Discover Your Conflict Management Style – Review

This is a review of Discover Your Conflict Management Style by Speed B. Leas, a resource from The Alban Institute.

Main Themes

This is a simple workbook style publication designed to help you, as the title suggests, discover your conflict management style. A self-assessment tool aids in determining your conflict management tendencies from among the following styles: persuading, compelling, avoiding / accommodating, collaborating, negotiating, and supporting. Knowing your preferred style and others will increase competence in encountering conflict and those with other preferred styles of conflict.

Strengths and Weaknesses

A great strength of this book is its brevity and tight focus on the topic. Another strength is that Leas addresses how, when and possible outcomes for each of the styles.

Relevance to The United Methodist Church

This resource is relevant to The United Methodist, particularly in regard to upcoming conferences – general, jurisdictional and annual. This resource may also be helpful to congregations in conflict internally or externally.

Relevance to The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection

I believe that this resource would be relevant and helpful to staff and lay teams that are experiencing conflict or those teams that wish to be better prepared for conflict when it arises.

Recommendation

I highly recommend this document to leaders within The United Methodist Church both lay and clergy, particularly delegates to General Conference 2008. I also recommend this resource to those who desire to increase their knowledge and usage of various conflict management styles.