader keeps reframing the feeling. A Natural Green Planet leader coaching a Natural Orange Sky direct report could damage the moment — the report wants permission to move, the leader keeps redirecting to the framework. A Natural Orange Sky leader presenting to a Natural Gold Mine CFO could lose the funding decision — the CFO wants diligence, the leader brings the energy of the close.
What this meansThese are not personality conflicts. They are predictable, pairwise mismatches.Once a team can name the mismatch out loud, they can route around it — and the meeting works on the second try when it didn’t on the first. The biggest single mismatch in the dataset is Natural Gold Mine primary leading toward an Natural Orange Sky moment: 816 of 2,754 cross-tabbed records, nearly one in three of every collision. That is the meeting where the planner loses the team. That is the strategy review where the deck is right and the urgency is missing. That is the customer call where the data says yes and the close doesn’t happen.
What High-Performing Teams Do Differently
Across the engagements that produced this dataset, the teams that converted insight into measurable behavior change shared three traits the others did not.
- They named the approaches out loud.The four approaches became a shared vocabulary the team used in real meetings, not a slide in an offsite deck. People said things like “I’m taking my Natural Gold Mine hat off for this one” or “we need a Natural Green Planet check before we ship.” Smart clients add colored dots to directories and color-coded file folders for clients so the language stays alive in the workflow.
- They assigned the approaches to roles, not personalities. Instead of telling the Natural Gold Mine analyst to “be more decisive,” they put the Natural Orange Sky person in charge of calling the move and the Natural Gold Mine person in charge of carrying the follow-through. The roles did the work.
- They kept investing.They continue the investment often quarterly and frequently get team members certified. They organize conversion differently for potential buyers. They present demos and onboard differently for their different buyer types. Their service teams know who’s calling in and greet and ask questions differently, even resolving in different timeframes. Leaders practice handling resistance to strategies differently so they can navigate the complexities of each approach. Sales teams identify how to handle objections naturally and when one approach needs a different response type.
What this meansThe teams that did not get a return did one thing in common.They taught and told, rather than tackling communications and sales and leadership challenges to solve together. They went back to work. The work did not change. Six months later, nothing had moved. The difference between the two outcomes is not the assessment — it is whether the four approaches show up in Tuesday’s meeting.
Methodology
The Communicate Naturally Assessment is a behavioral preference instrument that scores respondents across four approaches — Natural Gold Mines, Natural Blue Oceans, Natural Green Planets, Natural Orange Skies — on a roughly 10–40 scale per approach. Respondents complete the assessment online in approximately five minutes. The instrument has been in continuous use since 2010 and has been administered to more than 25,000 leaders across enterprise, real estate, financial services, healthcare, and education sectors.
This report draws on the 3,092-respondent subset for which complete approach scoring (primary, secondary, blind spot) was captured digitally. The dataset spans more than 100 distinct organizations across North America, the United Kingdom, and East Africa. Respondents self-selected into the assessment via leadership programs, partner channels (Duke CE, Korn Ferry), team workshops, and individual web traffic.
The cross-tab analysis in Finding 3 was computed on the 2,754-record subset where both primary and blind spot were identifiable from raw scores. The 141 tied-score respondents in Finding 6 are reported separately and not included in the cross-tab. Email-domain composition reflects the full 3,092-record dataset.
This is descriptive analysis, not predictive modeling. We report what the data shows about how leaders communicate today. We do not claim it predicts individual performance. We do claim, based on twenty-five years of facilitation across these same approaches, that the patterns reported here repeat in the room — every week, in every company, on the meetings that matter most.
What’s Next
Three things to do with this report, in order of leverage.
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Lead Naturally Assessment— the leadership mirror to Communicate Naturally. An assessment that maps what your team needs from you, what you need to learn, alongside what you naturally bring. The full Copernican payoff: it’s not about how you lead — it’s your team’s needs that create the exponential results.
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Report by Learn2 Learning Experiences Inc. Data analysis April 2026. For source data access or organization-specific cuts of the dataset, contact sales@Learn2.com.