The Thomas-Kilmann Instrument has been the leader in conflict resolution assessment for more than forty years. It is used by Human Resources (HR) and Organizational Development (OD) consultants as a catalyst to open discussions on difficult issues and facilitate learning about how conflict-handling modes affect personal, group and organizational dynamics.

The TKI Model is designed to measure a person’s behavior in conflict situations, situations in which the concerns of two people appear to be incompatible. In such conflict situations, we can describe an individual’s behavior along two dimensions: (1) assertiveness, the extent to which the person attempts to satisfy his own concerns, and (2) cooperativeness, the extent to which the person attempts to satisfy the other person’s concerns.

These two underlying dimensions of human behavior (assertiveness and cooperativeness) can then be used to define five different modes for responding to conflict situations:  Competing, Accommodating, Avoiding, Collaborating and Compromising.