You name the problem and you win. Your Push axis is high, your Pull axis is low, and in most disagreements you are the one who got the outcome they wanted. People know where you stand. They also know that disagreeing with you has a cost, and that shapes what they bring you more than you can see.
The Enforcer's problem is item eleven. You have won an argument and lost something you needed from that person afterwards. Most Enforcers score that one high and think of it as a fair trade. It is not, because the cost arrives later and in a different currency: the report who stops flagging risks, the peer who stops sharing the customer, the boss who stops backing you in the room you are not in.
The second pattern is that you experience Curiosity as weakness. Asking what the other person needs feels like giving ground before the argument has started. It is the opposite. It is finding out where the ground is.
Check your two Pull bars. If Repair is your lowest, the fix is after the conflict: you are winning and walking away. If Curiosity is lowest, the fix is before it: you are arguing before you have understood the case.
When I was scaling the company I ran, I had a manager everyone called brilliant. He was right in almost every argument, and he made sure people knew it. His output was excellent. His team kept leaving. For too long I tolerated it because of the output, and that was on me. When I finally sat down with him, I did not talk about his attitude.
I put the cost in front of him: the people who had left, what it took to replace them, and the ideas his team had stopped bringing him. He had never seen it added up. He started asking before he argued, and his people started staying. My rule since then is to confront first, and to cut only if the direct conversation does not move the behaviour.
One change for this week. Pick the person you most recently won a disagreement with. Go back and ask what it cost them. Not to reopen the decision. To find out what you did not hear the first time. You will be surprised how much they have been holding.
Your Directness score may be middling despite your reputation. That is because the score rewards both halves, naming and keeping. You have one.
Next step: the leader who wins every argument is often the reason decisions do not get challenged. The 360 feedback tool shows you the gap between how you see it and how they do.
Next step
The other results
- Straight TalkerYou name it, you hold it, you keep the person.
- SmootherYou keep the person and lose the point.
- PostponerYou wait. The problem does not.
- DealmakerYou split it. Nobody is unhappy enough to fix it.
About this result
This is one of 5 results from the Conflict Style Assessment, a free tool that shows the score without an email. Aggregate figures are at the statistics page once 30 completions have been reached. More free tools are at the tools shelf.