Free Online Resources

on Conflict Resolution and Conflict Styles

This page contains free essays and other web resources on conflict resolution and conflict style inventories. Some are on our site and some are on other sites.  Additional suggestions welcomed - send a note to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..   

General Info on Conflict Styles and Inventories

What is a conflict style inventory? This short introductory essay explains what conflict styles are and how knowledge of them helps in managing relationships.

Which conflict style to use? Go to a simple one-page summary of things to think about in deciding whether to confront or avoid conflict.

From the Program on Negotiation at Harvard, a blog with useful posts about negotiation skills.  Yes, it is very "Fisherian", ie: in the tradition of Roger Fisher, co-author with Bill Ury of the best-seller negotiation primer Getting to Yes.   That means there is a certain feeling in the essays that all negotiations are with Westernized urban professionals cutting deals over a boardroom table.  If you're dealing with protracted identity based conflict or conflicts over fundamental issues of injustice or with people from collectivist societies, the offerings soon get a bit thin.  That said, the Fisher and Ury tradition is excellent on certain fundamentals of negotiation and, especially if you operate in the corporate world, the PON is a good resource for basics.

Here is an excellent introduction to the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, addressed in particular to managers.   Since the Thomas Kilmann is based on the same logical framework as the Style Matters inventory (namely, the Blake Mouton Axis) most of what you read here holds true for both. 

Four page essay, "Addressing Conflict in the Family Business". Not extensive coverage but a decent intro. The last half of the essay draws on the Mouton Blake five style model used by the Thomas Kilmann and the Kraybill Conflict Style Inventories as a tool to suggest constructive responses.

Scholarly essay on conflict style inventories, "What Goes Around Comes Around: The Impact of Personal Conflict Style on Work Conflict and Stress", by Raymond Friedmann and Simon Tidd, in the International Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2000, pp32-55 . More than most people will want to know about conflict style inventories, but if you seek scholarly literature, with lots of references and some comparison among the inventories in use at the time of writing, here's a solid one.

Brief introductory essay to basic concepts of conflict style inventories, entitled "What is Your Conflict Style," from the Journal for Quality and Participation, Summer 2004, by Conerly, Keith, Tripathi, Arvind. The essay describes the five-style framework of conflict styles devised by Mouton and Blake in the 1960s, that underlies the most widely used conflict style inventories, including the Thomas Kilmann, the Jay Hall instrument, the Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory, and others.

 This article examines use of the conflict style inventory as a tool in coaching people to improve their relationships. The essay is addressed to people working in higher education, but almost everything in it can be quite easily transposed to other settings. Of special interest to trainers will be the section which includes outlines of training sessions to train people in the conflict style inventory materials.

Training in Conflict Styles

Get a free Trainer's Guide by Ron Kraybill for leading a conflict styles workshop.  20+ pages of step-by-step instructions guide you in leading conflict styles workshop your group will love.  Keyed to Style Matters, but works fine with Thomas Kilmann as well.  Download now.

 See the section below, "Cooperating and Compromising as Conflict Styles".  Many training resources can be found in references there.

YouTube.com has useful video resources for learning about conflict resolution and conflict styles.   Here's a nicely done intro to the five styles, strong enough to use in a training workshop if a trainer wants support explaining the conceptual framework underlying the five styles.   Though we find the "me/you" language of the opening minutes of this dramatized presentation of the five styles by co-trainers simplistic, a trainer might find find inspiration to do something similar in a workshop.   Do a search on 'conflict styles" or "conflict resolution" on YouTube and you'll come up with enough hits to entertain yourself for an evening on the results.

A remarkable collection of quotes, cartoons, and stories about conflict and negotiation can be downloaded for free from the Program on Negotiations at Harvard. A full 61 pages by Joshua Weiss, PhD. It's really a treasure trove for trainers and writers on conflict and peacebuilding!

Example of how conflict resolution training is being used: Bus drivers in London trained in conflict resolutions skills?  Yup.  Trainers might find this a nice little example for the start of a workshop, to show how people in all walks of life benefit from preparation for dealing with conflicts.    

 The Program on Negotiation at Harvard has a decent short essay on working out conflict among work colleagues in their newsletter. 

Culture and Conflict Styles

People from "high context" cultures give more weight to things like age, social roles, and expectations of bystanders in choosing how to respond to conflict than people from "low context" cultures.    An essay on the Riverhouse site explains the difference between the two.   See the section on culture in the free Trainers Guide  (see beginning of training resources section above) for ideas on how to incorporate cultural awareness into conflict styles training.

 The cultural dimensions of conflict management style are examined in this essay entitled: "Conflict management style: accounting for cross-national differences" by: Morris, Michael W.; Williams, Katherine Y. Leung, Kwok, and published in the: Journal of International Business Studies v. 29 no4 (1998) p. 729-47. This scholarly research essay focuses in particular on the use of avoiding and competing as responses to conflict in Asia and the U.S.

"Cross Cultural Conflict Resolution in Teams", by John Ford, gives an excellent over-view of cultural issues in teams. Ford is a veteran South African mediator/trainer now based in California. He writes with the authority of one who has spent a lifetime navigating cultural differences. He gives a nice summary of the differences between individualist versus collectivist cultures, pointing out that although in America the majority culture is individualistic in orientation, in places like California nearly half the population comes from cultural backgrounds that have strong collectivistic influences. Users of the Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory, which has users self-identify their own cultural background and gives differing instructions accordingly, may find this essay of particular interest.

A Thai team of researchers surveyed 198 law students in Thailand regarding their conflict styles and sought to determine whether gender and age are factors in predicting their dominant styles.   In their report, titled "Conflict Management Styles of Law Students in Thailand: A Study of Age and Gender", published in Journal of Global Business & Management, Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 2010, authors Bahaudin G. Mujtaba, Chaowanee Chawavisit, and Pawinee Pattaratalwanichfind that Thais have a strong collaborative orientation and there is no significant difference between the conflict management styles of Thai law students based on gender and age.   They suggest that the Buddhist teachings regarding Dukkha (suffering), Anicca (impermanence), and Anatta may have an influence on the Thai preference for a collaborative style.

This blog is about living in India, but much of its content would be useful to any outsider living or working in a High Context culture (see this essay on our site to understand the meaning of that).  Blogger Neil Miller reflects insightfully on his experiences living as an expat in India in The Golden Rule for Choosing the Best Forms of Business Communication in India or Are All Indians Indirect? or How to Recover from Offending Someone in India.   Not the usual yada-yada of do this/don't do that, Miller's writings suggest deep understanding of and appreciation for Indian culture.   Worth a read even if you don't live in India

 See the entry in the Avoiding section below for description of a fascinating video by a Japanese American social psychology professor at at Nagoya University, Japan, reflecting on the benefits of conflict avoidance, and how to do it skillfully.

Gender and Conflict Styles

A woman who heads a consulting firm and teaches negotiations blogs about her observation that women often seem to be reluctant to go after what they want in negotiations.   She advises women to change their negotiation style to match the situation they are in.   This concept lies, of course, at the heart of conflict style management and holds for men and women.   Everyone benefits from an ability to confidently switch to a style that is assertive and persistent, when the situation calls for it.   

 The gender dimensions of conflict styles are examined at "Conflict Resolution Style and Experience in Management: Moderating the Effects of Gender" at http://murphylibrary.uwlax.edu/digital/jur/2002/sutschek.pdf

Another study on gender and conflict style, entitled, "A gender-based categorization for conflict resolution" by Sheryl D. Brahnam, Thomas M. Margavio, Michael A. Hignite, Tonya B. Barrier, Jerry M. Chin, suggests that women are more likely to use collaborative/cooperative strategies and men are more likely to avoid. Journal of Management Development, March, 2005, 197-208.

"Results of this study indicate that, when compared with their male counterparts, women are more likely to utilize a collaborative conflict resolution style and men are more likely to avoid conflict. As collaboration is generally considered more productive and avoidance more disruptive in the conflict resolution process, the study suggests that women may possess more effective conflict resolution attributes than their male counterparts." For more info.

"Predictors of women's workplace conflict management styles" is a PhD dissertation written by Gerald Dean Charbonneau, Wayne State University. The research sought to determine whether social characteristics such as feminism, race, age, single head of household status, religion, and social class explain differences in conflict management among women. Here is a brief summary of the dissertation.

"Lessons Learned of Mediation in Indian Country: Exploring and comparing transformative mediation process and theory and American Indian values and processes", by Kristine Paranica is an essay on the cultural dimensions of making peace among the Sioux, the Chippewa, and several smaller groups. The essay does not deal with use of conflict style inventories, but is a useful read for anyone interested in expanding their awareness of how culture shapes expectations of how to make peace.

Harmonizing as Conflict Style

"Give and Take: The Accommodating Style in Managing Conflict" by Dale Eilerman provides an indepth analysis of one of the five styles of conflict (called Harmonizing in the Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory). Eilerman draws on the Myers-Briggs to add additional insights to this style.

Avoiding as Conflict Style

For input on Avoiding as a response to conflict:  A University of Wisconsin site offers a 3 minute video clip of a Harry Webne-Behrman, a facilitator/trainer, giving a lecture on barriers to negotiating in a cooperative style.  He describes three categories of barriers: personal, interpersonal, and structural or systemic barriers.   The lecturer says that because conflict is so uncomfortable, many people choose an avoiding response to conflict, leading to what he calls a "culture of avoidance."    Training tip: A trainer could screen this clip in a workshop and ask people to share examples of these barriers in their own lives.   Or a teacher might assign students to review the clip and come to class with such examples ready for discussion.

 Here's an entire doctoral thesis on conflict avoidance:  "Linking Goals to Avoidance in Interpersonal Conflict Situations: A Cognitive Approach" , by Qi Wang, who submitted this to the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, in 2006.  This is far too research-oriented to interest most trainers, but researchers may find the literature review useful, as well as the  six varieties of of avoidance Wang identifies, summarized on pp. 167ff.  Wang correctly points out that avoidance has received far less study than, say problem-solving, so her work marks an early effort to deepen scholarly understanding of avoidance as a strategy.  Someone planning to spend a lot of time in a culture that relies heavily on avoidance may find sections of the thesis valuable to get a fine-grained appreciation of the art of avoidance.

 This blog entry lists seven scholarly essays on the dynamics of avoidance and demands in marital relationships.

Jiro Takai, professor of social psychology at Nagoya University, Japan is a Japanese American who delivers a fascinating lecture on Youtube, "Rethinking Interpersonal Conflict Strategies: Is Avoiding really that Bad?"   Taki reviews Avoiding in the Mouton Blake framework (the underlying framework of both the Thomas Kilmann and our Style Matters inventories, and reflects on the Japanese preference for it in interpersonal settings.  He highlights its value as a conflict style and describes a variety of ways it is used skillfully.   This is a stimulating and thoughtful set of reflections by a well-informed scholar with feet firmly planted in two very different cultures.

Directing as Conflict Style

Blogger/trainer Susan Shearouse, founder of Frameworks for Agreement, describes the impact on one workshop participant of discovering that her conflict style in Storm settings was even more confrontive than in Calm settings.  "Get Over It, It's Just the Way I Am!"

In "The Secret to Winning an Argument is Ridiculously Simple", blogger Drake Baer summarizes a study that found that an effective way to get political extremists to soften their views is to invite them to explain how the view they hold could be implemented. In a study, when political extremists were asked to describe step-by-step how the policy they favor would be put into effect in reality, they rated themselves as less confident of their views after the conversation than before.   Those who were simply asked to give reasons for their views remained confident in them.   This suggests that rather than challenge a political extremist to defend their views, it may be more effective simple to ask them to describe in specific terms how their views could be implemented. 

Cooperating and Compromising as Conflict Styles

A group of Australian business managers set up a debate about which strategy is more effective in procurement and purchasing in the business world, a hard approach (the Directing Style in our inventory) or a soft approach (Cooperating or Compromising).   The soft approach won the debate, according to a news release, although participants agreed there are benefits to both.   The director of procurement for dairy giant Fonterra of New Zealand presented on behalf of the soft approach and argued "soft" negotiation "preserved relationships and left egos intact."   It also "reduced the risk of deadlock, produced faster, longer-lasting creative agreements and resulted in greater satisfaction for both parties."   

Psychotherapist Joy Marter offers fresh ideas for dealing with conflict constructively in her blogpost "Ten Tips for Effective Conflict Resolution".  An idea we like is: respond from a place of sadness, rather than anger.  Marter says that when we are angry, it is to protect our feelings of sadness.   But, to speak from the anger often damages relationships.  She suggests instead to "speak from our hurt", which means "we are sharing from a deeper and more vulnerable place of truth, and are not as threatening to others."   She offers three questions to ask ourselves before speaking in anger, plus numerous other ideas.

Blogger Larry Barkan offers a short sequence for asserting our needs with others.  In "How to Be Assertive" Barkan says:
1) Start with getting clear on what you want;
2) Ask permission from the person you are about to present a request to;
3) After receiving permission, pause until you have eye contact with that person;
4) Begin with the words, "Will you..." and keep it short.  The longer you speak, believes Barkan, the weaker your request;
5) Stop talking and wait in silence.

Yes, the approach is formulaic, and it reflects the individualist cultural assumptions of its author.  But in the right setting, with the right people, there is a lot of power in the quiet, clear, direct approach suggested here.   This essay is well-worth the five minutes it takes to read it.   People of all style preferences will benefit, but Harmonizing and Avoiders may find this particularly empowering.

The Negotiator's Bible: 100+ Tips and Tricks to Being a Negotiation God is a concise set of quotes from various people on negotiations, a significant number of which are useful when using Cooperating or Compromising Styles.   Like many web resources, some of these tips are "too cute".   Nevertheless, you can get a lot of helpful pointers here.

"Interpersonal Skills for Dealing with Conflict: Respect and Support in Action" by Tricia Jones, PhD, and Jessica Jameson, PhD is a 23 page Powerpoint presentation on topic of utmost important to anyone committed to responses to others that honor and support them.  This is a detailed, carefully reasoned, and sophisticated set of tools with discussion exercises to support them.   The language assumes a university level reading audience.

Blaming is probably the biggest obstacles to cooperative responses to conflict.  Blogger Carolyn Parr offers several useful suggestions on how to overcome blaming in "How to Stop Blaming Others".  Start with acknowledging your own errors, she says.  Don't assume you have an accurate picture of what is going on,  explore with an open mind.  Recognize that blaming is almost guaranteed not to achieve the result you want - change in the other person - because it invariably triggers defensiveness.   Listen, don't blame, she says.

 The Conflict Resolution Education Center has a superb library of web resources for teachers and trainers of peace and conflict resolution in general.

The School for a Culture of Peace, Belleterra, Spain, has a nice collection of training exercises in Spanish and English.  Nothing on conflict styles here, but for trainers wanting to go the next step and teach attitudes and skills for cooperation, this is a useful resource.  Each exercise is nicely summarized and has step by step instructions for trainers.  

Jessica Jameson and Tricia Jones pack a lot of concepts useful for personal communication in times of conflict into a twenty-three slide Powerpoint titled "Interpersonal Skills for Dealing with Conflict".  They go well beyond the useful but by now rather stale skills of "I messages" and Active Listening, and work with issues of saving face, identity needs, recognition and acknowledgement, etc.   They include several discussion exercises.  This is a fairly high-level presentation and a presenter could work with the core concepts here for many hours if supporting  discussion and exercises were created.   We got this from the CRE site which has a lot of other useful resources.

In "Why Negotiators Must Insist Their Opponent Makes A Profit", Forbes blogger Keld Jensen shows why helping sure that your opposite in negotiations makes a profit is often a smart business strategy.   That's the Cooperating Style, used in the business setting. 

There are limits to Cooperating and Compromising as useful strategies to deal with conflict.   In her essay Two Kinds of People You Should Never Negotiate With, blogger Judith White writes in the Harvard Business School Review that one should avoid negotiating with people who alternative between conciliation and provocation, or who "persist in seeing people in terms of absolute good and evil."   White says that in either case dynamics within your counterpart are likely to make it impossible to achieve an satisfactory solution through negotiation.

Neurochemistry and Conflict

Recent learnings about brain chemistry are bringing rich insights to many human endeavors, including conflict resolution.   In The Neurochemistry of Positive Conversations, June, 2014,  Judith E. Glaser and Richard D. Glaser highlight the fact that the chemical (cortisol) released during painful or frustrating interaction persists longer in the body than the chemical released during positive ones (oxytocin).  This explains why the bad feelings created by the former last longer than the good feelings of the latter.   They urge readers to think about the "chemistry of conversations", which means taking care to reduce cortisol-producing interactions and increase oxytocin-producing ones.   

Training Online or at a Distance

Noam Ebner and others have been discussing online negotiations training for some years.   You can view an abstract and download an August, 2014,  paper that summarizes their learnings here.   The paper "offers specific suggestions for getting started and fostering engagement in an online learning environment."  "While the focus of the article is on negotiation education, the considerations and guidance apply to other conflict and management topics as well."

Anger Management

In a blog post titled "You Make Me So Angry", Cinnie Noble writes insightfully about the false notion that other people make us feel certain emotions.  We make ourselves feel certain emotions in response to things others do or say, Noble says.   When we take responsibility for our own responses we then have an opportunity for self-discovery by exploring why we react in these ways.   Noble suggests questions for reflection in doing this.

Anger alters power arrangements.  Someone who is angry speaks more loudly, with greater intensity, in ways that impede others and demand a response.  Used in healthy ways, anger empowers people to deal with things that need to be dealt with.

But some people develop habits of careless use of anger's power.  They fly off the handle at small things, or routinely inject the show-stopping emotion of anger at times and places when nothing useful can result.   Rather than a force that gives life by ensuring that important things are dealt with, anger then becomes a threat and a burden in relationships.   Those living around such people often feel like they are "walking on eggshells", that they must make constant effort to avoid lest they trigger outrage.   Consciously or not, they may reduce their own space in the relationship, setting aside the meeting of their own goals and needs in order to avoid triggering hurtful outbursts.    Cinnie Noble says "we give a lot of power to people when we walk on eggshells around them and maybe they don’t own it."  In a short blog piece she offers a useful set of questions to think about regarding your own response to someone with poorly managed anger. 

Psychotherapist Joy Marter offers fresh ideas for dealing with conflict constructively in her blogpost "Ten Tips for Effective Conflict Resolution".  An idea we like is respond from a place of sadness, rather than anger.  Marter says that when we are angry, it is to protect our feelings of sadness and that speaking from anger often damages relationships.  She suggests instead to "speak from our hurt", which means "we are sharing from a deeper and more vulnerable place of truth, and are not as threatening to others."   She offers three questions to ask ourselves before speaking in anger, plus numerous other ideas.

Mike Fisher, founder of the British Association of Anger Management says anger is a defence mechanism against pain, and has produced a series of short, to-the-point free videos looking at anger from this perspective.   Some are for dealing with our own anger, some for dealing with other peoples' anger.  http://www.videojug.com/interview/anger-management-the-problem.

In "What to do When You've Made Someone Angry", Peter Breeman points out the difference between intentions and consequences.   Often when we anger someone and they confront us, we focus in a defensive way on our own intentions, which may have been quite good, whereas the angry person is focused on the consequences on them of what we have done.  This creates a large gap in understanding.  Breeman says that many conflicts between well-intentioned people can be reduced rather quickly if we focus on the consequences of our actions or behavior on others, and openly acknowledge these.

"Just Do It:  Dealing with Emotions in Conflict" makes the case for skills of listening and reflecting back what an angry person is saying.  Stop talking, breathe, and say "You...."  (not as in "You rascal" but "You want, think, feel...").  But to do that, you have to trust the power of these skills to turn things around, say the authors from Ridge Associates.