Some people go straight for a win-win. Some split the difference to get out of the room. Some dig in, some give in, and some just change the subject. Those are the five conflict strategies — and most of us lean on one or two far more than we realise.
Here is the theory behind them, how our conflict style test measures them, and why the most useful part of your result is often the style you almost never use.
A conflict style assessment measures which strategies a person tends to use when they disagree with someone. The Dutch Test for Conflict Handling (DUTCH) measures five strategies derived from Dual Concern Theory, which describes conflict behaviour as the product of concern for one's own outcomes and concern for the other party's: problem solving, compromising, forcing, yielding, and avoiding. Its authors describe it as a measure of behavioural intentions rather than observed behaviour.
Two concerns, five strategies
Dual Concern Theory describes conflict behaviour as the product of two things: how much you care about your own outcome and how much you care about the other person's.
- ✦Problem solving: high concern for both — look for a solution that works for everyone.
- ✦Compromising: moderate concern for both — meet in the middle.
- ✦Forcing: high concern for yourself — hold your position.
- ✦Yielding: high concern for the other — give them what they want.
- ✦Avoiding: low concern for both — step away from the issue.
Which style is best?
None of them. Each is the right answer to some situations: forcing when a line genuinely has to hold, yielding when you care less than they do, avoiding when emotions need to cool, compromising when time is short, problem solving when interests are not actually opposed.
The style you rarely reach for usually points to the class of situations you are handling with the wrong tool.
Not the Thomas-Kilmann (TKI)
The TKI is a commercial instrument whose items are not published. Our test uses the Dutch Test for Conflict Handling (DUTCH), which measures the same five strategies from the same theory, and whose twenty items are printed in a peer-reviewed paper you can read. The two are not interchangeable.
The five scores are also independent: scoring high on problem solving does not require scoring low on forcing, and they do not add up to a fixed total.
Intentions, not observed behaviour
The DUTCH's authors describe it as a measure of behavioural intentions. Sometimes intentions turn into behaviour, sometimes not — and the gap is widest for avoiding, which is defined by things not happening. With four items per scale, gaps under about 10 points are inside the instrument's noise.
Used well, it gives a team a way to say "I went straight to compromise and shouldn't have" without it becoming an argument about character. Want to compare a whole team? Try the team view.