What’s the last real disagreement you had with someone?  Maybe it was a disagreement over politics, or football.  Maybe it was the politics of football.  Perhaps you disagreed on the vision of your church, the strategy your team should take at work, what kind of vehicle to buy (avoid the minivan!), or how best to parent.  With whom did you disagree?  Was it a family member, a coworker, a neighbor, a Twitter follower or Facebook friend, or maybe a television news anchor.

As you think back on your last disagreement or a recent strong disagreement, how did you handle it?  The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI for short) describes five possible conflict “styles.”  Which of these did you employ?

• Competition. When you use this style, you pursue your own concerns at the expense of the other person, using whatever power seems appropriate to “win.”  This is a win-lose approach.
• Collaborating. When you use this style you are both fully assertive (pressing for what you want) and fully cooperative (pressing for what the other person wants). This style requires exploring the issue, digging into concerns, and engaging disagreement en route to a creative solution.  This is a win-win approach and it takes a lot of work.
• Compromising. When you compromise, you are mildly assertive and mildly cooperative as you look for a middle position you can both live with. This style requires a willingness to give and take and to get really clear what’s most important to you and what’s negotiable.
• Avoiding. When you use this style, you’re neither assertive nor cooperative and you more or less don’t address the conflict. This is the strategy of diplomatically side-stepping the issue, postponing the discussion, or simply withdrawing from a useless or threatening situation.
• Accommodating. This style is the opposite of competing.  Instead of pursuing your own concerns at the expense of the other person, you pursue the other person’s concerns at your expense.  This is a self-sacrificing mode that could express itself as selfless generosity, following orders, or being a doormat.

Each of these modes can be very appropriate and very inappropriate – it depends on the situation.  For example, at work if there are two options on the table and you truly believe one idea is the far-and-away best one while the other one will result in disaster, it’s time to be fully assertive (competing).  But when you and your husband are deciding where to eat on a Friday night, it’s not at all to push, push, pushing for your favorite Ethiopian restaurant when you know he hates it.  When deciding on dinner plans, a collaborating or compromising style is likely more appropriate (unless you really just don’t care, then accommodating would work well).

Two things really trip us up when it comes to disagreements:

1. Lack of flexibility. Most people have one or two styles that feel very natural for them and they use those styles no matter the situation.   A spiritually and emotionally mature person can recognize which style(s) are appropriate for a situation and can adapt away from their preferred mode when necessary.  A not-so-mature person is unable to flex and the overuse some styles while underusing others.
2. Being a jerk. Okay, so this is not a technical term, but we all know that how you employ a conflict style can be just as important as which style you employ.  Engaging in competition (advocating for what you prefer) doesn’t have to involve rudeness.  Avoiding doesn’t mean you have to judge the person or tell them it’s a non-issue (“Why are you so amped up about this, it’s not that important!”).

When coaching clients through conflict and disagreement, I find it helpful to explore with them which conflict style is most appropriate for the situation and how best to employ that style.  Here are some questions I often use (along with variations of each):

• What is your real concern here? (What do you really want?)
• What have you heard from the other person about what he really wants? (How does the other person’s wants differ from yours?)
• How important is this issue to you? (Is this a hill to die on or to abandon or somewhere in between? On a scale of 0 to 10, how important is it for you to get your way on this?)
• How important is the relationship to you? (How important is the other person?  If getting your way required nuking your relationship with the other person, how would you feel?)
• From what you’ve said, it sounds like a [name of style] is most appropriate here. This style involves [description of style] and tends to work best when [conditions in which the style is appropriate].  What do you think?
• So this situation requires [name of style]; how comfortable are you with [name of style]?
• Let’s say you [name of style], but do it super-duper poorly. What would that look like?  (What’s the worst way to [name of style]?)
• How would you [name of style] with almost flawless perfection look? What do you need to keep in mind in order to show up that way?

As you coach others to handle disagreements well, keep this model and these questions in mind.  And, let’s be honest, since we all experience disagreements every day, keep the model in mind for yourself, too.