Kilmann Diagnostics specializes in the online TKI, which includes automatic scoring, graphing, interpretation, and instant access to your personalized TKI Report upon completion. We do not provide a paper version of the TKI assessment.

If your company or university requires an invoice before purchasing, please Contact Us. Invoices are valid for 90 days from the issue date. However, full payment is required before access is granted to any online product. 

We accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. Purchases may also be paid by bank wire transfer or check. 

All prices on our website are shown in United States Dollars (USD). 

NOTE: Payments made in any currency other than USD will be subject to conversion using the international currency exchange rate in effect on the date the transaction is processed.

Full payment is required before access is granted to any online product.

Yes. After your purchase, please submit the required KD_Spreadsheet so we can generate private access links for TKI participants or create username accounts for other online assessments and our collection of online courses.

Yes. Discounts are available for purchases of 50 or more TKIs and 5 or more courses made at the same time. Group discount rates are displayed on each product purchase page. Pricing updates automatically in your shopping cart once quantity thresholds are met.

Yes. Kilmann Diagnostics is registered with SAM (System for Award Management) through the U.S. General Services Administration.

• Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): MZ7ZL8DSSMQ5
• CAGE Code: 6GMW7

Log into your Kilmann Diagnostics account created at the time of purchase and use the links on your Dashboard, such as “My TKI” or “My Online Courses.”

After completing your assessment on the Elevate platform and clicking SUBMIT, you can instantly access your personalized TKI Profile and Interpretive Report by clicking DOWNLOAD. If you ever misplace your report, you may log back into your private Elevate account at any time to download it again at no additional cost.

NOTE: If someone else purchased the TKI Individual Report for you, they may have disabled direct downloads and will provide the report directly to you.

If someone else purchased the TKI with a Team Report for you, they will provide your personalized TKI Team Report directly to you once all designated team members have completed the assessment.

Yes. If you purchased Individual Reports, each report will be automatically emailed to you upon completion (default) or, for purchase of 10 or more TKIs, we can provide a zip file of completed reports upon request.

If you purchased Team Reports, you will receive an email notification every time a member of your team completes their TKI assessment, once all team members have completed their assessments, please email us so we can send you a zip file of all the personalized TKI Team Reports for your team members, including the Facilitator’s Team Report.

You’ll receive an email from info@kilmanndiagnostics.com containing your username and password. Once you log in, your online course(s) will appear on your Dashboard.

If you do not receive the email, please check your Spam or Junk folder and add info@kilmanndiagnostics.com to your contacts. If you still need assistance, please contact us directly.

To build a strong foundation in the TKI Conflict Model, the five conflict-handling modes, and the TKI assessment, we recommend  BASIC Training in Conflict Management. In this 2-hour recorded course, Dr. Kilmann explains the underlying dimensions of conflict management and teaches you how to interpret both your own and others’ TKI results.

If you plan to use the TKI with groups, consider also taking GROUP Training in Conflict Management. This course focuses on developing and interpreting Group TKI Profiles after you’ve learned the fundamentals of individual TKI Profiles through either BASIC or ADVANCED Training in Conflict Management.

For the most comprehensive TKI learning experience and to receive certification after passing the 3 final exams, consider The TKI Package, which includes all three TKI-based courses at a discounted rate.

Yes. If you have previously purchased one or more individual courses—whether they are still active or have already expired—you can apply the full amount you paid toward the regular price of a course collection that includes those courses: either The Complete Program or The TKI Package.

You may also upgrade from The TKI Package (our three TKI-based courses) to The Complete Program, which includes all our online courses (our eleven courses on conflict management and change management).

To take advantage of the Upgrade Path, please complete and submit the form located at the bottom of the Upgrade Path web page.

Each course builds on concepts introduced in earlier courses, but you may take them in any order. Our recommended sequence is:

1. Expanding Consciousness
2. Quantum Transformation
3. BASIC Training in Conflict Management
4. GROUP Training in Conflict Management
5. ADVANCED Training in Conflict Management
6. Culture Management
7. Critical Thinking
8. Team Management
9. Strategy-Structure
10. Reward Systems
11. Process Management

Experienced TKI users may begin with ADVANCED Training, and you can always return to the foundational courses later.

For the best value and easiest access to the full sequence, consider purchasing The Complete Program.

If you purchase course(s) for yourself, the Final Exams are optional and are intended to help you assess your understanding of the material. However, if a course was purchased for you by an employer or sponsor, they may require you to complete the exam.

You may take each exam up to five times and must score at least 88 out of 100 to pass. Only you will see any unsuccessful scores. Kilmann Diagnostics will notify your sponsor only after you pass the exam.

To earn a certificate or certification, you must successfully pass the required Final Exams (one for each course).

To see a sample exam question, please visit: Sample Questions on Our Final Exams.

We recommend beginning with Expanding Consciousness and Quantum Transformation which will give you the big-picture understanding of conflict management and change management. 

If you are new to the TKI, continue with BASIC Training in Conflict Management. Experienced TKI users may begin with ADVANCED Training, followed by GROUP Training in Conflict Management to learn how to interpret Group TKI Profiles.

Next, continue through the next phase: Culture Management, Critical Thinking, Team Management, Strategy-Structure, Reward Systems, and Process Management. Together, these courses deepen your understanding of organizational development and change management.

If you complete The Complete Program and pass all eleven Final Exams, you will earn our highest credential: Certification in Conflict & Change Management with the Thomas-Kilmann Instrument. We also recommend reviewing the Optional Readings to reinforce the concepts covered throughout the courses.

All of our online courses include a Final Exam, but we currently offer certificates of completion for two advanced courses: ADVANCED Training in Conflict Management and Critical Thinking Skills.

We also offer two Certifications:

• Certification in the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument through The TKI Package
• Certification in Conflict & Change Management with the Thomas-Kilmann Instrument through The Complete Program

To earn a certificate or certification, you must pass the required Final Exams (one for each course) with a score of at least 88 out of 100. You may take each exam up to five times.

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Download the PDF to your computer before printing instead of printing directly from the browser.

If a TKI has not been completed, you may request a full refund within 30 days of purchase. Once the TKI has been completed—or after 30 days—refunds are no longer available. Individual TKI purchases are valid for 90 days. 

For group purchases, unused TKIs may be refunded within 30 days of purchase. Once a TKI has been completed—or after 30 days—refunds are no longer available. Unassigned TKI slots remain available for up to one year from the original purchase date. After one year, any remaining unassigned TKIs will expire and can no longer be assigned to participants. Expired slots can be renewed for 50% of the current price of that product.

The 90-day access period for each TKI begins once we import your KD_Spreadsheet, which includes the required participant account information.

These same policies apply to our other online assessment tools.

Please note: TKIs included with The TKI Package or The Complete Program are not eligible for refunds. Fully Translated TKI Reports (Option 2) are special-order products and are also nonrefundable.

If you purchased an online course or course collection for yourself, refunds are not available due to the immediate access provided to all course materials.

If you purchased an online course or course collection for others:

• If your spreadsheet has not yet been imported, we will provide a full refund within 30 days from the purchase date if you’ve changed your mind or if your previously scheduled educational program has been canceled.
• Once your spreadsheet has been imported, however, we do not provide refunds—either in whole or in part—for any of our online courses.

• Once a course is placed in a participant’s private account, it cannot be transferred to another participant at any time.

• Single TKIs and individual courses: 90 days
• The TKI Package: 6 months
• The Complete Program: 1 year

If you purchase any of our online courses, assessments, or downloadable files for someone else (or for several participants), the expiration period begins as soon as we import your KD_Spreadsheet.

Most online courses, course collections, and group assessment accounts may be renewed for 50% of the current price. Single TKI purchases and single assessment purchases are not eligible for renewal.

When you create a username account on our website or log in to your account for the very first time, you must accept all the terms and conditions of our Copyright, Use, and Hold-Harmless Agreement. And then, every time you make a purchase on our website, you must also agree to these same terms and conditions. Our intellectual property allows us to offer unique online services to our customers, so we ask you to accept—and honor—our policies.

Your privacy is important to us. To create and maintain your secure account, we collect basic information such as your name, email address, location, phone number, payment details, and optional company information.

This information is used only to process purchases, manage your account, provide invoices or refunds, communicate important updates, and improve our products and services.

Your information is stored securely and is accessible only to authorized KD personnel. We do not sell or share your information with outside organizations. You may also delete your account and personal information from our website at any time.

Since some people have been hurt by conflict, they understandably want to stay away from it—or get rid of it. In fact, some believe the world would be a better place if there were no conflict at all. But once we accept that conflict itself is neutral, we can then see that its goodness or badness is entirely based on how it is handled.

In essence, any conflict can be addressed with respect and dignity or can be approached with anger and malice. But even more important, conflict can be a great opportunity to create better solutions to old problems. Not surprisingly, the TKI has been designed to promote the potential goodness of conflict—how it can be managed creatively—so it can help people satisfy their needs in all kinds of situations.

There is a well-known “equation” in the social sciences: Behavior is a function of personality traits and situational forces. Although personality traits are rather enduring properties of people and thus can’t be changed in the short run (for example, your psychological type, as measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), the TKI measures how you typically behave in conflict situations, not your enduring personality traits. Although your behavior may be habitual (automatically choosing to behave in a certain way, regardless of the situation), your behavior can also become very conscious and deliberate (carefully analyzing the situation beforehand, considering a range of behavioral options, and then matching your behavior to the situation).

Indeed, once you take the TKI, calculate your scores, and profile your results, you’ll immediately become more aware of your behavioral habits in responding to conflict situations. And then, with the TKI’s interpretive materials, you’ll soon develop the ability to assess the key attributes of conflict situations, while knowing which mode best fits with a given situation. With practice, you’ll find it easy to choose behaviors—and quickly change them—depending on the attributes of the situation and what unfolds over time.

Before the TKI was developed in the early 1970s, all the other conflict instruments were subject to a strong social desirability response bias: Respondents could easily tell which conflict mode, given how it was worded, had a positive halo (collaborating) and which one’s wording had a negative halo (avoiding). As might be expected, these undesirable halos significantly affected the self-report of conflict-handling behavior. But by pairing modes so each A/B combination is now equal in social desirability (as determined by several research studies), respondents can no longer choose the A or B choice according to which one makes them feel better about themselves (or seem more ideal to others).

As a result, people taking the TKI must choose either the A or B item in each pair of statements by selecting the one that more accurately describes their behavior in conflict situations. Note: Even if responding to the A/B items seems cumbersome (probably because of their equal social desirability), your results on the TKI will be more accurate than would be the case if you took any other conflict instrument that hasn’t been carefully designed to minimize such response biases.

In real life, you’re always forced to choose which mode to use in a given situation—since you can’t use different conflict modes at the same time. To assess how often (relatively speaking) you typically choose one mode over another, we pair each mode three times with every other mode. Given all the possible combinations, that results in thirty TKI pairs in all.

Sometimes the same item for a mode is used more than once, because it remains equal in social desirability with a different item for another mode. Other times, the wording of an item in a pair is modified slightly (or is rewritten completely) to ensure the social desirability of both items remain equal.

The accuracy/reliability of any assessment increases rapidly as a second, third, and fourth item are added to the instrument. But after a while, adding more items only slightly increases the reliability of the instrument. In some cases, adding more items after a certain point actually decreases the accuracy of an instrument, because the additional items are adding other information, besides what the instrument is seeking to measure.

At the same time, adding more and more items can annoy respondents, because they become tired of answering more questions—which can also distract from the accuracy of the assessment. With the results of several research studies, the total of thirty items on the TKI was shown to be a useful balance between (1) the reliability/accuracy of measuring the five modes and (2) people’s resistance to filling out a long assessment.

The first validity study for the TKI was published in 1977: Ralph H. Kilmann and K. W. Thomas, “Developing a Forced-Choice Measure of Conflict-Handling Behavior,” Educational and Psychological Measurement, Vol. 37, No. 2, pages 309-325. Regarding how the TKI compares to other conflict instruments, also see the 1978 article: Thomas, K. W., and R. H. Kilmann. “Comparison of Four Instruments Measuring Conflict Behavior.” Psychological Reports, Vol. 42, No. 3, pages 1139-1145.

From just these early publications, the advantage of the TKI relative to other conflict-handling instruments  (developed by Blake and Mouton, Lawrence and Lorsch, and Hall) is impressive—especially in terms of the TKI’s dramatic reduction in the social desirability response bias.

Prior to 2007, the TKI Profile was based on the mode scores of 339 middle and upper managers in business and government, who were primarily white males in the United States in the early 1970s. Since 2007, the TKI Profile is now based on a random, stratified sample of 8,000 respondents (drawn from a population of 59,000 respondents) who reflect the U.S. population on gender, race, age, work experience, and geographical location. See CPP’s report, The Technical Brief, for the full study.

Remarkably, eight of the fifteen categories (high, medium, and low scores for each of the five modes) changed from the 1970s to the 2000s by only one number, while the other seven categories on the TKI Profile remained exactly the same.

Even more striking, there were no significant differences, practically speaking, across any demographic distinction. That’s why everyone in the U.S. can use the one—recently updated—TKI Profile to discover the distribution of their five conflict modes into high 25%, middle 50%, and low 25%.

In 2011, CPP provided its second report on TKI norms: International Technical Brief for the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument. This exploratory study included 6,168 individuals representing 16 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada (two samples—English speakers and Canadian French speakers), People’s Republic of China, France, Germany, India, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. All respondents, other than those who completed the Canadian French assessment, responded to a number of demographic items prior to taking the TKI assessment. These items pertained to organizational level, employment status, age, gender, years working in current occupation, and satisfaction with current occupation.

Although the TKI international research sample of 6,168 respondents from these 16 countries was relatively small as compared to the U.S. sample (59,000 respondents, from which 8.000 were randomly selected), the international study suggested that, as a practical matter, the U.S. TKI norms (in particular, the high, medium, and low categories) do not diverge strongly from those of the countries in this study.

Thus it is reasonable to conclude that the current TKI Profile can be used with confidence to interpret results for people of international origin and residence. In the near future, however, as more and more people respond to the TKI worldwide, cross-cultural studies will have a more solid basis (a large, stratified, random sample) for determining (1) whether the TKI Profile (based on the U.S. Norm Sample) needs to be modified to suit different countries or (2) if conflict-handling behavior is indeed so similar across countries and continents that what constitutes high, medium, and low scores on the TKI assessment, practically speaking, does not change much at all.

When the TKI Profile shows two of your modes as high, it merely suggests that you prefer to use them, probably too much, whenever your needs and concerns are incompatible with another person’s. But don’t try to read an unwarranted logic into these mode combinations, since their use has its own kind of logic.

For example, if you come out as both high on collaborating and avoiding, your immediate response to a conflict might be to collaborate with the other person. But if he doesn’t reciprocate in a collaborative manner, your response might be: “I quit. I’m leaving.” Or you might first avoid the scene, unless the other person immediately asks to resolve your differences with a collaborative dialogue. Essentially, what makes being high on both collaborating and avoiding “logical” is simply that you have learned to approach conflict situations from one extreme to another.

Indeed, any combination of two or more modes that are high (or low) has its own logic, because that’s the way you’ve learned to manage differences. Stated differently, your highest mode can be viewed as your most preferred mode; your next highest mode might be considered as your backup mode (just in case your preferred mode doesn’t work); and your lower modes are those you are not inclined to use, unless pressed to do so.

It’s probably easier to tone down your high modes, because you already know how to use them: You just have to use them less often and with more discernment. Regarding your low modes, however, your first response might be: “How—or why—would I ever use those modes?” This is often the case with the less assertive modes of avoiding and accommodating. Some people wonder why they would leave a situation or give in to someone else.

But once they’ve had a chance to study the interpretive materials in the TKI booklet (see a SAMPLE REPORT), they’ll learn when avoiding or accommodating are the perfect choices for a given situation, and how their needs will best be met by using these alternative—unassertive—modes in the right place at the right time. But in such cases, it still might take some extra practice to use what beforehand was ineffectively viewed as either a “coward’s” or a “weakling’s” response to conflict.

Similarly, if your low mode happens to be competing, you might first have to overcome the stereotype that “competing is aggressive and selfish,” before you can begin to use the competing mode more often—and more effectively.

The original instructions to the TKI are purposely general, so you can get an assessment of how you approach conflict across all kinds of situations. Some people, in fact, don’t vary their approach to managing differences, whether they are having conflicts with family members or fellow employees.

But other people use very different conflict-handling modes in those two situations. To get a better reading on your behavior in these settings, you can respond to the TKI’s items in two different ways. Regarding your work life, use these instructions: “In work-related situations, we sometimes find our wishes differing from those of another person. How do you respond to such situations?” Regarding your family life, use these instructions: “In family-related situations, we sometimes find our wishes differing from those of another person. How do you respond to such situations?”

Naturally, you can define other situations in the instructions—whenever you are interested in examining your conflict-handling behavior in a certain setting. Note: No matter how you change the instructions to the TKI, make sure you respond to every item with those specific instructions in mind.

The best approach for managing conflict is a combination of these four lessons:

(1) Know that you have five conflict-handling modes available to you at all times;

(2) develop the ability to assess the key attributes of a situation (level of stress, complexity of issue, importance of issue, availability of time to address conflict, level of trust between both persons, quality of listening and communication skills, support from cultural norms and the reward system, and importance of the relationship to both people);

(3) use the mode that best fits the situation; and

(4) switch to a different mode as the attributes of the situation change.

Choose the TKI Individual Report if your goal is to help participants better understand their own conflict-handling style. TKI Individual Reports are ideal for personal development, coaching, leadership training, or educational programs where participants are learning about themselves rather than focusing on a specific team. Individual Reports are also the best choice for larger groups or audiences whose members do not regularly interact with one another.

Choose the Personalized TKI Team Report if you are working with an established team of approximately 2–15+ members who regularly interact and want to improve how they manage conflict together. Each team member receives a personalized report that includes team-level analysis and their individual TKI Profile along with a comparison to the team’s overall conflict patterns. Facilitators also receive a Team Report that identifies the team’s strengths, challenges, and practical strategies for improving communication, collaboration, conflict management, and overall team effectiveness.

In short, choose the Individual Report to develop people; choose the Personalized Team Report to develop teams.