If you are planning a conflict styles workshop you'll need to decide how long to make it. In part it depends which version of the conflict style assessment you're using.
I'm an old-school trainer. I love the simplicity of paper and face-to-face training. But after Style Matters had been out in paper for several years, demand for an online tool drove us to also develop a digital version. That was an eye-opener for me.
After we got it set up, I couldn't deny that the score report our server spits out mines user data in ways I can't match in a workshop. It would take quick thinking and 10-15 minutes dedicated to each participant for a trainer to come even close to the detailed insights contained in the 10 page score report generated by our server. That's just not realistic with 10-20 people in a workshop.
So I'm a reluctant convert to the digital version of Style Matters. We still sell the print version, but in my opinion the ideal approach in training is to have users take the online version before the workshop, print out the score report at home, and bring it to a live workshop. (Already, you've saved 20 minutes of group time that would otherwise be spent passing around paper forms, giving instructions, and waiting for everyone to finish!)
Then in a face to face setting take users through a learning experience (supported by this Powerpoint or your own sketch of it) that provides some input on conflict styles, reinforced by review and discussion of digital score reports in small and large group settings.
That would be enough to cover the basics of conflict styles in 80-120 minutes. You could easily do a lot more, of course, if you have another hour or several more. See my Trainers Guide, available as a free download, for ideas.
Online tools open another scenario that many trainers like because it pushes individual activities outside of workshop time and allows the trainer to dedicate more classroom time to discussion.
Using the online version could look something like this:
In these groups, they each share what they see as one of their best strengths in the use of this style, and also each tells a short story of a time when they see that they over-used this style and it created difficulty. Hopefully you'll have more than an hour, in which case you can get lots of ideas for valuable discussion in the Trainers Guide.
Using this approach, it's possible to do a compact but coherent conflict styles workshop in as short as an hour. A length of 90-120 minutes would be better, but if an hour is all you can give, you can still create a worthwhile learning experience.
When using the online version, the Style Matters dashboard or coupon access allow you to send out invitations without big demands on your time to users.
For years I felt that users got a roughly equivalent product in the print and online versions. But in 2017 we substantially upgraded the algorithm for generating online score reports. It looks for a variety of patterns in the numbers and generates a detailed score report accordingly. This score report contains many suggestions for self-management based on scores, including situations where user scores are quite close among several styles.
An experienced trainer able to study an individual score report for several minutes can probably get close to that level of analysis. But in group settings, that's hardly possible due to time constraints. Even if the trainer is able to quickly identify the patterns, it takes several minutes of talking per user to describe those patterns. The limits of time make it impossible to provide that with more than a couple of people.
So, much as I love the human connection of the old-fashioned pencil-and-paper format, users get more specific, targeted feedback if they use the online version.
The ideal is a combo approach: Users take the inventory on their own online and bring a printed out score report to class. The trainer then works with them in reflecting on their score report and comparing notes with others.
