What’s Your Conflict Style? › Two Case Makers
Conflict styles, together
Two Case Makers
Two sets of facts, both in order. Nobody’s unprepared, and nobody may feel heard.
A free quiz: pick what you’d really do in 12 everyday moments. About 3 minutes.
Where it works
Both sides come ready, stick to what happened and rarely leave a point vague.
Where it trips
When both sides are building a case, each can be waiting for the other to finish so they can answer. It can turn into a contest over who remembers it right.
How each can be misread
One Case MakerThat’s not what happened.
- Can mean
- Let’s get this right.
- Can read as
- You’re lying.
The otherI have the email.
- Can mean
- Here’s what I’m going on.
- Can read as
- I’ll prove you wrong.
How it can go
Who said they’d book the hotel
One Case MakerYou said you’d book it.
The otherI said I’d book it if you sent the dates. I have the text.
One Case MakerAnd I sent them on the 4th.
PorcupineBoth may be right about the details. The hotel still isn’t booked, and neither has said how this feels or what they’d like to do now.
Why it helps: Check before assuming › Free tool · What does this text mean?Got a message like this?Paste it in to see a few ways it could be read, and what you could say back. We don’t save it.Check a textOne thing each can try
Whoever goes first
Say their point back before you add yours.
So you were waiting on the dates. Did I get that right?
Why it helps: Understand before answering ›Whoever answers
Move from who’s right to what’s next.
We remember it differently. What do we do about the hotel?
Why it helps: Us against the problem ›After a fight
Style is only half of it. Two people can want different things afterward: one wants to talk tonight, and the other needs a day. Neither is wrong. Say it out loud: “Here’s what I need after a fight. What do you need?”
Know a pair like this?
What’s Your Conflict Style?
Pick what you’d really do in twelve everyday moments, and see your style, how you come back from it and one thing to try.
Find your conflict style- The Case MakerYou have your facts straight, and you came prepared.
- The seven conflict stylesSeven ways people handle a disagreement, and five ways they come back from it.
No style is the best one: each works sometimes and trips sometimes, and yours may change with the person and the day. The quiz is for fun and conversation. It isn’t a scientific test, and it isn’t therapy, counseling or professional advice. Porcupine made up these styles and ways back, drawing loosely on common ideas about conflict, and nobody has tested them. They describe what people do in a disagreement, not who they are or how a relationship is going. If you’re afraid of how someone might react, a page like this isn’t enough: put your safety first and talk to someone you trust (Safety first).