I am teaching a class on emotionally healthy relationships this winter. Prepping for one of my classes, I remembered an assessment I took about 5 years ago by Jim Van Yperen, a church-conflict specialist. It’s simply called Conflict Style Assessment. It’s an inexpensive, self-paced guide to identifying and correcting your negative habits of handling conflict.
It takes about 45 minutes to go through Van Yperen’s assessment. It is really excellent! You can use it for your personal use, with your spouse, or in a small group. It would be an excellent tool for a church staff. I went through the assessment 5 years ago and just went through it again a couple days back. My style hasn’t changed much, but it has some. I’m growing but ever-so-slowly, it seems. Our negative habits of handling conflict seem to hang with us. That’s why we need each other. I highly recommend it!
Van Yperen’s book Making Peace, is an equally outstanding resource based on the assessment. However, you do not have to have read the book to get great benefit from the assessment.
Finally, take a look at the website of Van Yperen’s ministry called Restoring the Church. The free resources/downloads on how to examine and navigate your conflicts is housed under the FREE section of the website. The 4 resources — Preparing for a confrontation, How to say “I’m sorry” and mean it, Thoughts, Actions, and Speech, and Five things every leader must do in conflict (a step-by-step guide) — are each excellent, and they are free and quickly get right down to where the tire hits the road!
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