You will be able to name the five conflict modes and give a situation where each is the right choice.
Wei Jie runs operations for a chain of retail stores spread across the island. On a typical Tuesday he might have three disagreements before lunch. A store manager wants an extra part-timer for the weekend. Marketing wants to launch a promotion next week on a product that is still on a ship. And on a site visit he finds boxes stacked in front of a fire exit at the Tampines outlet.
He handled all three the same way: he talked until the other person gave in. It worked on the fire exit. It did not work on the roster, where the store manager agreed in the meeting and then quietly stopped cooperating for a month.
The trouble was not that Wei Jie handled conflict badly. He handled every conflict identically, and different conflicts need different approaches.
Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann, two researchers who studied conflict in organisations in the 1970s, described conflict behaviour using two dimensions. The first is how much you try to satisfy your own concerns, which they call assertiveness. The second is how much you try to satisfy the other person's concerns, which they call cooperativeness.
Put those two dimensions on a grid and you get five modes, which they used in their questionnaire, the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument. You do not need the questionnaire for this course. You do need the five modes.
Competing: high on your own concerns, low on theirs. You push for your position. Collaborating: high on both. You work with the other person to find a solution that fully meets both sets of needs. Compromising: moderate on both. Each side gives up something to reach an acceptable middle. Avoiding: low on both. You sidestep the conflict, postpone it or withdraw. Accommodating: low on your own concerns, high on theirs. You let the other person have what they want.
Thomas and Kilmann were clear that none of the five is good or bad in itself. Each fits some situations and backfires in others. The skill is matching the mode to the situation.
Competing is the right choice when a decision is urgent, when someone's safety is at risk, or when you are sure you are right about something important and there is no time to talk it through. The fire exit at Tampines is a clear case. Wei Jie did not need to understand the store team's storage challenges before getting the boxes moved. He needed them moved that hour. The conversation about storage could come later.
Collaborating fits when the issue is important to both sides and both sides' needs really matter, so that a split-the-difference answer would leave something important unsolved. It takes time, because you have to dig into what each side needs, which is where module 4's listening skills come in. The promotion is a good candidate. Marketing needs a campaign that hits its target. Operations needs stock that actually exists. A launch date set together, with marketing seeing the shipping schedule, could meet both needs.
Compromising suits moderate stakes and limited time. Neither side gets everything, but both get enough, and the issue is not worth the hours that full collaboration would take. Wei Jie's weekend roster could have been a compromise: one extra part-timer on Saturday but not Sunday, reviewed after a month.
Avoiding sounds like a failure, but it has its place. It suits trivial issues that are not worth anyone's energy, like the colour of the new shelf labels. It also suits moments when emotions need to cool before a real conversation can happen. Choosing to leave a heated discussion and come back tomorrow is avoiding, used well. The risk is using it for things that are not trivial, which lesson 5.2 looks at.
Accommodating suits two situations. The first is when the issue matters far more to the other person than to you. If a store manager feels strongly about which day her team does stocktake and you do not mind either way, letting her decide costs you nothing and builds goodwill.
The second is when you realise you were wrong. Once you see that the other person's position is better, conceding quickly and cleanly is a strength. Holding on to save face, when everyone can see you were mistaken, costs far more than admitting it.
Here is how Wei Jie would map his Tuesday now. The fire exit: competing, because of safety. The promotion: collaborating, because both sides' needs are important and there is time. The roster: compromising, because the stakes are moderate and the store manager's view deserved a real hearing he had not given it.
Three disagreements, three different modes. Lesson 5.4, Pick a mode for three live conflicts, gives you a way to make this choice quickly. For now, look backwards.
In the activity below you list five conflicts from the past year, name the mode you used in each, and decide which one would have fitted best.
List five conflicts from the past year and write which mode you used in each and which would have fitted best.
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