Seeker Postures is the "who is actually coming to us" report. It places every seeker on a ladder from hostile to already believing, then shows how each group is served: movement, decisions, prayer, and where each posture tends to end up.
The question the report itself names is: Where do our seekers start, and what happens for each posture?
Running it
Open EchoAnalyst in the left-hand menu, then Seeker Postures. Set a date range, choose your sources if you want to narrow it, and select Run Report. Nothing is computed until you do.
The controls are the same on every Echo Analyst report. They are described once in Getting started with Echo Analyst.
What the page shows
Every posture, from furthest to nearest is the ladder itself, in that order, with volume and outcomes for each rung.
Where each posture ends up crosses starting posture against movement, the table that tells you whether you are good with skeptics and weak with the already-believing, or the reverse. Conversation types does the same by the kind of conversation.
The Posture guide, linked from All Reports, defines every rung on the ladder.
The report itself opens with a Definitions section carrying the same terms in short form, so you can check a word without leaving the page.
What the measurements mean
Posture is where a seeker stood when the conversation began. It is a fixed ladder, ordered from furthest to nearest.
| Posture | Where they are |
|---|---|
| Hostile | Actively opposed |
| Skeptical | Doubtful, arguing in good faith |
| Curious | Interested, asking |
| Open | Receptive |
| Seeking | Actively looking for God |
| Already believing | Arrived as a believer |
| Unclear | Read, and could not be placed. Off the ladder. |
Unclear means the conversation was read and the seeker could not be placed. A conversation that never recorded a posture at all is a different thing again, and is not on the ladder.
The measures
| Measure | What it is | How it is worked out |
|---|---|---|
| Volume | How many arrived at each posture. | Analyzed conversations whose starting posture was recorded as that rung. |
| Movement | How often they moved toward God. | Share of assessed conversations in the top two movement buckets, per posture. |
| Decision rate | Took any step at all. | Any of the six actions. A missing decision and an explicit none are the same fact. |
| Prayer | How often prayer was offered. | Per posture, so you can see who your team prays with. |
| Average score | Conversation quality per posture. | Mean whole-conversation score, on the 1–5 scale below. |
The 1–5 scale
Every skill score in Echo Analyst uses the same five points, and the wording matters. This is not a school grade where 5 is the target.
| Score | What it means | How often |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Harmful, real harm or a protocol violation, such as missing a crisis or a doctrinal error | Rare |
| 2 | Below standard, a coachable weakness | Uncommon |
| 3 | Met the minimum, acceptable, with clear room to grow | Less common |
| 4 | Doing a good job, the expected baseline for someone doing the work well | Most common |
| 5 | Exceptional, training-example quality, and it requires specific cited evidence | Rare |
4 is the target, not 5. A team averaging 4 is doing the job well. A 5 has to be earned with evidence, so a page full of 5s would be a scoring fault rather than a triumph.
Two rules change how the number comes out. A 1 in any single skill caps the whole conversation's overall score, real harm is not averaged away by nine good things. And three skills return nothing at all when they do not apply: crisis sensitivity when there was no crisis, grace-filled truth when no hard truth was needed, and minors handling when no minor was involved. A blank is "not applicable", never zero.
Spiritual movement
The measure that appears on more Echo Analyst pages than any other. Each analyzed conversation is placed in one of five buckets:
- Significant movement toward God
- Slight movement toward
- No change
- Slight movement away
- Significant movement away
Where a report shows a single movement percentage, it is the share of conversations in the top two buckets, significant plus slight movement toward. "No change" is not counted as positive.
The denominator is conversations where movement was actually assessed, not every conversation in the group. A conversation nobody could read either way is left out rather than counted as no change, so the rate is not quietly deflated by conversations that were never a fair test.
A segment needs 10 conversations before its rates headline anything.
How the percentages are worked out
Three habits run through every number on this page, and they explain most of the surprises.
- Rates are per measured conversation, not per conversation. Each measure counts only the conversations where that thing was assessed.
- An empty sample gives a blank, not a zero. Where you see "—", nothing was measured. A confident 0% over no conversations would be a false statement, so the report declines to make it.
- Percentages are never averaged together. When groups are combined, the underlying counts are added and the rate is recomputed. Otherwise a rare group of three conversations would weigh as heavily as a common one of three hundred.
Why comparisons are not proof
Everything that compares one group against another here is an association. The report says so in its own words, and it is not a disclaimer to skip: if your team tends to do something in the conversations that were already going well, that practice will appear to cause the result.
The honest way to use it: treat a gap as a reason to try something deliberately, then watch whether the numbers follow.
Reading it honestly
Everything comparing one group against another on this page is an association, not proof of cause. The report says so in its own words, and it matters: if your team tends to do something in the conversations that were already going well, it will look like that practice caused the result.
Two buckets are easy to confuse. Unclear means the conversation was read and the seeker could not be placed. A conversation that never recorded a posture at all is a different thing and is not on the ladder.
A segment needs 10 conversations before its rates are used to headline anything.
If it comes back empty
Two things cause this, and neither means the report is broken.
The Sources filter remembers what you last chose. A selection made months ago can exclude everything you have added since. Open Sources, check what is ticked, and run it again.
Only closed conversations are analyzed. A conversation that is still open, or that was abandoned before your team replied, carries no analysis and appears in no number here. A busy period can still be a thin one for this report if most of it never closed.