I just finished reading the book Discover Your Conflict Management Styles and was compelled to create and Excel file which automates an assessment tool. This tool is used as a foundation for the book; you can download the Excel here or with the download icon below. The tool has 45 questions and identifies six different styles for managing differences: Persuading, Compelling, Avoiding/Accommodating, Collaborating, Negotiating, and Supporting.

Each can be an appropriate style, and none should be thought of as “bad” or inferior. A certain style can cause a problem when it is used inappropriately, but one should not assume that Avoiding is always wrong or that all conflicts must be confronted. Nor should one assume that Compelling is always inappropriate or that one should make an effort in every situation to collaborate or persuade. In fact, the styles that have been recently touted as always appropriate can be harmful when they are used in contexts that call for other strategies. (For example, using collaborative strategies is inappropriate in situations where people will take advantage of naïve people who may become inappropriately vulnerable. Collaboration is also inappropriate when both sides will not or cannot share all information.) [1]

Conflict is a part of everyone’s life; we can’t eliminate it. Nor would we necessarily want to–for new insights and growth can emerge from well-managed conflict. Managing conflict is something we all can do on our own, especially if we make use of techniques developed for that purpose. Healthy conflict management is a necessary part of ministry, family life, work–even play. The popularity of this book since it first appeared in 1984 is confirmation of the need for every individual to learn how best to deal with conflict.

The two-part goal of Discover Your Conflict Management Style remains the same as in the original version:

1. To help persons learn about the range of appropriate conflict-management strategies and when each works best.
2. To help individuals identify their own preferred styles of conflict management, and to consider using other styles as well.

As Speed Leas points out, the appropriate time to use this resource is not in the midst of a conflict–but at a time when you can contemplate and digest the information for future use. You might set aside a period of time during which you administer the instrument, and then ponder the additional resources for interpreting it and putting the results to good use. There is probably no more or less conflict today than there has ever been in human relations–but through the accumulated wisdom of experts like Leas, we become ever more capable of using it in healthy, growth-producing ways.

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[1] Speed Leas, Discover Your Conflict Management Style (Washington, D.C.: Alban Institute, 1997), 2–3.