16 Tips for Using the TKI Tool for Developing People and Facilitating Conflict Management
Ralph Kilmann
Co-Author of the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI): Celebrating the TKI's 50th Anniversary Year (1974–2024)
I’m publishing this newsletter series to discuss the nuances of the four timeless topics for people and organizations: conflict, change, transformation, and consciousness. You can subscribe to never miss an article.
The first draft of the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI?) was created in early 1971 at the University of California, Los Angeles. In UCLA’s Graduate School of Management, Ken Thomas was a young assistant professor, and I was an even younger doctoral student. After several rounds of data collection—which allowed us to fine-tune the instructions, the 30 items, and the accompanying interpretive materials—the TKI instrument was ready for publication. For the next five decades, I continued using it in my research, teaching, and consulting projects, which allowed me to learn more and more about conflict management.
All you need to know to start is that the TKI assessment measures the relative frequency with which you use five modes of behavior—competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating—in a conflict situation. After taking the assessment, you become aware that you’ve been using, out of habit, one or more modes too much and one or more modes too little. By learning how to purposely choose the right mode for a given situation, more of your needs, and other people’s needs, can be met.
Through these 16 tips, which I'll be sharing in subsequent articles, you’ll become more aware of some fascinating nuances about using and interpreting the TKI assessment.
Good and Bad Avoiding
Let’s start with the avoiding mode, which is positioned at the very bottom-left corner of the TKI Conflict Model. Avoiding represents the combination of low assertive- ness and low cooperativeness—neither attempting to satisfy your own needs nor attempting to satisfy the other person’s needs. But an important distinction is to be made between good avoiding and bad avoiding (also referred to as effective avoiding and ineffective avoiding, respectively).
Good avoiding is when you purposely leave a conflict situation in order to collect more information, wait for tempers to calm down, or conclude that what you first thought was a vital issue isn’t that important after all.
Bad avoiding, however, is when the topic is very important to both you and the other people involved in the conflict (and to the organization) but you aren’t comfortable with confronting them. Instead, you’re inclined to sacrifice your needs and their needs—which undermines your self-esteem, leaves you perpetually dissatisfied, and prevents you from helping the others.
Tip #1
Only avoid when that approach to conflict serves to truly benefit you as well as others—whether in the short term or long term. But don’t avoid people or situations simply because you don’t like conflict or are reluctant to receive what you need and deserve. With awareness and practice, combined with assertiveness and cooperativeness, you can easily learn to get both your needs and other people’s needs met—for all the right reasons.
This article is part of a series:
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Kilmann Diagnostics offers a series of eleven recorded online courses and nine assessment tools on the four timeless topics: conflict management, change management, consciousness, and transformation. For more information about these online courses and how to earn your Certification in Conflict and Change Management with the Thomas-Kilmann Instrument (TKI), visit: https://kilmanndiagnostics.com . For the most up-to-date and comprehensive discussion of Dr. Kilmann’s theories and methods for achieving long-term organizational success, see his 2021 Legacy Book: Creating a Quantum Organization.
Success Coach
1 年thanks for sharing