What Are the 5 Conflict Management Strategies?

The five conflict management strategies are competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating. These come from the Thomas-Kilmann model, which maps each strategy against two factors: how assertive you are about your own needs, and how cooperative you are about the other person's.

Competing - Pursuing your own position at the expense of the other party's. High assertiveness, low cooperation. Useful when a quick, decisive outcome matters more than preserving the relationship — but overused, it damages trust.

Collaborating - Working together to find a solution that fully satisfies both sides. High assertiveness, high cooperation. This is generally the strongest long-term outcome, but it takes more time and goodwill than the other strategies, so it isn't always realistic in the moment.

Compromising - Both sides give up something to reach a middle ground. Moderate on both assertiveness and cooperation. Faster than collaborating, but neither side gets everything they wanted.

Avoiding - Sidestepping the conflict rather than addressing it. Low assertiveness, low cooperation. Sometimes the right call - for a genuinely trivial issue, or when there isn't time to deal with it properly - but avoiding conflict that actually matters tends to let it resurface later.

Accommodating - Giving way to the other party's position. Low assertiveness, high cooperation. Useful when the relationship matters more than the specific issue, or when you're clearly in the wrong - but relied on too often, it can mean your own needs never get addressed.

None of these is universally "the right one." Which strategy fits depends on the situation: how much the outcome matters, how much the relationship matters, and how much time there is to resolve things properly. Recognising which mode you're defaulting to - and whether it's actually the right one for the situation in front of you - is often more useful than trying to always pick the "best" strategy.

Our Conflict Management & Personal Safety training builds this kind of situational judgement, alongside the practical skills for staying safe when conflict involves members of the public rather than colleagues.