You will apply the conflict modes to real situations you are facing now and commit to an approach for each.
Looking back at old conflicts, as you did in lesson 5.1, is useful for spotting your habits. But the conflicts that matter are the ones in front of you now: the colleague you need to talk to this week, the supplier who keeps letting you down, the argument at home that keeps coming back. This exercise takes three of those and makes a deliberate choice about each one before you walk in.
It takes about 25 minutes. You will end up with a short conflict planner: one row per conflict, with a chosen mode, the reason, and the first sentence you will say.
Write down three disagreements you are in right now. Mix them up if you can: one large, one small, at least one at work, and one at home if there is one. Describe each in a single factual line, as you learned in module 4, without the story.
Wei Jie's first was with marketing, who want to launch a promotion on 1 March for a product whose shipment is due on 25 February. His second was a supplier who has delivered late on three of the last four Fridays, so the stores went into each of those weekends short. The third was at home, where he and his sister keep arguing about who takes their mother to her polyclinic appointments.
For each conflict, give two ratings from 1 to 5. The first is how much the outcome matters to you. The second is how much the relationship with this person matters to you, over the long run.
These two ratings line up with the two dimensions Thomas and Kilmann used: concern for your own goals and concern for the other person's. They are not the same thing, but they are a practical way to think about them. How much a supplier relationship matters comes down to how easily you could replace them. A sibling relationship usually matters a lot.
Then note the time available. Is this something that has to be settled today, this week, or this quarter?
Wei Jie's ratings: the promotion was 5 for outcome and 4 for relationship, with about three weeks to settle it. The supplier was 4 for outcome and 2 for relationship, since two other suppliers carry the same range, and the festive season was a month away. His sister was 3 for outcome and 5 for relationship, with the next appointment in ten days.
Let the ratings and the time make the choice, and keep your habit out of it. Here is a rough guide based on lesson 5.1.
High outcome and high relationship, with time to talk: collaborate. High outcome and lower relationship, or urgent: compete, firmly and politely. Middling on both, or short of time: compromise. Low outcome and high relationship: accommodate. Low on both: avoid, or leave it until emotions cool.
Treat the guide as a starting point that you can overrule. If the outcome is about safety or ethics, compete regardless of the relationship. If you have been wrong, accommodate regardless of the outcome. And if your default mode from lesson 5.2 keeps coming out of the guide, check you are not rating to justify it.
Wei Jie's choices: collaborate on the promotion, because both he and marketing needed something important from it and there was time to work it out. Compete with the supplier, because the outcome mattered, the relationship could be replaced, and he needed a fix before the festive season. Compromise with his sister, because the relationship mattered more than who drove, and an arrangement both of them could live with was better than a perfect one. He noticed that two of these went against his default of competing, which made him trust the choices more.
For each conflict, write the first sentence you will actually say. The opening sets the mode. A collaborating opening invites the other person in. A competing opening states your position clearly and calmly. A compromising opening names the trade.
Wei Jie's openings:
For marketing: "I want this promotion to land well, and I've got a stock problem I think we can solve together. Can we look at the shipping dates and your campaign plan side by side?"
For the supplier: "Three of the last four Friday deliveries have been late, and our stores were short each time. From next week I need deliveries by Thursday at 5pm, or we'll need to move some of the range to another supplier."
For his sister: "Can we split this? I'll do the morning appointments and you take the afternoon ones, and we look at it again in three months."
Each opening sticks to facts and leaves motives out. None of them says the supplier is careless or that his sister is not pulling her weight. That keeps the door open whichever mode you choose.
A finished conflict planner has three rows. Each row has the conflict in one factual line, the two ratings, the time available, the mode you chose, one sentence on why, and the opening sentence you will say. Read the openings aloud once. If any of them sounds like someone else, rewrite it until it sounds like you.
When you hold these conversations over the coming weeks, note which mode you actually used once you were in the room. People often drift back to their default under pressure, and knowing when that happens is the next thing to work on. Fill in your three rows in the activity below.
Fill in the conflict planner for three live situations with a chosen mode, the reason and an opening sentence for each.
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