Negotiation Style
Everyone has a different way of approaching negotiation, depending on the circumstance and the person’s
personality. However, the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) is a questionnaire that provides
a systematic framework for categorizing five broad negotiation styles. It is closely associated with work done
by conflict resolution experts Dean Pruitt and Jeffrey Rubin. These styles are often considered in terms of the
level of self-interest, instead of how other negotiators feel. These five general negotiation styles include:
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Forcing. If a party has high concern for itself, and low concern for the other party, it may adopt a
competitive approach that only takes into account the outcomes it desires. This negotiation style is most
prone to zero-sum thinking. For example, a car dealership that tries to give each customer as little as
possible for his or her trade-in vehicle would be applying a forcing negotiation approach. While the party
using the forcing approach is only considering its own self-interests, this negotiating style often
undermines the party’s long-term success. For example, in the car dealership example, if a customer feels
she has not received a fair trade-in value after the sale, she may leave negative reviews and will not refer
her friends and family to that dealership and will not return to it when the time comes to buy another car.
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Collaborating. If a party has high concern and care for both itself and the other party, it will often employ
a collaborative negotiation that seeks to maximum the gain for both. In this negotiating style, parties
recognize that acting in their mutual interests may create greater value and synergies.
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Compromising. A compromising approach to negotiation will take place when parties share some
concerns for both themselves and the other party. While it is not always possible to collaborate, parties
can often find certain points that are more important to one versus the other, and in that way, find ways
to isolate what is most important to each party.
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Avoiding. When a party has low concern for itself and for the other party, it will often try to avoid
negotiation completely.
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Yielding. Finally, when a party has low self-concern for itself and high concern for the other party, it will
yield to demands that may not be in its own best interest. As with avoidance techniques, it is important to
ask why the party has low self-concern. It may be due to an unfair power differential between the two
parties that has caused the weaker party to feel it is futile to represent its own interests. This example
illustrates why negotiation is often fraught with ethical issues.
Chapter 2 Disputes and Dispute Settlement
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