2.1: Five Styles of Handling Conflict
Let's begin by exploring a tool Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann created in 1974, which describes five styles for handling conflict: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating. They based each style on an individual's appetite for assertiveness and cooperation. Understanding what you hope to gain when you face a workplace conflict or disagreement and what those around you wish to achieve will help you negotiate a beneficial solution. Here are the five elements of the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument.
- Competing: People with a competing style play to win. While other employees may perceive them to be aggressive, assertive, bossy, or inconsiderate, competing individuals often do well when a swift decision is in order.
When you work with someone who has a competitive conflict style, remember they want to win, so position your ideas in a way that makes them think they are winning.
- Collaborating: Collaborators aim to create solutions where everyone wins. They take
time to think through all options before deciding and are known for their strong relationships with others. However, they are criticized for taking too much time and effort to make a decision. When you work with someone of this style, give them time and
space to think through different views and options before forcing them to make a decision.
- Compromising: In compromises, no one wins outright in a negotiation, but each side achieves something they can tolerate and loses something they would have preferred.
Politicians typically compromise by taking the best ideas from as many parties as possible to create an alternate solution. Keep in mind that parties that compromise may later resent having given up something they value. When you work with someone using
this style, decide what is important to you in the negotiation upfront.
- Avoiding: Conflict avoiders find any workaround to avoid conflict. Some may perceive conflict avoiders as uncaring, but they may just hope the conflict disappears. Conflict avoidance
can hurt relationships and business decisions because the perpetrators often avoid confronting the issue beyond the decision deadline. When you work with someone who avoids conflict, you may have to bring up the issues and suggest solutions.
- Accommodating: Accommodation allows the other party to win. This can be a good strategy if you feel you are on the wrong track or want to preserve a relationship. When you work with someone who is accommodating, you may have to ask them a lot of questions to discern what their needs are so you can address them.
Read this article to learn how these five conflict resolution approaches relate to the individual characteristics of assertiveness and cooperativeness.
Read this page to learn how to use the Thomas-Killmann approach to conflict resolution to obtain a positive outcome. Pay attention to the role emotional intelligence plays in guiding our thinking and behavior.