Even before doing the questionnaire, I knew that my approach to conflict is to be the peacekeeper. This was always how my family describes me when conflict occurs. To be completely honest, conflict gives me the stomach flips and I try to avoid it as much as possible. I don’t enjoy it and find it anxiety-inducing and stressful. My way to deal with conflict is to try to come to a solution as quickly as possible, even if this means I compromise my own wants for the situation. This came out quite strongly in my score, scoring 14 in the areas of ‘Accommodating’ and ‘Compromising’. My next strongest area of conflict resolution in ‘Collaboration’ in which I scored 13 and ‘Avoiding’ gaining 11. These all seem quite high and on reflection it appears that if I can’t accommodate, compromise or collaborate, then I do everything I can to avoid the conflict. This is in line with the way I perceive myself in conflict situations and reiterates on how others perceive me in conflict situations.

The area of ‘Competing’ only scored 5 points. This is not surprising to me, but I have never thought of this as a deficit in how I manage conflict. My perception of competing (standing up strongly for my ideas) would antagonise a conflict situation. I would rather back down or try to compromise rather than stand firmly with my side of an argument. I feel this is an area that I need to improve on because in order to compromise and collaborate well, all ideas need to be heard and considered rather than being drowned out by the loudest idea.