Five Conflict Management Styles and How to Use Them

Key Takeaways

• The five conflict management styles are accommodating, avoiding, collaborating, competing and compromising, each defined by levels of assertiveness and cooperativeness.

• No single style is universally "best." The most effective approach depends on the situation, the relationship and the stakes involved.

• Personality traits influence your default conflict style, but you can learn to flex between styles with practice and self-awareness.

• Developing stronger conflict resolution skills improves team communication, reduces workplace stress and strengthens professional relationships.

Would you like to reduce workplace stress caused by "people issues?" One way to improve workplace stress is to better understand personality and conflict management styles. The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) is the most widely recognized framework for understanding how people respond to disagreements. It maps behavior along two dimensions: assertiveness (how much you prioritize your own needs) and cooperativeness (how much you prioritize the other party's needs). These two dimensions produce five distinct conflict management styles:

• Accommodating

• Avoiding

• Collaborating

• Competing

• Compromising

Along with these, we will also go into how you can develop conflict handling styles, in order to help understand your coworkers and develop the proper communication skills essential to anybody who has to work with others.

What Are the Five Conflict Management Styles?

Even though researchers have divided conflict management styles into five categories, no person fits perfectly in one category. But generally speaking, here are the different ways people deal with workplace issues.

The TKI framework plots each style according to its level of assertiveness and cooperativeness. The table below provides a quick reference for all five conflict resolution styles, including when each works best and the risks involved.

Here is a brief overview of each style:

• Accommodating: You set aside your own concerns to satisfy the other person's needs. This style prioritizes the relationship over the outcome.

• Avoiding: You sidestep the disagreement entirely, neither pursuing your own goals nor addressing the other party's concerns.

• Collaborating: You work with the other person to find a solution that fully satisfies both sides. This style demands the most time and trust.

• Competing: You pursue your own position at the other person's expense. This style is decisive but can strain relationships.

• Compromising: Both parties give up something to reach a middle-ground solution. It is faster than collaborating but may leave both sides partially unsatisfied.

The Five Styles Explained

Accommodating Style

Characteristics of an Accommodator: Accommodators may be less assertive and highly cooperative. They tend to avoid conflict and have a strong desire to be liked by others.

The accommodating style sits at the intersection of low assertiveness and high cooperativeness. People who default to this approach prioritize harmony and the other person's satisfaction, sometimes at their own expense. Key characteristics include:

• Willingness to yield on personal preferences to keep the peace

• Strong empathy and attentiveness to others' emotions

• Tendency to say "yes" even when they disagree

• Discomfort with direct confrontation

Workplace scenario: A project manager disagrees with a colleague's proposed timeline but agrees to it without raising concerns because the colleague feels strongly about the deadline. The project moves forward smoothly, but the manager quietly absorbs extra stress to meet the unrealistic schedule.

Pros: Preserves relationships, builds goodwill and can de-escalate tense situations quickly.

Cons: Can lead to resentment over time, signals that your needs are negotiable and may prevent the team from hearing important concerns.

An accommodator can sometimes fall into people-pleasing tendencies, which end up being detrimental in the long run, and true collaboration is not possible. A good way to reduce people pleasing is by building assertive communication skills and knowing your boundaries. Resolving a conflict, while also maintaining a relationship, generally involves some form of negotiation. Knowing clearly what your minimum requirements and boundaries are will help you recognize the areas where you are more flexible

Avoiding Style

Characteristics of an Avoider: Avoiders tend to be unassertive and uncooperative. When individuals use this strategy, they tend to give up personal goals to avoid conflict.

The avoiding style reflects low assertiveness and low cooperativeness. People who lean on this approach withdraw from disagreements rather than engage. Key characteristics include:

• Tendency to postpone or sidestep difficult conversations

• Preference for working independently to reduce friction

• Discomfort with emotional intensity

• Belief that many conflicts will resolve themselves if left alone

Workplace scenario: Two team members disagree about how to divide responsibilities on a shared project. Rather than address the overlap, one team member simply works around the other, leading to duplicated effort and confusion.

Pros: Useful when the issue is trivial, when emotions need time to cool or when you lack enough information to engage productively.

Cons: Unresolved issues tend to escalate, and chronic avoidance can erode trust and accountability within a team.

If you find yourself giving up your personal goals to avoid conflict, one way to fix this conflict handling style is by knowing your values. We generally engage in conflict about the things we care about. Understanding your own core values will help you anticipate what might push your buttons and cause you to feel conflict. Being able to talk about your values and their importance can help you manage yourself and others in a conflict.

Collaborating Style

Characteristics of a Collaborator: Collaborators are both goal- and relationship-oriented. This allows both sides of the conflict to receive what they need and leave the conflict feeling content.

The collaborating style combines high assertiveness with high cooperativeness. People who favor this approach invest time and energy to find a solution that genuinely satisfies everyone involved. Key characteristics include:

• Willingness to explore underlying interests, not just surface positions

• Comfort with open dialogue and creative problem-solving

• Patience for longer discussions to reach a durable agreement

• Strong listening and communication skills paired with clear advocacy for their own needs

Workplace scenario: Two departments need access to the same limited budget for different initiatives. Instead of splitting the funds or one department conceding, the department heads meet to understand each other's goals and design a phased plan that funds both initiatives over two quarters.

Pros: Produces the most durable and satisfying outcomes, strengthens relationships and builds mutual respect.

Cons: Requires significant time and willingness from all parties. Not practical when a quick decision is needed or when the other party is unwilling to engage.

Developing a conflict resolution style such as a collaborator starts by learning the values of others. Understanding another person's values can help you anticipate what might push their buttons. Sometimes, you can choose to avoid a conflict simply by recognizing that a conflict represents something important to them that you don't feel strongly about. Let someone else "win" simply by not engaging.

Competing Style

Characteristics of a Competitor: The competitor tends to be highly assertive and uncooperative. Competitors value individual goals over relationships. Individuals that prefer this style tend to be commanding, intimidating and have a need to win.

The competing style reflects high assertiveness and low cooperativeness. People who default to this approach pursue their own objectives decisively, even when it means overriding others' preferences. Key characteristics include:

• Confidence in their own position and willingness to defend it firmly

• Comfort making unpopular decisions when necessary

• Focus on outcomes over interpersonal harmony

• Risk of being perceived as aggressive or dismissive

Workplace scenario: A safety manager discovers that a production team is skipping a required inspection step to save time. Despite pushback from the team lead, the safety manager enforces the protocol immediately because compliance is non-negotiable.

Pros: Essential when quick, decisive action is needed, when safety or ethics are at stake or when you must protect against someone taking advantage of a cooperative approach.

Cons: Can damage relationships, discourage open communication and create a culture of fear if overused.

You must willfully shift your position to reinforce shared goals. Don't view your teammates as opponents, but resources to achieve your shared objectives. Identify points of agreement, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, and build on those. Expand on them until you produce a platform on which you can find true growth.

Compromising Style

Characteristics of a Compromiser: The compromiser is assertive and highly cooperative. This style tends to be more concerned with the collective goal rather than their own goal.

The compromising style sits at the midpoint of both assertiveness and cooperativeness. People who favor this approach look for a middle ground where each party gives up something to reach an acceptable outcome. Key characteristics include:

• Pragmatic mindset focused on finding workable solutions quickly

• Willingness to make concessions in exchange for concessions from others

• Preference for fairness and balance over "winning"

• Comfort with outcomes that are "good enough" rather than perfect

Workplace scenario: Two teams each request a larger share of a limited conference room schedule. Rather than one team dominating the calendar, a manager splits the available slots evenly, giving each team fewer hours than requested but ensuring both have regular access.

Pros: Efficient when time is limited, useful when both parties hold equal power and maintains a sense of fairness.

Cons: Can produce outcomes that leave both sides partially dissatisfied. Important issues may receive shallow treatment if the focus is on speed rather than depth.

If you want to be a better leader and conflict manager, challenge your own belief system daily - one issue at a time. Make sure that you don't just think things, but know exactly what you think and why you think it. Too often we believe things very strongly for weak reasons. Exploring our own beliefs and testing them helps us to understand not just our own beliefs and thought processes, but the beliefs and thought processes of others!

When to Use Each Conflict Management Style

No single conflict management style works in every situation. Skilled conflict managers assess the circumstances and choose the approach that fits. Here are common workplace scenarios matched to the style most likely to produce a good outcome:

1. A colleague proposes a minor process change you disagree with, but the impact on your work is negligible. Use the accommodating style. Letting this one go preserves the relationship and saves your influence for higher-stakes issues.

2. A heated argument breaks out in a meeting and emotions are running high. Use the avoiding style temporarily. Give everyone time to cool down, then revisit the issue when the group can think clearly.

3. Two departments need to redesign a workflow that affects both teams' daily operations. Use the collaborating style. The complexity and long-term impact justify the time investment required to find a solution both sides fully support.

4. A direct report is violating a compliance policy that could expose the company to legal risk. Use the competing style. Safety, legal and ethical standards are non-negotiable, and decisive action protects the organization.

5. Your team and another team both want funding for a new tool, but the budget only covers one purchase this quarter. Use the compromising style. Splitting resources or alternating priority across quarters keeps both teams moving forward.

6. A peer consistently takes credit for collaborative work in front of leadership. Use the collaborating style first to address the behavior directly and seek a mutual understanding. If that fails, escalate using a competing approach to protect your contributions.

The goal is not to pick one style and stick with it. The most effective professionals recognize which style the moment calls for and adjust accordingly.

How Personality Shapes Your Default Conflict Style

Your personality plays a significant role in determining which conflict management style you reach for instinctively. Researchers publishing in journals such as Personality and Individual Differences found consistent links between the Big Five personality traits and conflict personality types.

Here is how each trait tends to map to a default style:

• High agreeableness: People who score high in agreeableness naturally prioritize harmony and others' feelings. They tend to default to the accommodating or compromising style.

• Low agreeableness: Those who are more skeptical or direct often default to the competing style, prioritizing their own position over relational comfort.

• High extraversion: Extraverts are comfortable engaging in direct dialogue and tend to favor collaborating or competing, depending on the situation.

• High neuroticism: Individuals who experience stronger emotional reactions to stress may default to avoiding, withdrawing from conflict to manage their discomfort.

• High conscientiousness: Detail-oriented and rule-following individuals often lean toward competing when standards are at stake or compromising when fairness is the priority.

• High openness: People who are curious and flexible tend to gravitate toward collaborating because they enjoy exploring creative solutions.

When you understand these tendencies, you avoid labeling yourself or others. You build self-awareness so you can recognize when your default conflict handling style serves you and when it does not, and you can better navigate disruptive workstyle differences on your team. With practice, you can learn to flex into a different style when the situation demands it.

How to Improve Your Conflict Resolution Skills

You can strengthen your workplace conflict resolution skills with deliberate practice. The following steps provide a structured approach to resolving disagreements productively.

1. Acknowledge the conflict early. Don't let workplace conflict fester. Leaders should address conflict immediately, or the situation could escalate. Communicate a commitment to working with employees in conflict towards joint resolution.

2. Listen without taking sides. Most employees want to be valued and being heard is important to them. The first step in resolving conflict is to listen. If multiple people are involved, gather them together and give everyone a chance to speak. It is a good opportunity for all parties to hear all sides and gain a full understanding of the conflict.

3. Identify the right conflict management style for the situation. Before jumping to a solution, consider the stakes, the relationship and the urgency. A minor scheduling disagreement calls for a different approach than a dispute over project ownership. Refer back to the situational guidance above to match the moment to the style.

4. Ask those in conflict for solutions. Often people in conflict look to others to resolve their problems and to mediate. Asking employees to offer solutions gives them an opportunity to grow their emotional intelligence and communicate better with whom they conflict. Help by mediating a mutually agreeable resolution.

5. Encourage teamwork. When employees complete successful projects together it creates an experience of shared accomplishment and camaraderie. Reward cooperation and teamwork by sharing their success company wide. Positive public encouragement can be a strong motivator.

6. Build emotional intelligence as a foundation. Emotional intelligence, the ability to recognize and manage your own emotions while understanding others', underpins every conflict management style. Strengthening your EQ helps you stay composed under pressure, read the room accurately and respond rather than react.

Build Conflict Management Skills with Training

You do not inherit conflict management as an innate talent. You can develop these skills through intentional learning, reflection and practice. Pryor Learning helps workers feel more confident and successful in the workplace. That's why Pryor offers courses about personality types and conflict management styles to develop your conflict resolution styles and become the best team player you could be.

Consider these Pryor courses to strengthen your approach to workplace conflict:

• How to Handle Emotionally Charged Situations in the Workplace - Learn how to face confrontation head-on and transform competition into cooperation. This is the perfect class to help repair damaged relationships.

• Dealing with Difficult People - Learn the strategies for working with know-it-alls, dictators and gripers.

• Confronting Workplace Conflict - Build confidence in coming to a solution even when the situation seems impossible.

For ongoing development, PryorPlus gives you access to a library of courses so you can continue building communication and conflict resolution skills at your own pace.