🧩 Models & personality profiles
Personality & conflict models
Profile models applied to negotiation: DISC (W. M. Marston), Big Five (Costa & McCrae), Process Communication (T. Kahler), Thomas-Kilmann (TKI), social styles (Merrill & Reid).
Full detail in the “Origin & history” section below.
Author of the library
Negotiation lecturer at KEDGE Business School
A rare threefold background serving negotiation: teaching, commercial justice and audit, backed by experience as a company director in Bordeaux.
The Thomas-Kilmann Model (TKI) is a reading grid of behaviours in conflict situations that crosses two dimensions, assertiveness (defending one's own interests) and cooperativeness (taking the other party's interests into account). From this crossing emerge five conflict-handling modes: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating. No mode is intrinsically good or bad: each is suited to certain situations and costly in others. In negotiation, the model serves to diagnose one's own dominant reflex, to read that of the other party and to consciously choose the most effective mode depending on the stake, the relationship and the time available.
At a glance
Vigilance: low (3.5/10) · Preparation required: 7/10
Indicative profile: it situates the “Models & personality profiles” family as the Models & personality profiles school practises it, not this technique taken in isolation. Techniques from the same family and school therefore share the same profile. NEGOCOACH editorial rating out of 10, non-experimental · the higher the “relational risk” value, the more costly the technique is to the relationship.
NEGOCOACH assessment
Tactical potential 6.7/10 (effectiveness, impact, discretion) and vigilance low (relational and ethical risk): two distinct readings, deliberately never merged into a single score that would reward risk. NEGOCOACH editorial rating calibrated from the “Models & personality profiles” family and the “Models & personality profiles” school. Each criterion is rated out of 10; click to understand what it measures.
How far the technique can carry the negotiation in the intended direction when it is well executed.
Strength of the effect produced on the counterpart's perceptions, emotions and decisions.
How hard it is for the other party to notice the technique is being used. A high value = very discreet.
The information, analysis and rehearsal required upfront to use it effectively.
Potential cost to the relationship and to trust if the technique is spotted, refused or fails. A high value = riskier.
Moral acceptability: fairness, transparency and respect for the counterpart's autonomy. A high value = more defensible.
Documented school
The school this technique stems from is documented by recognised work and established practice, without experimental consensus. This indicator qualifies the school, not this technique taken in isolation.
Indicative NEGOCOACH editorial rating, for teaching purposes. For “Relational risk”, a high value signals a cost to the relationship, not a quality.
Developed in 1974 by Kenneth W. Thomas (professor of management, later at the Naval Postgraduate School) and Ralph H. Kilmann (University of Pittsburgh) in the form of a 30-item forced-choice questionnaire, the TKI (Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument). The model extends and refines the "managerial grid" of Robert Blake and Jane Mouton (The Managerial Grid, 1964), which placed leadership styles on the axes "concern for production" and "concern for people". Thomas formalised the conceptual framework in his chapter "Conflict and Conflict Management" in the Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology edited by M. D. Dunnette (1976). The instrument, distributed today by The Myers-Briggs Company, has sold more than ten million copies.
The TKI is a descriptive model that characterises a person's behaviour in the face of a conflict of interest along two independent axes: assertiveness, the degree to which one seeks to satisfy one's own concerns, and cooperativeness, the degree to which one seeks to satisfy those of the other party. The combinations of these two axes define five operating modes: competing (assertive + uncooperative: imposing one's solution), collaborating (assertive + cooperative: seeking a win-win solution that fully satisfies both), compromising (intermediate: mutual sharing of concessions), avoiding (neither assertive nor cooperative: withdrawing or deferring) and accommodating (unassertive + cooperative: yielding for the other's benefit). Operationally, the model provides a common language for naming a behaviour, a mirror of one's preferred style and a guide for selecting the mode suited to the context.
Application by context
A salesperson selling a complex and recurring solution adopts collaboration to co-build an offer aligned with the client's real needs, but switches to assumed competition on a one-off discount with no relational follow-up.
A buyer facing a single strategic supplier chooses collaboration to secure quality and innovation over time, whereas they resort to compromise on a standardised, competitively tendered lot where price prevails.
In labour negotiation, an HR director frontally avoids confrontation on a secondary matter to preserve the capital of trust (tactical avoidance), but engages in genuine collaboration on the remote-working agreement where employer and employee interests can converge.
In a hostage-taking or an acute crisis, the negotiator first favours apparent accommodation and avoidance of escalation to buy time and lower the tension, before opening a space for compromise once the relationship is stabilised.
A parliamentary group leader resorts to compromise to pass a law by exchanging amendments, reserves competition for symbolic identity votes and accommodation for minor matters where yielding consolidates a coalition alliance.
A seller in a hurry to move may choose accommodation on the price to close quickly, whereas a buyer who has time plays avoidance (letting the property mature on the market) then a final compromise on sharing the costs.
Facing a counterpart from a culture that prioritises harmony and face, a Western negotiator moderates frontal competition in favour of relational accommodation and slow collaboration, on pain of breaking the bond before even discussing the substance.
During an inheritance division, the siblings gain by aiming for collaboration (identifying what each truly values: the family home for one, the cash for the other) rather than a mechanical 50/50 compromise that satisfies no one well.
Counter-techniques
Negotiation is also played on defence. Here is how to recognise this technique when it is used against you, and turn it around.
The signals that give it away
The counters that defuse it
Turn it into an advantage
Name the manoeuvre: said out loud, a technique loses most of its power.
Reacting emotionally instead of coming back to the facts.
Strengths: the model is simple, memorable and immediately actionable; it de-dramatises conflict by presenting it as neutral and manageable; it offers a shared vocabulary that facilitates the debrief of a negotiation; it reminds us that no style is universally superior and pushes for behavioural flexibility; it is supported by a widely distributed and studied psychometric instrument. Weaknesses: the TKI measures declared preferences, not necessarily real behaviours under pressure; the forced-choice format produces relative (ipsative) scores that are hard to compare from one individual to another; the model describes individual styles and underestimates relational, power and context dynamics; it can lock a person into a label ("I am a competitor") instead of opening them up; finally it does not say how to concretely execute a mode, only which one to choose.
The model is particularly useful ahead of a negotiation to prepare one's posture, in training to develop self-awareness and behavioural repertoire, and during the debrief to analyse what was at play. It sheds light above all on situations with a lasting relational component where the choice of mode has consequences: team management, recurring sales negotiation, labour dialogue, family mediation. It is less relevant for purely transactional, anonymous transactions where only the balance of power counts. Collaboration is called for when the stake is high for both parties and time exists; competition when a quick and vital decision must be imposed; compromise when the objectives are moderately important and time is short; avoidance when the stake is trivial or escalation dangerous; accommodation when one is wrong, when the relationship prevails, or when one is building capital for the future.
Business · Diagnosing a counterproductive competing reflex, Representative scenario: a high-performing sales director, whose dominant TKI style is competing, gets excellent results in short cycles but sees his strategic key accounts deteriorate. The debrief using the model reveals that he applies the same mode (impose, win the point) to recurring relationships that would call for collaboration. By consciously working to activate his under-used collaborative mode (asking questions about interests, seeking value-added solutions), he transforms annual power struggles into multi-year partnerships. The case illustrates the central use of the TKI: not to judge the style, but to broaden the repertoire according to the relational stake.
Diplomatic · Camp David 1978: from competition to collaboration on interests, A real case, read in the light of the model: during the Camp David Accords (1978), Egypt and Israel held incompatible positions concerning the Sinai (pure competition over a territorial dividing line). The American mediation shifted the discussion from positions to underlying interests (Egyptian sovereignty on one side, Israeli security on the other), making a collaborative solution possible: return of the territory to Egypt in exchange for guaranteed demilitarisation. The move from a distributive competitive mode to an integrative collaborative mode made possible an agreement that mere compromise (splitting the difference) would not have produced. The analysis through the five modes is here a pedagogical re-reading, the agreement itself belonging historically to the interests/positions approach.
To recognise that someone is trying to manoeuvre you via a given mode, name it mentally: a counterpart in hard competition (ultimatums, time pressure, a single position) is trying to make you tip into accommodation; a falsely collaborative counterpart may extract your interests without revealing any of their own. Defence: do not respond in automatic mirror. Facing competition, refuse escalation, return to objective criteria and to your best alternative (BATNA) rather than yielding; facing pseudo-collaboration, demand reciprocity in the sharing of information; facing an opponent who plays avoidance to make you wait, set deadlines. The best protection remains conscious flexibility: keep control over the choice of your own mode instead of letting it be dictated by the other party's behaviour.
The TKI is a tool for personal development and dialogue, not an instrument for selecting or labelling people: using it to classify, recruit or judge is a questionable misuse, all the more so as its ipsative scores do not lend themselves to inter-individual comparison. It describes self-declared preferences and may diverge from real behaviour, especially under strong tension. Ethically, knowledge of the modes can serve to manipulate (knowingly pushing the other party towards accommodation): the deontological limit is to use it to improve the quality and fairness of agreements, not to exploit an asymmetry. Finally the model, centred on the individual, largely ignores structural power relations, collective stakes and cultural dimensions, which require other complementary frameworks.
Directly related: the managerial grid of Blake and Mouton (1964) from which the TKI derives; the dual concern model of Pruitt and Rubin, which crosses "concern for self" and "concern for the other" to recover similar strategies. In negotiation, the Harvard principled method (Fisher and Ury, Getting to Yes) operationalises the collaborative mode via the positions/interests distinction, the BATNA and objective criteria. It is also linked to the distributive versus integrative negotiation distinction (Walton and McKersie), and, for reading personalities, to behavioural typologies such as DISC or Social Styles.
Quick exercise
Answer in your head, then reveal the solution. Memory is built through active recall.
Frequently asked questions
The Thomas-Kilmann Model (TKI) is a reading grid of behaviours in conflict situations that crosses two dimensions, assertiveness (defending one's own interests) and cooperativeness (taking the other party's interests into account). From this crossing emerge five conflict-handling modes: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating. No mode is intrinsically good or bad: each is suited to certain situations and costly in others. In negotiation, the model serves to diagnose one's own dominant reflex, to read that of the other party and to consciously choose the most effective mode depending on the stake, the relationship and the time available.
Yes. Used in good faith it stays within a fair negotiation: it structures the exchange without deceiving the other party. Being transparent about your intentions strengthens the long-term relationship.
Reacting emotionally instead of coming back to the facts. The right reflex: slow down and reformulate.
NEGOCOACH does not assess the experimental validation of this technique in isolation. What we document is the grounding of its source school (Models & personality profiles): documented school. Full detail is in the "At a glance" section of this page.
Practise with AI
Copy, paste into your assistant, replace the [brackets]. Works with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, Perplexity.
Build your plan before the meeting
You are an expert negotiation coach. Help me prepare to use the "The Thomas-Kilmann Model" technique in the following situation: [describe your situation]. Give me: the conditions for success, a 3-step script, my counterpart's likely objections and how to answer them.
Rehearse against an AI counterpart
Play the role of my counterpart in a negotiation. I am going to test the "The Thomas-Kilmann Model" technique. React realistically and with resistance, do not give in too quickly, then at the end analyse my performance and suggest 3 concrete improvements.
Analyse a past negotiation
Here is how my negotiation went: [paste the exchanges]. Analyse whether the "The Thomas-Kilmann Model" technique was used well, what worked, the mistakes made, and spell out precisely what I could have done better.
References
Founding works of the 🧩 Models & personality profiles school this technique belongs to.
Emotions of Normal People (origine du DISC)
BookW. M. Marston · 1928
Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Big Five)
Ouvrage de référenceP. Costa & R. McCrae · 1992
Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument
OutilK. Thomas & R. Kilmann · 1974
The Process Communication Model
OuvrageT. Kahler · 1982
Profile models applied to negotiation: DISC (W. M. Marston), Big Five (Costa & McCrae), Process Communication (T. Kahler), Thomas-Kilmann (TKI), social styles (Merrill & Reid).
On video
Videos to picture The Thomas-Kilmann Model and anchor it through examples.
A verified video selection is being enriched; the search above already surfaces the best videos on the topic.
Technique map
Every technique sits within a network: what it draws on, what it combines with, where it applies, and how to defend against it.
Spot its signals, neutralise it and turn it around with the defensive playbook on this page.
See the counter-techniquesThe Thomas-Kilmann Model (TKI) is a reading grid of behaviours in conflict situations that crosses two dimensions, assertiveness (defending one's own interests) and cooperativeness (taking the other party's interests into account). From this crossing emerge five conflict-handling modes: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating. No mode is intrinsically good or bad: each is suited to certain situations and costly in others. In negotiation, the model serves to diagnose one's own dominant reflex, to read that of the other party and to consciously choose the most effective mode depending on the stake, the relationship and the time available.
Name the manoeuvre: said out loud, a technique loses most of its power.
Reacting emotionally instead of coming back to the facts.
Our programmes turn theory into a concrete advantage.