Conflict Style Test — Free 20-Item Conflict Resolution Style Quiz

The starting point is the managerial grid of the 1960s, in which Blake and Mouton sorted managers' behavior along two axes: concern for people and concern for results. Organizational psychologists later reworked that frame for conflict situations, describing how people respond with two axes of their own: assertiveness, or how hard you push your own needs, and cooperativeness, or how much you try to honor the other side's. Combining high and low positions on those two axes yields five styles. Often called the dual concern model, this framework is widely used in negotiation and organizational conflict research.

The five styles sit like this. Competing is high on assertiveness and low on cooperativeness: you press your position through to the end. Collaborating is high on both, investing time in a new solution that satisfies everyone. Compromising is mid-range on both, favoring a trade in which each side gives a little and meets in the middle. Avoiding is low on both: you postpone awkward topics or leave the room. Accommodating is low on assertiveness and high on cooperativeness, adjusting to the other person to protect the relationship. None of these is the right way; which one is useful depends on the situation.

Soundary's conflict style test consists of 20 items written in-house with reference to this published model. Each of the five styles has 4 items, answered on a 5-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree, and some items are reverse-scored. Each style is scored from 0 to 100, and the highest one is presented as your headline type: The Competitor, The Collaborator, The Compromiser, The Avoider or The Accommodator. It is not a translation or adaptation of any commercial conflict-management instrument, so scores are not compared with those tools' norms.

Read the profile of all five bars rather than the headline type alone. If two styles score similarly high, you are switching between them depending on the situation; a style that scores noticeably low is a tool you rarely pick up. Keep in mind that people who handle conflict well are not those who excel at one style but those who can choose a style to fit the moment.

Pairing situations with styles looks like this. Competing works when time is short or a principle must be held; collaborating shines in long-term relationships that run on trust and in issues with tangled stakes. Compromising fits when you must reach agreement with an equally strong counterpart within limited time, and avoiding can actually be wise for trivial frictions or heated moments. Accommodating builds trust when the issue matters far more to the other person or when you realize you were wrong. The most practical exercise is to picture a situation that calls for your lowest style and try it once in a small conflict.

The result is a good starting point for reflecting on team meetings, conversations with your manager, or arguments with a partner or family. Sharing it with someone close to you helps reframe why they keep postponing and you keep pushing: not as a flaw of character but as a difference in style. Because styles shift with roles, relationships and environment, retake the test a few months later or after a change such as a new team or a new relationship and compare. If anger is hard to control in every conflict, or recurring arguments are wearing down your daily life, consider taking the anger self-check as well and talking with a professional.