Dealing with Conflict
Leader’s Guide
Alexander Watson Hiam
HRD Press, Inc. • Amherst • Massachusetts
Copyright © 2005, Alexander Hiam
All rights reserved. No other part of this Leader’s Guide may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Published by:HRD Press, Inc.
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ISBN 0-87425-505-8
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Cover design by Eileen Klockars
Editorial services by Sally M. Farnham
Table of Contents
Introduction and Recommendations...... v
Part I.Dealing with Conflict Instrument...... 1
About the Instrument...... 3
Administering the Instrument...... 9
Part II.Modules for Teaching Conflict Management...... 15
(These modules correspond to sections in the Participant Coursebook)
Module 1:Exploring Conflict...... 17
Module 2:Understanding Your Style...... 33
Module 3:Which Style Should You Use?...... 39
Module 4:How to Raise Conflict IQ...... 51
Module 5:Advanced Techniques for Competition and Collaboration...... 57
Appendix: Management Training Topic: Conflict and Motivation...... 85
Leader’s GuidePage 1
Introduction and Recommendations
If you have your own course design and simply wish to use the Dealing with Conflict Instrument within it, you will find all you need to know within Part I of this guide.
If you wish to administer the instrument as part of a conflict management course that lasts from a couple hours to a full day or more, you will find details of a modular curriculum in Part II. There is also an available Participant’s Coursebook for your participants.
The course content is highly activity based. The Participant Coursebook supports the activities. If you hand out the coursebook and the Dealing with Conflict Instrument to each participant, they will have all they need for an excellent training experience.
Some trainers will want to adopt the full curriculum offered in this guide, while others will choose to use component parts of it in their programs. Feel free to use certain activities or cases if you wish. Many trainers unbundle this content and create their own programs with
it. On the other hand, those who have delivered it in its entirety find it very effective as well.
My training associates and I have delivered many courses based on this content, sometimes integrating other activities and games, and in other cases simplifying the program by cutting some of the content in order to fit the client’s need. I have recently updated the course materials to reflect some of those experiences and to integrate the more successful and generally applicable activities for your use.
If you are interested in exploring additional options for teaching conflict or negotiation skills or have any other questions or suggestions, please let me know. Thank you.
Alex Hiam
Leader’s GuidePage 1
Part I
DWCI / Dealing with Conflict InstrumentAbout the Instrument
The following sections explain how the Dealing with Conflict Instrument (DWCI) was developed and tested, and how users respond to it.
Instrument Development and Testing
The final version of the DWCI was tested on a diverse sample of employees and managers from more than 30 different organizations. Of the instruments distributed, 67 percent were returned, and all that were returned were completed fully and provided usable results. Results were generally consistent with earlier tests of samples of employees; when all the data is pooled, a consistent pattern of distribution of styles emerges from a set of data covering more than a hundred organizations and many hundreds of employees. Results are also generally consistent with the academic literature on conflict-handling styles, as well as with earlier studies conducted by the instrument developers on samples of business school students. (Statistical results from the DWCI test will be summarized in later sections.)
The final version of the DWCI was tested using two different distribution methods. About
one-third of the instruments were distributed in face-to-face training or supervisory contexts. Response rates were 100 percent in these contexts, even though employees realized that their personal results would be seen by others. They did not seem to have any hesitations about completing the instrument or sharing the results for use in the study, even though some of
them made comments suggesting that they were a little self-conscious about their approach
to conflict.
The rest of the instruments were distributed by mail to employees at a wide variety of companies throughout the United States. A brief cover note was included, asking for help
with the study and giving both mail and fax options for submission of the results. No follow-up was performed, yet roughly half of these instruments were completed and returned voluntarily. Again, employees did not seem overly concerned about confidentiality. Although the mailing was designed to permit and encourage anonymous responses, many respondents included personal notes or cover letters thanking us for giving them the opportunity to participate.
Some respondents even provided anecdotal reports on their specific reactions to the results
(see section entitled “Qualitative User Responses” for text of these comments).
Development History
The final round of testing reported here represents the culmination of a multi-year effort
by Alexander Hiam & Associates and the affiliated Human Interactions Assessment and Management development group to develop and test conflict-style instruments.
Six rounds of instrument testing and development over a five-year period further refined the assessments in the Flex-Style Negotiating product line and assessments published in a book from John Wiley & Sons, The Fast Forward MBA in Negotiating and Deal Making (Lewicki and Hiam, 1999). Alexander Hiam & Associates has also used several assessments similar in design to the DWCI in consultative and training contexts, which permitted testing of various protocols and instructions, as well as the refinement of supporting text based on typical participant questions and concerns.
In-depth interviews were also conducted by the developers and publishers with a variety of expert instrument users from the corporate-training and education fields in order to explore questions of format, design, and instructional content.
The five conflict-handling styles measured in the DWCI have been well defined through a long tradition of academic research, as reported in Think Before You Speak: A Complete Guide to Strategic Negotiation (Lewicki, Hiam, and Olander; Wiley, 1996) and many other sources.
The general approach to defining and measuring conflict-handling styles draws on a long series of assessments, tests, and training experiences conducted by the developers, as well as on a tradition of academic research. There are nevertheless some specifics of the DWCI that make it unique: In particular, it uses a copyrighted, original set of items designed to be easier to read and less dependent upon specific cultural experiences than are the items commonly used in earlier assessments and instruments.
In addition, this instrument is much shorter than earlier academic and commercial assessments. It uses only 15 forced-choice pairs, which is less than half the typical number of questions used in earlier assessments. As a result, the instrument is easier and quicker to use, which probably explains to a large degree the strongly positive reaction it has received from users in pilot tests.
A shorter instrument saves user and trainer time and makes it easier to obtain a more significant return on time invested—but only if the instrument works. In developing and testing items for the DWCI, we compared results from short and long versions and could find no significant differences in distribution of styles; this suggests that the shorter version is comparable to longer assessments in the way it measures conflict-handling style. We also found that users of the new, shorter instrument felt its results were appropriate and insightful (specific results are analyzed in later sections).
Another way to evaluate the validity of a short conflict-style instrument is to consider the number of items used to define each style. In spite of the short format of the DWCI, it does include six separate items for each of the five styles. There is close covariance in selection
of many of the same-style items, indicating that they are measuring the same underlying construct. And the use of six different items per construct also permits the instrument to measure multiple aspects of each individual construct. Six items per style seems to be
more than adequate to measure style usage. Little or nothing is gained by increasing the number of items, and something is definitely lost from the subject’s perspective when there is more complexity and redundancy. After experimenting with many formats, we concluded that longer conflict-style assessments are likely to generate subject resistance and not likely to provide better results than the DWCI. In fact, the DWCI measures more of the reported aspects of each conflict-handling style than do some of the earlier, longer instruments because other instruments tend to include more redundant items.
Statistical Distribution of Styles
In a multi-company employee sample representing 90 self-style analyses, the following distribution of styles was found:
Style / PercentAccommodate / 19
Avoid / 9
Compromise / 12
Compete / 13
Collaborate / 47
Typically, a little less than half of the employees describe their styles as collaborative using
the DWCI. That means that about two-thirds of the time, one or both of the participants in a one-on-one workplace conflict are not natural collaborators, which explains why collaboration
is less common in the workplace than most managers would like it to be.
Also note that the proportion of collaborators is considerably lower in most organizations when the other version of the instrument is used. People who describe themselves as collaborators are often viewed as competitors by others, often because they have difficulty using their desired style in conflicts. Training and assessment activities can change this pattern.
Transparency
Most instrument users do not want to “see through” the instrument while taking it. If they recognize a pattern and guess what the items are measuring, they feel that their insight
makes the instrument less valuable. They worry that they are simply answering in order to
get the results they want. And from a methodological perspective, they are right. An obvious
or transparent instrument fails to measure underlying patterns or temperaments in most cases. Therefore, transparency is not desirable in an instrument such as this one.
In pre-tests of the DWCI, respondents were asked if they knew what the questions were getting at. And in the final test, some users volunteered information on this point as well. No users reported that the test was transparent. In general, respondents seemed to have no trouble focusing on the specific items and did not visualize any underlying pattern while completing the items. And in general, when they turned the page and analyzed their results, they experienced an aha! moment in which the underlying pattern became visible to them and they were suddenly able to see what had been measured. This experience is considered a desirable
and appropriate one by the instrument developers.
Style Dominance among Instrument Users
In general, roughly three-fourths of respondents have one style that is dominant (with a higher score than the other four). For example, in the 90-response multi-company employee sample used for the final pre-release test of the instrument, 72 percent of responses resulted in a single dominant style, 27 percent resulted in two-style ties, and 1 percent resulted in three-way ties.
In a training context, a tendency toward identifying single-style dominance is appropriate and expected. Many people do tend to rely upon a single conflict-handling style, especially under pressure. The instrument helps them identify that style and become more self-aware so that they can better understand how they react to conflict.
Some users will no doubt be surprised to find that it is possible to score equally high on two
or even three styles. They will wonder why they do not have a single dominant style. In a training context, the instructor can point out that people who are particularly effective at handling conflicts are good at using multiple styles and tend to show a more balanced distribution of scores. In fact, reducing the dominance of one style is a possible training objective.
Another common training objective is to shift more people toward a collaboration-dominant profile. This objective makes good sense when trainees work on complex issues in which collaboration is important. It also makes sense if the ultimate goal is to build employee motivation, since collaborative approaches help boost job motivation levels in the workplace. However, trainers should note that each style has its place; collaboration, in fact, is not appropriate in every situation. The information provided with the DWCI includes a diagram
and instructions to help trainees or employees identify the right style for each specific conflict situation.
Item-by-Item Analysis
Some facilitators and trainers express interest in the distribution of responses to specific items within the DWCI. The following table summarizes results in the multi-company sample used in the pre-release test of the instrument:
Percent SelectingItem / A / B
1 / 64% / 36%
2 / 74 / 26
3 / 42 / 58
4 / 39 / 61
5 / 68 / 32
6 / 72 / 28
7 / 75 / 25
8 / 71 / 29
9 / 78 / 22
10 / 74 / 26
11 / 78 / 22
12 / 26 / 74
13 / 74 / 26
14 / 20 / 80
15 / 56 / 44
As these results indicate, some choices are more popular than others, but none are selected
by less than one-fifth of users. Therefore, in most groups, at least one person will favor each
of the possible options in the forced-choice pairs. The results indicate that the instrument differentiates among respondents to a significant extent. Detailed statistics from other conflict instruments have not been made publicly available, so direct comparison or cross-instrument norming is not possible. The above distribution appears to be a reasonable one, given what
has been published about style preferences, and might even provide a norm for use by future researchers.
Qualitative User Responses
Employees who self-assessed using the DWCI in the initial tests were uniformly positive about the experience. All were able to complete the instrument and obtain usable results, although some did find one or more of the forced-choice pairs challenging. (Facilitators and trainers will probably field some questions along the lines of “Do I have to choose one of these? I don’t like either option.” Such responses are inevitable with forced-choice instruments, but are balanced by the simplicity and speed of a forced-choice design.)
When they examined their results, respondents found them useful and felt that they were accurate. No serious complaints about the instrument or the self-assessment experience were voiced in the various pre-release tests, which included several small-group discussions. And many respondents reported experiencing insights into their approach to conflict.
Some of those participating in the initial tests offered written comments. Since these give a good indication of the range of likely reactions, they are reproduced here. (Note that responses reflect reactions not only to the instrument itself, but also to the instructional information that accompanies it.)
“I thought it was personally enlightening and a good exercise.”
—Insurance company employee
“At first I wasn’t sure how to interpret my results, but in thinking about it, I do seem to vary from being an accommodator to being competitive.”
—Publishing executive
“Lots of great ideas!”
—Bank manager
“Very interesting. I can see how asking the right questions up front can help dictate the appropriate outcome.”
—Training specialist
“I agree with the results.”
—Retail clerk
“It’s definitely me. I guess I am pretty competitive!”
—Salesperson
“I think it’s definitely accurate. We make a real effort to be collaborative in my group. But my style might be different outside of work.”
—Nurse
“I tied three ways, so my results are conflicting. But I think it’s accurate. I do use different styles in different situations.”
—Cook
“It’s true; I don’t accommodate.”
—Athlete
“It made me realize that I avoid until I have to deal with the conflict, and then I have to win. I need to change that pattern so I can be more collaborative with my employees.”
—Executive
“I didn’t realize I was such a wuss! I need to stick up for myself more.”
—Restaurant employee
“I found this survey interesting and helpful. I plan to give it to our managers and supervisors also.”
—Manufacturing vice president
As these varied user responses indicate, the instrument typically generates a positive
response and sometimes leads to significant insights. No complaints or negative comments were received in the several pilot tests used to evaluate the instrument, which is an indication that the instrument is relatively easy to complete and is seen as providing sufficiently useful results to justify the effort required to complete it.
Leader’s GuidePage 1
Administering the Instrument
Some instructors administer the instrument now without explanation, while others prefer to introduce the topic of conflict (Module 1 in Part II) and then administer the instrument. This guide supports both approaches and allows you to make a choice. Each one seems to work well, but my preference is to delay use of the instrument until after I’ve done the first training module because it gives participants more context with which to interpret their scores. You will then be able to explore the implications of different styles and profiles with the group and be more confident that they understand the styles and the grid that portrays them in relation to each party’s interests.
If you follow the training sequence laid out in Part II, you will find detailed instructions for administering the instrument in Module 2 and you can follow them when you come to them.