Beyond Resolution: Leveraging Conflict Styles for High-Trust Leadership

In today’s dynamic and high-stakes healthcare environment, effective leadership requires more than clinical expertise or operational excellence—it demands mastery in navigating interpersonal conflict.

Using the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI), this session introduces a practical and evidence-based framework to help healthcare leaders leverage conflict as a catalyst for team alignment, innovation and performance. Led by Sue Lee, MD, and Hannah Shirkey, the session blends executive insights with behavioral science to equip participants with tools to reframe conflict as opportunity. The speakers will share real-world experiences on integrating conflict styles into leadership development, patient safety initiatives and interdisciplinary team alignment.

This session will provide practical applications of the five conflict-handling modes—competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating—helping attendees identify their default response and when to adapt based on context. Interactive polling, case studies and role-based scenarios will guide attendees in developing personalized strategies for managing conflict in their current roles.

Session highlights include:

• An introduction to the validated TKI model and its relevance in high-stakes healthcare environments


• Exploration of real conflict scenarios faced by physician and administrative leaders


• Frameworks for applying the right conflict mode for leadership, patient safety and organizational change


• Strategies to build cultures of trust through intentional conflict management