Conflict Resolution Style
Avoiding
Low assertion, low cooperation — you sidestep or postpone conflict to keep the peace.
Avoiding in depth
The Avoiding style, characterized by low assertiveness and low cooperativeness, is defined by a conscious or unconscious decision to sidestep, postpone, or completely withdraw from conflict. When you utilize this style, you do not pursue your own concerns, nor do you actively help the other party satisfy theirs. Instead, you change the subject, walk away, delay discussions, or route around the tension entirely. In popular culture, avoidance is often unfairly maligned as a sign of weakness or poor communication. However, in psychometric models, avoiding is recognized as an exceptionally valuable, highly strategic tool when used in the correct context. Avoiding is the most appropriate and strategic choice under several specific conditions. It is invaluable when interpersonal emotions are running so high that rational discussion has become impossible; withdrawing allows tempers to cool and prevents irreparable damage to relationships. It is also highly functional when the issue at hand is trivial (such as an argument over an email's font size), when you have absolutely no power to affect the outcome, or when the potential damage of confronting a conflict far outweighs the benefits of resolving it. Additionally, avoiding is a key diagnostic step: it allows you to gather more information and wait for a more favorable time to address the issue. Nevertheless, chronic or defensive avoidance creates severe systemic risks. When critical operational or relationship problems are swept under the rug, they fester. Unresolved tension turns into silent resentment, minor process issues compound into major organizational failures, and relationships gradually erode due to a complete lack of genuine communication and connection.
Strengths
- Emotional cooling and de-escalation — Provides necessary physical and psychological space for intense anger or anxiety to subside before attempting resolution.
- Conservation of strategic energy — Prevents wasting valuable time, emotion, and cognitive focus on trivial, low-stakes disputes that do not impact core objectives.
- Information gathering and preparation — Allows you to delay response until you have gathered sufficient data, consulted allies, or clarified your own long-term objectives.
- Relational preservation in high-risk contexts — Protects you and your team in toxic, highly volatile, or politically dangerous environments where confrontation would lead to retaliation.
- Allowing natural resolution — Gives minor, transient issues the space to resolve themselves naturally without active, disruptive intervention.
Growth edges
- Unaddressed systemic escalation — Allows minor process flaws or team frictions to grow unchecked until they become catastrophic, highly expensive failures.
- Resentment and passive-aggression accumulation — Suppressing disagreements leads to silent bitterness, which frequently emerges as compliance without commitment or subtle sabotage.
- Loss of influence and voice — By consistently withdrawing from tension, you cede decision-making authority to more assertive colleagues, reducing your organizational impact.
- Erosion of trust and connection — Partners and colleagues may perceive your withdrawal as coldness, apathy, or a lack of care, gradually undermining relationship depth.
- Inefficient decision bottlenecks — Delaying difficult choices or avoiding crucial conversations stalls team operations, creating frustrating dependencies and delays.
Where Avoiding thrives at work
- Highly volatile political environments — Where navigating unstable leadership or organizational transitions requires keeping a low profile and avoiding taking sides.
- Trivial operational disputes — Where managing low-impact disagreements (like kitchen layout or office temperature) is best handled by letting it go or using standard policies.
- High-tension, emotionally charged escalations — Where a customer or stakeholder is screaming and immediate withdrawal or deferral is required to protect staff safety.
- Information-scarce strategic crossroads — Where a decision must be made, but waiting for critical market data or regulatory feedback is the most rational path.
- Large-scale matrixed organizations — Where routing around uncooperative departments or individuals is faster and more effective than confronting their roadblocks directly.
In relationships
In intimate relationships, the Avoiding style can act as a circuit breaker for explosive arguments, allowing partners to cool down. However, chronic avoidance creates a deep emotional distance, leaving partners feeling isolated and lonely.
- Prevents the escalation of heat-of-the-moment arguments by knowing when to walk away and cool down.
- May use silent treatments, physical withdrawal, or humor to deflect any attempt at serious emotional talk.
- Builds a wall of unaddressed issues over time, leading to a relationship that feels polite but completely disconnected.
- Leaves the partner to carry the entire emotional load of raising and resolving domestic or relational problems.
- Must practice setting a specific, agreed-upon future time to talk when requesting a delay in a difficult conversation.
Is Avoiding you, or is it the next type over?
You're likely Avoiding if
- When someone raises an uncomfortable or tense topic, your natural response is to crack a joke, change the subject, or suddenly remember a task you need to do.
- You believe that most arguments are not worth the emotional drama and that things usually sort themselves out if you leave them alone.
- You feel a strong physical sensation of anxiety or dread when you anticipate a difficult conversation, leading you to postpone it repeatedly.
- You prefer to express disagreement silently—such as by slowly withdrawing your support from a project rather than arguing in a meeting.
You're probably NOT Avoiding if
- You are completely comfortable telling someone exactly where they stand and initiating a direct confrontation to clear the air immediately — that is Competing.
- Your primary drive in any dispute is to ensure everyone feels heard and you will sit through hours of emotional processing to make it happen — that is Collaborating.
- You are highly focused on finding a quick, practical trade-off or splitting the difference right away — that is Compromising.
- You naturally prioritize whatever the other person wants, eagerly adapting your plans to make sure they are happy and comfortable — that is Accommodating.
About the Conflict Resolution Style framework
Our instrument is built upon the dual-concern model of conflict resolution, popularized by the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI). This model conceptualizes conflict behaviors along two independent axes: assertiveness (the degree to which you attempt to satisfy your own concerns) and cooperativeness (the degree to which you attempt to satisfy the other person's concerns).
Other types in this framework
Competing
Assertive and direct — you pursue your own position firmly, prioritizing outcomes over harmony.
Collaborating
Both assertive and cooperative — you seek win-win solutions that fully satisfy everyone involved.
Compromising
Moderate on both axes — you look for middle ground where each side gives a little.
Accommodating
Cooperative and yielding — you prioritize the other person's needs over your own position.
Is Avoiding your type?
Take the Conflict Resolution Style to find out which type best describes you, with a full report and personalized insights.