Conflict Management Style
Primary Style:
Leading with Competing means you assert firmly under conflict. Optimal in crises and principled issues; costly when overused.
Asserting your position firmly to win
Yielding to others' needs to maintain relationships
Working together to find win-win solutions
Stepping back from conflict to preserve harmony
Finding middle ground through mutual concession
A detailed read of each dimension at your score band, with what's likely a strength, what to watch, and where to invest.
You push hard. Optimal in crises; costly as default.
From the research: Competing mode optimal in crises and principled stands; over-use predicts escalation (Rahim, 2002).
Accommodates when it makes sense.
From the research: Accommodating preserves relationships on low stakes; chronic accommodation predicts unfair accumulation (Judge et al., 2012).
Collaborates on important issues.
From the research: Collaborating produces most durable resolutions on high-stakes issues (Fisher & Ury, 1981).
Avoids when appropriate.
From the research: Avoiding is appropriate for trivial issues; chronic avoidance predicts derailment (Hogan).
Compromises when appropriate.
From the research: Compromising efficient for symmetric stakes; suboptimal when positions are asymmetric.
No low-scoring dimensions — nothing stands out as a growth area from this assessment.
Each Thomas-Kilmann mode has moments where it's exactly right and moments where it costs you. The guidance below is tuned to the score band you actually landed in — so you're reading advice that fits your profile, not generic best-practice.
Competing
Strong
Your willingness to assert a position gives teams decisiveness in moments that would otherwise drift.
When overdone, it reads as dismissiveness. Good ideas from quieter colleagues can get overwritten by yours before they surface.
In group decisions, speak third rather than first — you'll still land your point but leave room for the room.
Collaborating
Strong
You find integrative solutions other people would have settled for compromise on. Your team trusts you to surface what really matters to everyone.
You can underweight time pressure. When the window is short, collaboration turns into delay.
Timebox collaborative conversations. If a session isn't converging in 20 minutes, name it and switch to compromise.
Compromising
Balanced
You use compromise as a tool, not a reflex. You can horse-trade when it fits the situation.
Occasionally you'll hold out for a perfect answer when an imperfect one would have kept things moving.
When time is tight and neither party will get everything, name the compromise early — the ask is respected.
Avoiding
Strong
You pick your moments. You know the difference between an issue worth engaging and noise best let go.
Your threshold for engaging may be set too high. Small irritations can compound before you address them.
Once a week, pick one avoided conversation and have it. The decision to engage is often harder than the conversation itself.
Accommodating
Strong
You're generous with goodwill. You build credit with colleagues by letting small things go and flexing on their priorities.
You may accommodate on issues where holding your ground would have served the team better. Your preferences can get pushed to the edges.
Once a week, notice something you'd typically accommodate on and don't. See what happens.
Three workplace conflicts, read through the lens of your strongest mode (Competing). Each one pairs the response you're most likely to reach for with a coaching prompt for the moments that reach for you instead.
Your cross-functional partner has bumped your standing meeting three weeks running. You suspect they don't see the value, but the coordination it gives you matters.
You'd go direct — a brief, pointed message saying the cancellations are costing the team and asking them to protect the slot or propose an alternative.
Your Competing default will pull you one way here. Before you fire off the note, ask yourself what their reality might be. A single curious question first ("what's pulling your time?") often lands the same outcome with a better relationship.
You pitched a project restructure in a staff meeting. Your manager shut it down quickly in front of the team and moved on. You still think you're right.
You'd push back in the moment or immediately after the meeting — make the case, cite the evidence, and expect a proper hearing.
Your instinct to re-engage fast is correct, but choose the venue carefully. A private follow-up — "I'd like another crack at that proposal, what would I need to show you?" — keeps the working relationship intact.
In a team meeting, one of your reports openly questioned a call you'd already made, using language that felt like a line being crossed.
You'd name the behaviour on the spot or in the room just after — clear on what's fine (disagreement) and what's not (the framing). You'd expect them to adjust.
Your instinct is right that this needs addressing, but avoid a public reply. Pull them aside within the hour and separate the content of the disagreement from the way it was raised.
A balanced profile has three or more modes above 50%. A dominant profile has one mode well clear of the rest. Your bars tell you which you are — and the narrative below tells you what to do about it.
The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (Kilmann & Thomas, 1977) is the most widely used conflict framework in organisational development. It maps conflict behaviour on two axes — assertiveness and cooperativeness — producing five modes. No mode is 'best'; each is optimal in some contexts and costly in others.
Flexibility across modes predicts leadership effectiveness better than any single mode (Rahim, 2002). Over-reliance on one mode is a classic derailer — especially Competing (read as abrasive) or Avoiding (read as checked-out).