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Many negotiation courses and executive training programs cover the sub-
ject of bargaining styles. The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument
(TKI) is a commonly used psychological assessment tool that helps students
and teachers probe this topic. The TKI measures the five conflict manage-
ment facets proposed by the Dual Concerns Model: competing,
collaborating, compromising, accommodating, and avoiding. The author
has used the TKI extensively in teaching executives about bargaining styles,
and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of it as a teaching aid. He also
presents research on the frequency with which various TKI scores are
reported in business programs. Finally, he provides thumbnail sketches of
typical bargaining behavior exhibited by people with very strong and very
weak predispositions for each of the five conflict modes. Some implications
of these behaviors for specific professional audiences are explored.
G. Richard Shell is professor of legal studies and management at The Wharton School of the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Penn. 19104-6369. Email: shellric@Wharton.upenn.edu.
Among other publications, he is the author of Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for
Reasonable People (New York: Penguin, 1999).
0748-4526/01/0400-0155$19.50/0 © 2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation Negotiation Journal April 2001 155
both would be wise to think about their own and their counterpart’s bar-
gaining styles before making a move.
Like Trump and King, each of us has a unique combination of personal-
ity traits that impact the way we bargain. These behavioral instincts and
intuitions set boundaries on the range of situations within which we will be
at our peak in terms of effectiveness. In addition, they help define the types
of negotiations (and negotiation counterparts) we enjoy — and those we
find stressful, frustrating, or confusing.
What, then, is a bargaining style?
Bargaining styles, as I see them, are relatively stable, personality-driven
clusters of behaviors and reactions that arise in negotiating encounters. They
are, in the words of Gilkey and Greenhalgh (1986: 245), “patterns in individ-
uals’ behavior that reappear in various [bargaining] situations” through the
mechanism of “predispositions” toward particular courses of conduct. For
example, people who strongly dislike interpersonal conflict will likely carry
this dislike with them into many bargaining encounters. This trait will affect
their effectiveness when the negotiation shows signs of becoming confronta-
tional. Similarly, people who thrive on interpersonal conflict and explicit
disagreement in their personal relations will experience stress, and may
become less effective, when the bargaining situation calls for subtle tact and
diplomacy.
I believe knowledge of bargaining styles is critical to negotiation suc-
cess and ought to occupy a central place in negotiation training. Such
knowledge helps students gain perspective on their own actions, interpret
others’ behavior, and use feedback more constructively. A style-sensitive cur-
riculum leads students to assess their strengths and weaknesses in systematic
ways, helping them to devise individualized learning agendas. The timid stu-
dent can focus with greater clarity on why assertive people make him or her
uneasy. The competitively-oriented student can understand more deeply
why, to many others, winning isn’t everything.
But the topic of bargaining styles in teaching negotiation presents a
problem: how best to address this elusive subject. We negotiation teachers
are an eclectic bunch — lawyers, business and law school professors, dis-
pute resolution professionals, political scientists, psychologists, you name it.
Relatively few of us are professionally qualified to dig deep into the psyches
of our students. Nor, in some cases, do we wish to. Few things upset a nego-
tiation teacher or a class more than when a simulation accidentally exposes a
student’s deeply repressed compulsion, phobia, or fear. Yet dig we must (at
least a little) if we are to address the issue of bargaining styles. In this brief
essay, I shall discuss the way I gain entry into this topic.
My special focus here is on one of the more popular bargaining style
assessment tools, the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI).
Written in the mid-1970s, the TKI is old news to many. Many teachers and
trainers have used the TKI for a variety of purposes, and an academic cottage
industry developed in the 1980s testing the reliability and validity of the TKI
7
8
7
80% 8
75% 7 9 6
6
70%
7
6
60% 8 5
5
Mid 25%
50% 5 6
7
4
40% 4
4
5
30%
6
3
25% 3
3
20% 4
Low 25%
5
2 2
2
10%
3 4
1 2 3 1 1
0 1 2, 1
0% 0 0 0 0
Sample: 1682 participants in Wharton School executive programs led by Professor G. Richard Shell.
7
8
7
80% 8
75% 7 9 6
6
70%
7
6
60% 8 5
5
Mid 25%
50% 5 6
7
4
40% 4
4
5
30%
6
3
25% 3
3
20% 4
Low 25%
5
2 2
2
10%
3 4
1 2 3 1 1
0 1 2, 1
0% 0 0 0 0
Sample: 1682 participants in Wharton School executive programs led by Professor G. Richard Shell.
Negotiation Journal April 2001 165
have a talent for interest-based bargaining techniques. Such techniques as
brainstorming will come naturally to them and will even seem “obvious.”
Highly competitive people will feel more comfortable than others when
faced with hard-nosed bargaining moves. Those with high accommodating
scores may find their predispositions quite useful in relationship-sensitive sit-
uations — such as consulting — in which attention to others’ needs and
feelings is critical.
People often display preferences for several of the TKI conflict modes.
And people sometimes have several modes that they distinctly do not prefer.
When a TKI trait falls within the middle band of percentile rankings (roughly
between the 25th and 75th percentiles), it usually means the mode is a
more-or-less available resource, which may be called upon as the situation
and personality of the other party dictates.
I have also found that different professional subgroups exhibit distinc-
tive style preferences. For example, I have taught many nurses and nurse
executives in the U.S. health care industry in various programs. These indi-
viduals’ TKI scores show much less of a predisposition for competing and
considerably more of a predisposition for accommodating than is the case
for business executives. Considering the overall professional focus of nurses
on caring for others, these scores make sense. People may select a care-giv-
ing profession in part because serving others’ needs gives them personal
satisfaction. Executives in the nonclinical side of health care exhibit no such
trends — a fact that may help explain some of the reoccurring communica-
tion problems between “suits” (the business people) and “coats” (the clinical
staff) that plague some health care institutions. I have encountered a number
of such professional subgroup styles, including police chiefs and diplomats
(both groups are high “avoiders”); Wall Street investment bankers (high
“competitors”); and financial services and pharmaceutical sales teams (high
“compromisers” and “accommodators”).
Some Characteristics of Negotiators
Exhibiting the Five Conflict Modes
Over the years, I have discussed personal TKI profiles with many hundreds
of executives and other professionals. In these conversations, I have tested
various style-based hypotheses with them for confirmation or disconfima-
tion. In the subsections that follow, I summarize this experience by
commenting on the bargaining strengths and weaknesses that may be exhib-
ited by negotiators in a relatively high (75th or higher) percentile or
relatively low (25th or lower) percentile for each of the five conflict modes.
For shorthand, I refer to people with each trait by the name of the conflict
mode itself (e.g., “high accommodator” or “low compromiser”). I am thus
assuming in these comments that the person is “high” or “low” in the sub-
ject conflict mode only — and “in the middle” for all other modes.
Instructors should be aware that this is a convenient rather than a realistic
assumption, but it does permit me to discuss some important implications of
Accommodating
Negotiators Strongly Predisposed Toward Accommodating. Negotiators
with a strong predisposition toward accommodation derive significant satisfac-
tion from solving other peoples’ problems. They often have good
relationship-building skills and are relatively sensitive to others’ emotional
states, body language and verbal signals. This is a great trait to call on when
working on negotiating problems within teams, bargaining in sales-based “rela-
tionship management” roles, or providing many types of customer services.
In terms of weaknesses, high accommodators sometimes place more
weight on the relationship aspect of negotiations than the situation may war-
rant. In such cases, they are vulnerable to more competitively-oriented
people. High accommodators who are taken advantage of in such situations
may then experience resentment, further impeding their effectiveness.
Weakly Predisposed Toward Accommodating. Negotiators with low
accommodation scores are relatively uninterested in the other party’s emo-
tional states, needs, and frames of reference. They also have a tendency to
hold out stubbornly for their view of the “right” answer to a negotiating
problem. Where the low accommodator is an expert who understands the
negotiation problem better than others at the table, this trait will assure that
a group spends time considering the objectively “best” outcome. However,
others may perceive the low accommodator as stubborn to the point of
being unreasonable.
Compromising
Negotiators Strongly Predisposed Toward Compromising. People with
a strong predisposition toward compromising are eager to “close the gap” in
negotiations based on fair standards or formulae. When time is short, or
when the stakes are small, a marked predisposition toward compromise can
be a virtue. Others will see the high compromiser as a relationship-friendly,
“reasonable person.” However, high compromisers often rush the negotia-
tion process unnecessarily to reach the closing stage of the process and, in
their haste, may make concessions too readily. This can be costly when a lot
is riding on a negotiation outcome. They also do not discriminate carefully
among various fair criteria, some of which may be more advantageous to
their position than others. High compromisers tend to be satisfied with an
outcome as long as it is supported by any face-saving reason.
Weakly Predisposed Toward Compromising. People with a weak pre-
disposition for compromise are, almost by definition, men and women of
principle. Their great strength is their ability to summon passion and com-
mitment when serious matters of principle and precedent are at stake in a
negotiation. Their great weakness is their tendency to “make an issue” of
Avoiding
Negotiators Strongly Predisposed Toward Avoiding. High avoiders are
adept at deferring and dodging the confrontational aspects of negotiation. As
a positive attribute, avoidance can be experienced by others as tact and
diplomacy, permitting groups to function in the face of dysfunctional, hard-
to-resolve interpersonal differences. Professional diplomats are avoiders, as
are skillful “office politicians.” I have also noticed that people who enjoy
working in hierarchies have higher than normal avoiding scores — profes-
sionals such as police officials, military officers, and even surgeons. When
interpersonal conflict is a functional aspect of organizational or group life,
however, high avoiders can be a bottleneck in the flow of important infor-
mation about the intensity of people’s preferences. And when interpersonal
conflicts fester, they sometimes get worse, leading to all manner of prob-
lems. Finally, high avoiders often pass up many perfectly legitimate
opportunities to negotiate.
Weakly Predisposed Toward Avoiding. Low avoiders have little fear of
interpersonal conflict. Indeed, they may in some cases enjoy it. As negotia-
tors, they have a high tolerance for assertive, hard-nosed bargaining. They
can fight hard against their bargaining counterpart all day and share drinks
and stories with the same person in the evening. Low-avoid scores are help-
ful in such professions as labor-management relations, litigation, and mergers
and acquisitions work. But beware: People with low-avoid scores sometimes
lack tact, and are sometimes viewed by others as confrontational. In bureau-
cratic settings, low avoiders may be seen as troublemakers who refuse to
leave well enough alone.
Collaborating
Negotiators Strongly Predisposed Toward Collaborating. High collabo-
rators enjoy negotiations because they enjoy solving tough problems in
engaged, interactive ways. They are instinctively good at using negotiations
to probe beneath the surface of conflicts to discover basic interests and per-
Competing
Negotiators Strongly Predisposed Toward Competing. Like high collab-
orators, high competitors also like to negotiate. But they enjoy it for a
different reason: negotiating presents an opportunity to win what they see
as a game or sport based on a set of practiced skills. Competitors can be
found in any professional field, but they are most in their element when the
stakes are high, time is limited, and bluffing is possible. Litigation attorneys
who enjoy their work tend to be highly competitive people, as do invest-
ment bankers and hedge fund managers. Such negotiators have excellent
instincts about such matters as leverage, deadlines, openings, final offers,
ultimata, and similar aspects of tough, traditional bargaining. The competi-
tive style can dominate the bargaining process, so competitive people can
sometimes be hard on relationships. In addition, competitive negotiators
instinctively focus on the issues that are easiest to count in terms of winning
and losing — like money. They may overlook nonquantitative issues that can
yield substantial value.
Weakly Predisposed Toward Competing. People with a weak predispo-
sition for competing think negotiations are about much more than winning
and losing. Rather, the goal in negotiations is for the parties to treat each
other fairly, avoid needless conflict, solve problems or create trusting rela-
tionships. Others often view people with low competing scores on the TKI
as especially nonthreatening. This can be a strength in many professional set-
1. The occasion for my revisiting the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument was the
arrival on our faculty of a practice professor, Stuart Diamond, who is a graduate of Harvard Law
School and a former affiliate of Conflict Management Inc. of Cambridge, Mass. Stuart believed the
TKI was a particularly useful teaching tool, and his enthusiasm convinced me to try using it again.
2. Negotiation pedagogy: A research survey of four disciplines (at 61). This report was pre-
pared for the spring, 2000 meeting at Harvard University of scholars affiliated with Hewlett
Foundation-supported negotiation centers. It is available at the Program on Negotiation’s website,
www.pon.harvard.edu/events/hewlett. See also Ron S. Fortgang’s (2000) description and analysis
of this project.
3. Rounding out the psychological aspects of the standard negotiation course curriculum,
experimentally-grounded ways of discovering various psychological biases have become a com-
mon topic. This set of materials has little to do with bargaining styles as such. Rather, it
emphasizes cognitive errors to which people of all races, genders, and interpersonal orientations
are prone.
Led by Max Bazerman and Maggie Neale (1992) — building on foundations laid by Daniel
Kahneman and Amos Tversky (1979) and Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky (1982) — negotiation
teachers have learned to instruct their students about systematic biases in human cognition that
can cloud negotiator judgment. The experimental evidence for such phenomena as “fixed pie”
biases, gain-loss framing, availability, escalation of commitment, and overconfidence is strong, and
classroom demonstrations of many of these biases are relatively easy to conduct. The pedagogical
goal is to help people learn to recognize cognitive biases, overcome them in appropriate situa-
tions, and become more effective negotiators as a result.
Like materials on gender, race, or culture, materials on cognitive psychology complement
rather than substitute for content related to bargaining styles. The biases are not predispositions
toward handling interpersonal conflict situations so much as they are hard-wired quirks in the
human information-processing system. Negotiations are merely one form of decision making in
which such biases are troublesome.
4. The TKI may be licensed for use by its current owner, Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc.
The telephone contact for this firm is 800-624-1765. The world wide web address is: www.cpp-
db.com/products/tki
5. Faculty at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government have more recently developed and
used in their negotiation courses a web-based “multi-rater feedback tool” based on a variation of
the Dual Concerns model (see Allred 2000). This multi-rater system probes a student’s effective-
ness at using five “facets” of conflict management: integrating, asserting, accommodating,
avoiding, and a combination facet called “accommodating/avoiding.” Students rate themselves
along these dimensions and, in turn, are rated by other people with whom they have interacted in
conflict situations (including course simulations). The results of these surveys are collated and
compared.
The multi-rater system drops “compromising” as a conflict mode from the Dual Concerns
model in favor of the combination of “accommodating/avoiding.” The big difference between the
multi-rater and TKI instrument is not the conflict modes, however. Rather, it is the feedback,
which students get in the multi-rater profile on their self-reported styles from people who have
experienced these styles in action. This sort of “reality check” gives students helpful perspective
and allows them to evaluate their effectiveness. It is, of course, possible to use the TKI or any
other assessment tool in exactly the same way by asking students to rate each other during the
course on their relative skill at using the relative personality-based skills.
Another psychological tool used for exploring the spectrum of personality types is the
“Machiavellianism Scale” developed by Christie and Geis (1970). People who score high on these
tests (“high Machs”) tend to win in loosely structured coalition games, manipulate others for self-
gain more often, and lie more frequently than do low Machs. High Machs are usually seen as a
special type of competitively oriented person.
6. One TKI study has suggested that the TKI categories may be a bit too simple and that the
avoiding and accommodating styles really embody a single style preference for sidestepping “emo-
tional unpleasantness” (Konovsky, Jaster, and McDonald 1989). This study did not involve the
context of negotiation, however, when a tendency to accommodate by addressing others’ needs
may be more easily distinguished from a tendency to avoid the negotiation situation altogether.
7. For other studies summarizing research on the TKI, see Womack (1988) and Knapp, Put-
nam, and Davis (1988).
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Blake, R.R. and J.S. Mouton. 1964. The managerial grid. Houston: Gulf Publications.
Bordone, R.C. 2000. Teaching interpersonal skills for negotiation and for life. Negotiation Journal
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Christie, R. and F.L. Geis, eds. 1970. Studies in Machiavellianism. New York: Academic Press.
Fortgang, R.S. 2000. Taking stock: An analysis of negotiation pedagogy across four professional
fields. Negotiation Journal 16(4): 325-338.
Gilkey, R.W. and L.Greenhalgh. 1986. The role of personality in successful negotiating. Negotia-
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Kabanoff, B. 1987. Predictive validity of the MODE Conflict Instrument. Journal of Applied Psy-
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Kahneman, D. and A. Tversky. 1979. Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econo-
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