Week 3
Mastering Conflict Solving
Online Live Webinar
Friday, September 22 9:30-10:30 am
Mastering Conflict Solving: Using the TKI model to understand conflict styles and how your styles are helping or hurting your team work
What we will be covering …
Work stress is often made worse due to poor handling of conflict. We will be using the Thomas-Kilmann Assessment (TKI) and conflict solving method to help you to discover whether you might be overusing or underusing one or more of five conflict-handling modes (collaborating, competing, compromising, accommodating, and avoiding), so you can improve how you handle conflict in the future.
Before we meet in person next time, please take the TKI assessment. Read this before beginning: Guide to completing the TKI Form
Once you are finished, click here to learn what your scores mean.
Learning Objectives
Learn about the five conflict styles (collaborating, competing, compromising, accommodating, and avoiding)
Learn about the continuum of styles along the distributive line (competing to accommodating); the defensive line (avoiding to compromising); and the integrative line (compromising to collaborating)
Understanding how overuse or underuse of certain styles can help or hinder your work efforts
Learn about the 8 conditions that determine when to use one style over another
Understand that there are no good or bad styles, only better ways to apply all of them
Identify some problem areas in conflict solving that you’d like to transform
Practice Recommendations
Observing Your Conflict Styles in Action Worksheet
Self-observation is one of the most powerful learning tools we have. This week, I recommend that you observe in daily life how you use the various styles in both professional and personal situations. These can be very small conflicts, like scheduling a time to have coffee, to more complicated situations where emotions run high–like anger, frustration or embarrassment. The goal is to notice how you operate when conflict arises
Without trying to change anything, just become curious about your behavior in conflictual situations. When do you notice that you are:
Competing to get your needs met while other people’s expressed needs will not be met; or where you insist on your point of view as the basis for a decision, regardless of other perspectives?
Compromising when there are conflicting needs or contrasting points of view, finding a way for all concerned to get some of their needs met or points of view considered?
Giving in entirely and accommodating another person’s needs or points of view at the expense of your own?
Avoiding taking action–avoiding doing or saying something that would address or resolve a conflict or challenge?
collaborating with others on a set of solutions that will satisfy the needs and perspectives of many people or groups, and/or will reach more complex goals? You might also observe trying to use collaboration in a situation where you are running into roadblocks with that style.
Writing things down when we are trying to learn new things has been shown to be extremely effective, so if you want to improve your learning, use the self-observation worksheet below to write down your observations.
Please remember that all of the conflict solving modes are good and useful, depending on the circumstances.
Optional Additional Practice
If you want, you can also note whether you think the mode you are using is helping you or not helping you in solving your conflict.
Downloads
Observing Your Conflict Styles in Action Worksheet