An original 30-item conflict-style assessment inspired by Thomas-Kilmann conflict-mode theory, which maps how you handle disagreement along two axes: assertiveness (how hard you pursue your own concerns) and cooperativeness (how much you attend to the other person's). Their intersection defines five modes — Competing, Collaborating, Compromising, Avoiding, and Accommodating. Instead of asking how you'd like to think you behave, every item drops you into a concrete, slightly uncomfortable moment — the second a plan gets challenged, the silence after you've been overruled, the text you draft and delete — and asks what you actually do. Reverse-keyed items in every mode guard against simply agreeing with everything. The result surfaces your go-to move, the modes you under-use, and where your default helps versus quietly costs you. Educational and reflective only; it is not therapy, relationship advice, or a clinical evaluation.
Your result is broken down across 5 distinct dimensions rather than collapsing everything into a single number. Each dimension is scored from its own set of items, so you can see which specific pattern is driving your overall result.
Scores fall into one of 5 interpretive bands. Here is what each one means, what tends to sit underneath it, and what usually helps.
Competing
Your dominant conflict mode is Competing — assertive and uncooperative. When friction appears you push for your own position, marshal your case, and drive toward the outcome you believe is right. This is a power-oriented mode: you use whatever leverage you have — expertise, rank, persistence, or sheer conviction — to win the point rather than let it slide.
What it suggests
Competing is exactly the right mode when a decision is urgent, when an unpopular but correct call has to be made, or when you're protecting yourself or others against someone acting in bad faith. Overused, though, it costs you: people stop bringing you their real objections, they nod and then quietly disengage, and you win the argument while losing the buy-in you actually needed. The tell of overuse is that you're surrounded by yes-people and starved of honest pushback.
What helps
Your growth edge is curiosity before conviction. Before you make your case, ask one genuine question about the other person's reasoning and actually let the answer move you. Practice conceding a point you'd normally defend to the death — not as surrender, but to prove to the room that being right matters more to you than winning. Save your full assertiveness for the moments that truly warrant it.
Collaborating
Your dominant conflict mode is Collaborating — assertive and cooperative at the same time. You treat conflict as a shared problem to solve rather than a contest to win, digging beneath stated positions to find the underlying needs on both sides. When it works, this mode produces the rare outcome where everyone's core concerns are actually met, not just averaged away.
What it suggests
Collaborating is the most demanding mode and the most rewarding when the stakes and the relationship both matter — merging two teams, resolving a values clash, redesigning how people work together. But it's expensive: it takes time, trust, and energy, and not every disagreement deserves it. The overuse trap is turning trivial choices into full working sessions, exhausting people who just wanted a quick decision, or using 'let's find a win-win' to avoid a hard call that really needs one clear owner.
What helps
Your growth edge is triage — knowing when a problem is worth the full collaborative treatment and when a fast compromise or a clean decision serves everyone better. Before you open up a deep problem-solving process, ask whether the stakes justify it. And watch for using collaboration to dodge conflict: sometimes the caring move is to simply decide, not to keep everyone in the room until consensus.
Compromising
Your dominant conflict mode is Compromising — the practical middle ground between assertiveness and cooperation. You look for the workable deal that gives each side part of what they want, splitting the difference so everyone walks away with something. This is the mode of negotiators, dealmakers, and anyone who values momentum over perfection.
What it suggests
Compromising shines under time pressure, between roughly equal parties, or as a fallback when collaboration stalls — it produces a fair-enough result fast and keeps relationships intact. Its overuse cost is subtle: reach for the middle too quickly and you leave real value on the table, settling for a mediocre split when a little more digging would have surfaced a solution that genuinely satisfied both sides. Chronic compromise can also mean the deeper issue never gets named, because splitting the difference is easier than examining it.
What helps
Your growth edge is resisting the reflex to trade too soon. On the disagreements that really matter, hold off on the split and ask what each side actually needs underneath the position — you may find a solution better than any compromise. And when you catch yourself meeting in the middle to end the discomfort rather than to reach a good outcome, slow down: the fair split isn't always the right one.
Avoiding
Your dominant conflict mode is Avoiding — unassertive and uncooperative. When tension rises your instinct is to step back: to sidestep the issue, postpone it to a better moment, or simply withdraw rather than engage. You pursue neither your own concerns nor the other person's in the moment, choosing distance over friction.
What it suggests
Avoiding is genuinely wise when an issue is trivial, when emotions are too hot for anyone to think, or when the cost of engaging clearly outweighs the benefit — and letting heat drain before returning is a real skill. But as a default it lets problems compound underground. Needs and resentments accumulate unspoken, then surface later as distance, a flat tone, or a blow-up that seems to come from nowhere. The people around you often don't know there's a problem until it has already grown large.
What helps
Your growth edge is tolerance for the unresolved moment. Pick one low-stakes disagreement this week and stay in it two minutes longer than is comfortable before resolving or leaving it. A simple opener helps: "There's something small I want to name before it gets bigger." Notice that the discomfort crests and passes faster than you expect — and that naming things early is far cheaper than the eventual reckoning.
Accommodating
Your dominant conflict mode is Accommodating — unassertive but cooperative. When you and someone else want different things, you tend to set your own concern aside and give the other person what they need. You yield, smooth things over, and preserve the relationship, often at the cost of your own position in the moment.
What it suggests
Accommodating is generous and exactly right when you're wrong, when the issue matters far more to the other person than to you, or when preserving harmony is worth more than the point at stake — it builds goodwill and shows real care. Overused, though, it quietly erodes you: your own needs go chronically unmet, resentment builds under the surface, and others learn they can override you without pushback. A natural accommodator paired with a competitor ends up drained and unheard, sometimes without either person noticing until it's severe.
What helps
Your growth edge is assertion — treating your own needs as legitimate rather than negotiable-away. Practice holding one position you'd normally concede, and say plainly what you want before you consider yielding. Ask yourself whether you're accommodating because it's genuinely the right call or because conflict feels unsafe. Your care is a strength; pairing it with the ability to stand your ground is what will keep it from costing you.
Conflict Style & Communication Playbook contains 30 items and takes about 8 minutes. Responses are combined using a sum method across the dimensions listed above, then mapped to the interpretive bands above. Your percentile is an interim estimate that sharpens as more people take the test, and is labelled as provisional in your result.
This assessment also includes hidden validity items that detect inattentive or socially-desirable answering. When they trigger, your result carries a lowered confidence rating and we tell you — rather than presenting a skewed score as fact.
The test ships in 10 parallel forms that rotate between takes, so repeat visitors do not simply memorise the same items.
This is an educational, self-reflective assessment — not a diagnosis. A questionnaire can describe a pattern and point you toward language for it, but it cannot account for your history, context, or circumstances, and it is not a substitute for evaluation by a qualified professional. If a result concerns you, treat it as a reason to talk to someone rather than as a verdict.
Your answers are scored on your device. Taking this test requires no account, no email address, and no payment, and your full result — every band, every dimension — is shown to you immediately and in full.