Ed Batista

Conflict Modes and Managerial Styles

How do you deal with conflict? Most of us have a preferred conflict resolution style that corresponds with one of the five modes identified in the 1970s by psychologists Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann [1]:

(Here's a larger version of the graphic above.)

When our natural style becomes a default option in all circumstances, we can find it difficult to resolve certain conflicts, because some styles are poorly suited to certain situations. All of the Thomas-Kilmann modes can be used effectively in the right context, and it's important to develop the ability to choose the mode that best fits the situation and to increase our level of comfort with alternative styles. This framework forms the basis of a popular assessment known as the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, commonly referred to as the TKI.

The TKI is available through Kilmann's firm, Kilmann Diagnostics, and from The Myers-Briggs Company, formerly known as Consulting Psychologists Press or CPP. [2] The latter firm renamed itself after its primary product, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI, which has been roundly criticized for its lack of validity and reliability. [3] I fundamentally agree with this critique of the MBTI, although I acknowledge that it can play a useful role in a conversation about individual differences when we view its results with critical distance and feel free to challenge its conclusions. But all too often MBTI results are instead used to label people and sort them into boxes rather than to promote self-reflection and a richer understanding of ourselves.

In this context its worth asking whether the TKI is similarly flawed, but I haven't yet found any such criticism. Kilmann asserts that the TKI's development was actually rooted in a desire to create an assessment free from social desirability bias, or "people’s tendencies to present the most socially acceptable image of themselves, rather than present themselves as they really are." [4] That said, mediator Ron Kraybill developed an alternative to the TKI, known as the Kraybill Conflict Styles Inventory, in order to provide more nuanced results that account for the amount of stress in the environment as well as differences between cultures. [5]

It's also worth noting that both the TKI and Kraybill's version are built on the Managerial Style Grid, developed by Jane Mouton and Robert Blake in the 1960's, a concept that I view as one of the most important frameworks in the history of organizational management. [6] (Here's a larger version of the graph below.)

Revised June 2020.

Here's a 3-slide PowerPoint file of the graphs above, along with a similar one describing the Kraybill Conflict Styles Inventory.

Thanks to Andrea Corney for her thorough explanation of the TKI when I first encountered it as her colleague at Stanford in 2007.

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Footnotes

[1] "Developing a Forced-Choice Measure of Conflict-Handling Behavior: The 'Mode' Instrument" (Ralph Kilmann and Kenneth Thomas, Education and Psychological Measurement, 1977, 37, pages 309-325) For a thorough summary, see "Conflict Management: the Five Conflict Styles," by Bonnie Burrell at MIT's Collaboration Toolbox (2001).

[2] Thomas-Kilmann Instrument:

• Kilmann Diagnostics
• The Myers-Briggs Company

[3] Goodbye to MBTI, the Fad That Won't Die. (Adam Grant, Psychology Today, 2013)

[4] A Brief History of the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (Ralph Kilmann)

[5] The Kraybill Conflict Styles Inventory is available from Riverhouse Press. Kraybill's version uses a Likert scale rather than the forced-choice questions employed in the TKI, and it provides answers for what Kraybill calls "calm" and "storm" conditions, noting that our styles may change under stress. Kraybill also offers a version that distinguishes between "individualistic" and "collectivistic" cultures.

[6] Mouton and Blake's work is carried on by Grid International, which provides leadership development and organizational culture consulting services, and their Managerial Style Grid has had a big impact on my own work related to organizational culture: Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)

Martin Luther King Day

Today is the 21st celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and once again I'm marking it by watching King's "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on August 28th, 1963.  (American Rhetoric's outstanding page includes a transcript and streaming audio, as well as the YouTube video below.)

If you're looking for a way to reflect on King's legacy, I encourage you to take 18 minutes out of your day and watch the whole thing; it always chokes me up a bit and makes me feel both proud and ashamed to be an American.  On a related note, I recently read Debra Dickerson's The End of Blackness, and it's far and away the most thought-provoking book I've encountered on the subject of race in America.  I hope to talk further about why I found it so compelling in the near future, but for now this brief mention will have to do.

The Value of Soft Startups

How do you initiate a difficult conversation? Even when I felt fully justified in my point of view, I can't think of a time when going in with guns blazing resulted in a successful outcome. In yesterday's post on John Gottman's findings about good relationships, I mentioned the value of a "soft startup," i.e. initiating a tough discussion gently and compassionately, rather than leaping in with harsh, critical comments.

I participated in some role-plays today with students at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and the experience made it quite clear that a soft startup goes a long way toward resolving difficulties successfully. Family therapist J. Bailey Molineux discusses Gottman's definition of a soft startup, and although his comments are aimed at discussions between spouses, they can be paraphrased effectively for use in professional relationships [1]:

How to Initiate a Soft Startup

1. Start with something positive.
2. Use first-person "I" statements to express your perspective and your feelings. (Don't assume that what you perceive is the only possible truth.)
3. Don't make assumptions about the other party's perspective. (They may not even be aware that there's a problem, or it may not be their fault--and they may be happy to help solve it if they're approached in the right way.)
4. State your request clearly, firmly and politely. (And acknowledge any concessions that are granted.)

This is just the beginning of the discussion, not the conclusion, and you'll need a number of additional behavioral skills in your repertoire to succeed. But marriage researchers like Gottman have concluded that spouses are much more likely to resolve difficult conversations successfully when they use a soft startup, and that's true in our professional relationships as well.

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[1] Loving Isn't Easy: A Complete Guide for Understanding, Improving, and Saving Your Marriage (J. Bailey Molineux, 2000)

John Gottman on Successful Relationships

Are interpersonal skills universally transferable across different types of relationships? Specifically, can what you learn in a marriage or a committed partnership* be applied with a professional colleague? That's a question being raised in my Group Facilitation Training Program at Stanford, which watched a video of John Gottman talking about The Seven Principles for Making Marriages Work.

Gottman's primary ideas are as follows:

1. There are four types of behavior that are particularly corrosive in a marriage:
   1. Criticism: Presenting a problem as though the other person has a defective personality. (Note that criticism is different from complaining, which reflects your unhappiness without attributing it to the other person's personality.)
   2. Defensiveness: Denial of responsibility for any part of a problem.
   3. Contempt: The suggestion that you're superior in some way to the other person. (This is frequently manifested in a very specific facial expression—one side of the mouth is drawn further to the side, creating an "unhappy" dimple—and often accompanied by a roll of the eyes.)
   4. Stonewalling: A refusal to engage and provide feedback.
2. All of the behaviors above appear in good marriages, but they're balanced by a substantial number of positive interactions.  The ratio of positive to negative interactions is typically 5:1, even during times of conflict.
3. Couples in a good marriage work to repair the damage, and repair efforts don't have to be skillful or timely--just accepted.
4. The likelihood of acceptance (and success) is based on two factors:
   1. A "soft startup," i.e. initiating the discussion gently and compassionately, rather than leaping to harsh, critical comments.
   2. The quality of the friendship in the marriage.
5. There are seven dimensions to marital friendship:
   1. Feeling known by the other person; a sense that they are interested in you and your world. (Involved spouses actually create what Gottman calls a "love map" to give them a detailed--and current--conceptual perspective of the other person's reality.)
   2. A "culture of appreciation" that nurtures mutual fondness, admiration and respect.
   3. Sensitivity and responsiveness to even the most minor bids for attention, i.e. a pattern of actively "turning toward" each other, rather than ignoring each other.
   4. The degree of mutual influence.
   5. Accepting that some problems are intractable and simply can't be solved right now.
   6. An awareness that inside those intractable problems is often a deeply personal dream, a willingness to share those dreams, and a commitment to honor them together.
   7. The creation of shared meaning. (Gottman describes every marriage as a "cross-cultural experience," and notes that each person brings a different set of culturally determined meanings to the relationship--"What does it mean to eat together? What does it mean to take a vacation? What is the meaning of our lives?" Ultimately those distinct meanings need to be integrated and shared by both people.)

Having been married for 14 years, Gottman's ideas resonate deeply with me. I don't know much about the research underlying his work, but it certainly feels right. And I can easily see how many of these concepts would be applicable to my professional relationships as well.

I know it's a two-way street; I've used David Bradford and Allan Cohen's concept of supportive confrontation in my marriage, and it's made me a much better communicator with my wife. It'll be interesting to see how successfully we can apply Gottman's ideas running in the other direction.

*Although Gottman's book title and most of his remarks are focused on marriages, in the Q&A he noted that his research indicated that the same principles apply in committed partnerships, both straight and gay. People who were living together in a romantic relationship without some type of formal commitment ultimately did not behave the same way, no matter how long they were together.

David Kilcullen on Tactical Leadership

One of the primary themes in David Bradford's class on High Performance Leadership at Stanford's Graduate School of Business is the importance of "middle leadership"--the idea that leadership is not the exclusive province of those at the top, and that people at all levels in an organization, particularly those who are usually derided as mere "middle managers," need to act as leaders who take responsibility not only for their individual duties but also for the success of the larger teams that surround them. David Kilcullen understands this concept intimately.

Kilcullen is an Australian military officer currently serving the U.S. government as a counter-terrorism expert. In March 2006 he wrote "Twenty Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Counterinsurgency," [PDF] a detailed field guide aimed at company commanders whose units have been deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Kilcullen's paper has apparently provoked a great deal of discussion in military circles over the past year and is beginning to reach a wider audience--see Stephen O'Grady's recent post reflecting on Kilcullen's ideas in the context of "bottom up marketing."

Putting the politics of counter-terrorism aside for a moment, what I find most interesting about Kilcullen's paper is its focus on tactical leadership. Kilcullen is writing for majors, captains and lieutenants--the military's equivalent of middle managers. They're front-line officers facing complex, rapidly-changing situations with little (if any) real-time contact with the superiors who devised the strategy that they're responsible for implementing at a tactical level. But Kilcullen emphasizes that their personal leadership at the tactical level is the key to large-scale strategic success. Here are just three examples of Kilcullen encouraging his "middle manager" readers to think about the big picture:

12. Prepare for handover from Day One. Believe it or not, you will not resolve the insurgency on your watch. Your tour will end, and your successors will need your corporate knowledge. Start handover folders, in every platoon and specialist squad, from day one. Ideally, you would have inherited these from your predecessors, but if not you must start them. The folders should include lessons learned, details about the population, village and patrol reports, updated maps, photographs: anything that will help newcomers master the environment. Computerized databases are fine, but keep good back-ups and ensure you have hard copy of key artifacts and documents. This is boring, tedious and essential. Over time, you will create a corporate memory that keeps your people alive.

18. Remember the global audience. One of the biggest differences between the counterinsurgencies our fathers fought and those we face today is the omnipresence of globalized media. Most houses in Iraq have one or more satellite dishes. Web bloggers, print, radio and television reporters and others are monitoring and commenting on your every move. When the insurgents ambush your patrols or set off a car bomb, they do so not to destroy one more track, but because they want graphic images of a burning vehicle and dead bodies for the evening news. Beware the "scripted enemy," who plays to a global audience and seeks to defeat you in the court of global public opinion. You counter this by training people to always bear in mind the global audience, assume that everything they say or do will be publicized, and befriend the media. Get the press onside: help them get their story, and trade information with them. Good relationships with non-embedded media--especially indigenous media--dramatically increase your situational awareness, and help get your message across to the global and local audience.

23. Practise armed civil affairs. Counterinsurgency is armed social work; an attempt to redress basic social and political problems while being shot at. This makes civil affairs a central counterinsurgency activity, not an afterthought. It is how you restructure the environment to displace the enemy from it. In your company sector, civil affairs must focus on meeting basic needs first, then progress up Maslow's hierarchy as each successive need is met. A series of village or neighborhood surveys, regularly updated, are an invaluable tool to help understand the populations' needs, and track progress in meeting them over time. You need intimate cooperation with inter-agency partners here--national, international and local. You will not be able to control these partners--many NGOs, for example, do not want to be too closely associated with you because they need to preserve their perceived neutrality. Instead, you need to work on a shared diagnosis of the problem, building a consensus that helps you self-synchronize. Your role is to provide protection, identify needs, facilitate civil affairs and use improvements in social conditions as leverage to build networks and mobilize the population.

To be clear, if you're an organizational leader in search of guidance, I'm not necessarily recommending that you read Kilcullen's paper, although it's fascinating in its own right. I'm not one of those people who study Musashi's A Book of Five Rings or Sun Tzu's The Art of War seeking to translate them into guides for contemporary business leaders; analogies between business and war generally strike me as childish. But I do think there's a lesson for everyone in Kilcullen's implicit endorsement of tactical (or middle) leadership.

Thanks to George Packer's outstanding Knowing the Enemy (it's long; here's a printer-friendly version) in the Dec. 18, 2006 New Yorker, which sent me in search of Kilcullen's paper in the first place.
 

Rick Rubin on Discernment

Mike Sager interviewed uber-producer Rick Rubin for Esquire's "What I've Learned" series in their January issue. This jumped out at me from Rubin's remarks:

So much of my work is trying to be critical without being judgmental. I try to make criticisms in a very, very specific way. The more specific it is--if someone can really understand where you're coming from and what you're suggesting--the more it will actually help them.

Substitute "discerning" for "critical" and "observations" for "criticisms," and I think that's a pretty good description of executive coaching.