Lsi Conflict

Tanisha Davis

GM570

LSI Conflict Paper

LSI Conflict is a “special version of Life Styles Inventory that focuses on teaching individuals how their personal styles manifest themselves in conflict situations” (Lafferty, p. 3). The LSI Conflict exercise helped me understand in significant detail my strongest and weakest conflict styles, as well as my general orientation. Based on the answers I provided in the exercise, my general orientation is Aggressive/ Defensive. Individuals associated with this orientation tend to view conflict as threatening and become adversarial. Aggressive/Defensive individuals often attempt to overpower and outwit their opponents and are motivated by the desire to win. Lafferty (2009) suggests that this orientation “usually produces a less than desired result because it frequently escalates conflict into a win/lose contest (p. 5). Additionally, this exercise helped me determine that my strongest conflict profile is “perfectionist”, and my weakest conflict profile is “accommodator”.

As stated earlier, my dominant personal conflict style is perfectionist. Perfectionists are “characterized by unreasonably high standards and undue attention to details which adversely affect how they handle conflict with others” (Lafferty, 2009, p.15). Individuals that score high for the Perfectionist style set impossible standards for themselves and believe they should be able to achieve them. According to Lafferty (2009), this conflict style mirrors the Perfectionist’s approach to conflicts with others, causing these individuals to set unrealistic expectations not only for themselves, but for others as well. These expectations also cause perfectionists to purse others with unrelenting determination and affect their perspective on certain objectives that are at stake.

Lafferty (2009) provided some adjectives that briefly describe perfectionists and the ones I found most descriptive of me include: believe in actions not words, tries to be...