Five ways to handle conflict

by Paul Daly

Two children are in a kitchen. Each wants the last orange. What do they do?

Most people, in my experience, say halve the orange, and that is what the children decided. The first child took one half, ate the fruit and threw away the peel while the other child threw away the fruit and used the peel from the second half to flavour a cake. They each ended up with half an orange. But they could have effectively ended up with a whole orange if they had asked each other what they wanted it for.

The story is recounted by Fisher, Ury and Patton (2011, p. 57) to illustrate the difference between positions and interests and the authors argue that many arguments are conflicts of position and result in impasses because the interests of both people are not explored.

Another story the authors use to illustrate a similar point is of two men quarrelling in a library. One wants the window closed and the other wants it open. They cannot agree on any of the options: closed, open a crack, halfway, three quarters, fully open. How can this be resolved?

The librarian enters and asks one of the men why he wants the window open and the answer is “To get some fresh air”. She asks the other man why he wants the window closed and he says “To avoid a draught”. She thinks for a minute and then opens wide a window in the next room, which brings in fresh air without a draught (Fisher, Ury and Patton, 2011 p. 40).

Conflict is inevitable in life because at times people have incompatible needs, feelings, values, interests, goals, attitudes and perceptions. Sometimes these differences lead to serious and protracted disagreements.

None of us are novices when it comes to conflict. Since childhood we all have developed skills and strategies to deal with it. We may not be aware of how and why we are succeeding or failing. Some of these strategies are reactive and automatic. Some are counter-productive. Others are a form of denial. They may have worked in the past for us but may need now to be reflected on and updated and a range of other possible options considered.

Conflict resolution theory offers a number of perspectives that can widen our understanding. Conflict can be complex. For example, The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (Coleman, Deutsch, & Marcus, 2014) explores, among many others, the following themes in conflict: inequalities of power, social justice, trust, effective communication, the role of language, emotions that facilitate constructive outcomes, judgemental biases, self-regulation, conflictual styles of personality, forgiveness and reconciliation, and mediation.

In this short article I am going to outline just one model: the popular and influential Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) (Thomas and Kilmann, 1974; Kilmann, n.d.) which posits five conflict handling modes.

The conflict modes are competing, accommodating, compromising, avoiding and collaborating. How these five modes are defined by the authors can be seen in the diagram below which is adapted from their original graph (Thomas and Kilmann, 2008). On the vertical axis is assertiveness - “satisfying your own concerns”; on the horizontal axis is cooperativeness - “satisfying the other person’s concerns” (Thomas and Kilmann, 2008). You can be high or low or half way on either of these and the result are five different conflict handling styles.

Looking at this diagram and remembering the stories of the orange and the window above, it might be thought that collaborating (high cooperativeness and high assertiveness) is the only appropriate conflict-handling mode and that all the others are always to be avoided. However, that is not the case. According to this model each of the conflict modes have strengths in certain circumstances and these are outlined by Thomas and Kilmann (2008):

Competing (high assertiveness and low cooperativeness). You might opt for this approach when urgent decisive action is needed, for example, in an emergency, or when unpopular actions such as cost-cutting require implementation.

Accommodating (low assertiveness and high cooperativeness). You might use this mode when the issue is much more important to the other person than it is to you, when you realise that you are wrong, or when there is a particular need to preserve harmony and avoid disruption.

Compromising (intermediate assertiveness and intermediate cooperativeness). You might adopt this approach when you and the person you are in conflict with are strongly committed to mutually exclusive goals.

Avoiding (low assertiveness and low cooperativeness). You might avoid or withdraw from conflict when you perceive an issue as unimportant, when the damage due to conflict outweighs its benefits, when others can resolve the issue more effectively, or when you need to let people cool down.

Collaborating (high assertiveness and high cooperativeness). You might choose to collaborate when you need to find an integrative consensual long-term solution where the concerns of both parties are fully expressed and hard feelings are worked through.

To see the range of conflict responses mapped out so clearly is in itself beneficial. Reflecting on one’s experience in the light of this model indicates whether one is overusing or underusing some of the conflict handling behaviours and expands one’s repertoire of responses. (Thomas and Kilmann, 2008). For example, someone who is constantly bickering over relatively unimportant matters may explore why this is so and realise that there are other options, such as not engaging with the conflict or accommodating the other person’s perspective or compromising. Someone else may be conflictaverse and allow others to walk all over them and may find encouragement in this model to take tentative steps toward asserting themselves in small ways to begin with. People who habitually compromise may be surprised to learn that both their own concerns and those of others can be satisfied to a greater extent following dialogue and the search for creative solutions. The model does not posit the reasons why people take on a particular conflict handling mode or avoid other modes but it holds out the possibility of change through awareness and practice (Kilmann Diagnostics, 2014).

Kilmann (Kilmann Diagnostics, 2014) emphasises that there are a number of different ways of enacting the five modes, some better than others. With competing, for example, you might speak in a dominating manner or alternatively you might share persuasively why it is so important to you to do something in a particular way. With avoiding you might abruptly leave a conversation and walk away or alternatively you might say that you need some more time to think about the issue. It is important to enact each mode with “care, sensitivity and respect” (Kilmann Diagnostics, 2014).

There is a charge to take the TKI assessment online but there is ample material on the model freely available on the Kilmann Diagnostics website, https://kilmanndiagnostics.com/.

In conflict resolution training there is a rich literature on collaborating - the win-win option - with descriptions of active listening, empathy, appropriate assertiveness, the unconscious dimensions of the “iceberg of conflict”, the body’s “fight, flight, freeze and flow” responses, ’I’ statements, attacking the problem rather than the person, and willingness to resolve (Cornelius and Faire, 2007; Cloke and Goldsmith, 2000). Each of these topics deserves an article of its own. The focus here has been on one helpful framework that illustrates the possibilities of different conflict responses.

Paul Daly is an IAHIP accredited psychotherapist working in private practice and community-based therapy in Dublin.

References

Cloke, K. and Goldsmith, J. (2000). Resolving conflicts at work: Eight strategies for everyone on the job. Jossey-Bass.

Coleman, P. T., Deutsch, M., & Marcus, E. C. (Eds.). 3rd edit. (2014). The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice. John Wiley & Sons.

Cornelius, H., & Faire, S. (2007). Everyone can win: Responding to conflict constructively. Simon & Schuster.

Fisher, R., Ury, W. L., & Patton, B. (2011). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in. Penguin.

Kilmann, R.H. (n.d.) A Brief History of the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI). https://kilmanndiagnostics.com/a-brief-history-of-the-thomas-kilmann-conflict-modeinstrument/

Kilmann Diagnostics website https://kilmanndiagnostics.com/

Kilmann Diagnostics (2014) Learning to use different TKI Modes, https://youtu.be/miwZ31chiFc

Thomas, K. W., and Kilmann, R. H. (May, 1, 2008) Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument - Profile and Interpretive Report - Report prepared for Jane Sample https://kilmanndiagnostics.com/wpcontent/uploads/2018/03/TKI_Sample_Report.pdf

Thomas, K. W., and Kilmann R. H. (1974) The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument. CPP, Inc.

IAHIP 2022 - INSIDE OUT 98 - Autumn 2022