Navigating Firestorms: The Imperative of Conflict-Intelligent Leadership in a Turbulent World

As the war between Israel and Hamas grinds on, the leaders of companies (Sorkin et. al 2023), universities (Otterman 2023), and other public institutions (Nerkar and Bromwich 2023) are increasingly finding themselves caught in the maelstrom of the conflict’s politics. This is nothing new. COVID-19 vaccination mandates, George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests, #MeToo, Trump-ism, Woke-ism, critical race theory, climate catastrophes, and Roe v. Wade are only a partial listing of the parade of divisive moral disputes roiling our society and stopping communities and institutions in their tracks. Every day, employees revolt, board members resign, donors rescind gifts, advertisers pull ads, and consumers boycott, while leaders are pressured to take public positions on impossibly divisive issues and face litigious blowback over what only yesterday seemed like righteous policies, such as DEI (Telford 2023). When a multitude of divisions begin to coalesce around core political or value differences, they can create a polycrisis (Whiting and Park 2023) or firestorm that tightens its grip and takes on a life of its own. These firestorms—conflagrations so intense that they create and sustain their own wind systems with storm-force winds emanating from every direction toward the storm’s center, where the air is heated and then ascends—fuel the fire of our disputes. Such is the nature of some of the more vicious cycles of conflict today.

In this new era of political weaponization of most major events, the capacity to quell or channel tensions, open dialogue, and unite passionately riven groups has shot to the top of the list of essential leadership competencies. Gone are the days where shoot-from-the-hip, tell-it-like-it-is, take-it-or-leave it corporate kings could publicly pontificate without consequence—witness Travis Kalanick (Uber) and Adam Neuman (WeWork) and Kanye West (Adidas; Thompson 2023). Today’s leaders and managers would do well to up their conflict-management game and garner greater conflict intelligence (CIQ).

This article offers a novel framework for increasing CIQ that builds on evidence-based practices for constructive conflict resolution but extends and enhances them with new insights and strategies gleaned from complexity science. Fundamentally, the development of conflict intelligence requires a broadening of one’s orientation to conflict across four levels: from a focus on and awareness of the self (implicit beliefs, emotional reactions, and ability to self-regulate), to a focus on social dynamics (interpersonal, intergroup, and moral conflict dynamics), as well as situational dynamics (conflicts in fundamentally different contexts), and ultimately to a focus on the broader systemic forces that may determine and be determined by more entrenched patterns of conflict. In these pages, I define and make the case for CIQ, outline the competencies and skills conducive to increasing it at each level, and then offer four original “toolkits,” one for each level, which provide links to relevant resources such as online assessments, “just-in-time” apps, and accessible articles on the supporting science. Our aim is to offer leaders a road map—a common vision, language, and skill set for navigating our often dizzying, contentious new world.

Here’s just a taste of the multitude of tempestuous leadership challenges of the day. Imagine finding yourself in the position of the former president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay. The daughter of Haitian immigrants and Harvard’s first Black—and second female—president, Dr. Gay is an ardent supporter of diversity in hiring and an expert on minority representation and political participation in government. She also happened to be appointed president just as the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the use of race-conscious admissions at Harvard (Liptak 2023) and other universities, and at a time when highly vocal, Right-wing American Conservatives are mounting a full-throated attack on elite universities, characterizing their “woke agenda” as a dangerous threat to American democracy (Confessore 2023).

This was the setting when the most recent war in Israel and Gaza erupted in October of 2023—both in the Middle East and on university campuses like Harvard, which were immediately divided by unwieldy student protests, dueling public letters from the faculty (Orbey 2023), and outside activist groups driving doxing trucks around campus (Hartman-Caverly, 2023). Soon after, Dr. Gay was called to testify before the Republican-led U.S. Congress about reported incidents of harassment against Jewish students, and was immediately criticized for what was characterized as her “lawyerly and evasive” responses to questioning (Saul and Hartocollis 2023). In reaction, influential donors, alumni, and students demanded Dr. Gay’s resignation. Despite this pressure, Harvard’s governing board, after hours of tense deliberation, agreed to stand by her.

However, soon after the board’s decision, The New York Times reported that new instances of “duplicative language” had been identified in Dr. Gay’s academic writings—the most recent found in her 1997 dissertation (Schuessler 2023)—fueling yet another flare-up over existing questions of plagiarism in the president’s scholarly work. This, of course, was all happening while President Gay was continuously navigating the myriad lower-level grievances, disputes, tiffs, and tensions that accompany leading a top university of 16,000 staff (including 6,000 unionized) serving 23,000 students with approximately 40,000 parents looking on—and just as the U.S. was entering what is likely to be a historically contentious and polarizing election year.

The biggest burden posed by such virulent firestorms is that they add up. The damage they inflict over time by distracting and derailing leaders, alienating followers, accumulating public enmity, and decimating reputations is heavy and pernicious. They culminate in a trap—what physicists call an “attractor” —that can grow rapidly to encircle and constrain leaders and take on a life of its own. On January 2, 2024, Dr. Gay resigned as president of Harvard, further dividing the campus.

Similarly treacherous, multifront conflagrations have been plaguing leaders across the public and private sectors—in tech and media companies (Sorkin et al. 2023), nonprofits (Peck 2023), public defender offices (Nerkar and Bromwich 2023), places of worship (Graham 2023), and even in hospitals among medical teams (Jena and Worsham 2023). They can be sparked by a passing remark or social-media misstep from years back, escalate and mutate into new variations, become aligned with other grievances, and at some point, feel impossible to escape. If a leader is to survive or thrive in such tension-filled days, weeks, and years, they must be highly skilled in conflict engagement, agile, and adaptive. They would also do well to assemble teams and nurture cultures around them conducive to high levels of conflict intelligence.

Over the past few decades, we at the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Teachers College, Columbia University have been developing and testing a series of evidence-based, adaptive models of conflict management to help leaders and managers bolster their Conflict IQ to better meet today’s challenges. As a Center committed to bridging science and practice, we also strive to make our research useful by forging our findings into novel techniques for understanding and resolving conflict, creating and validating self-assessments for professional development, building simple “just-in-time” apps or tools for preparing to engage in different types of conflict effectively, and then sharing this work through accessible workshops, trade books, videos, and popular media. This article summarizes our research on CIQ at the self, social, situational, and systemic levels and then offers four “toolkits,” which provide resource links to these practical applications derived from research.

Conflict intelligence is essentially the capacity to do the right thing at the right time in response to very different conflicts. It begins with the recognition that in the current volatile, often-politicized environment, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to managing different types of conflicts effectively. So, it is crucial to have alternate strategies for responding to distinct disputes and to know which option best “fits” which situation. This means moving beyond standard win-win versus win-lose choices of conflict management toward mastering more adaptive, situationally appropriate approaches.

Let’s break it down. Although definitions of conflict vary, I prefer Mary Parker Follett’s clear-eyed view offered a century ago of “differences that matter” (Gehani and Gehani 2007). They may be disparities in attitudes, preferences, beliefs, values, moral priorities, ideas, or access to coveted resources—but when they are important and clash with others, they generate conflict. These collisions, however, also spark energy and attract attention, which can be leveraged to good or bad effect. Seen this way, conflicts big and small are simply a normal, pervasive, potentially beneficial aspect of our lives—in fact our days would be quite tedious without them. The essential question inspired by Follett is: How can we respond to them in ways that channel their energy to work for us not against us (Coleman and Ferguson 2014)?

Intelligence is commonly defined as “the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations” (Merriam-Webster n.d.), and practical intelligence as “the set of skills and dispositions used to solve everyday problems by applying knowledge gained from experience to purposefully adapt to, shape and select environments” (Sternberg 2007). Following this, we define conflict intelligence (CIQ) as “the capacity to facilitate the management of qualitatively different types of conflicts in diverse or changing situations, effectively and constructively” (Coleman 2018). In other words, it is the ability to channel conflicts’ energy fruitfully.

The idea of CIQ was born of a novel approach to the study and practice of conflict resolution in more demanding situations, which combines empirical insights from various disciplines (Vallacher et al. 2010a), especially peace and conflict studies, social psychology, and dynamical systems (Ciarlet 1998), a branch of applied mathematics focused on how complex systems—like humans, relationships, and organizations—evolve over time and settle into predictable patterns. CIQ builds on a century of big ideas and empirical research on constructive conflict resolution (Coleman et al. 2014), but extends our thinking to reflect how conflicts and conflict-resolution tactics play out over time, and to consider how broad constellations of forces in the environment can work in concert to shape our experiences, reactions, and ultimately our effects on them. In other words, CIQ adds temporal flows and highly complex, nonlinear interactions to our understanding of and approach to dynamical conflicts—conflicts that are “of or concerned with energy or forces that produce motion, as opposed to static.” (Collins English Dictionary 2024).

At its core, conflict intelligence is based on four empirically derived assumptions:

1. Conflict is a natural and necessary element in life. Conflict is a pervasive, naturally occurring aspect of life that is an essential source of energy for learning (Deutsch 1973; Johnson and Johnson 1979), relationship enhancement (Gottman et al. 2014), creativity (Coleman and Deutsch 2006), innovation (Tjosvold and Wong 2010), and equitable societal reform (Coleman et al. 2022).

2. Conflict initially feels bad. Conflict often automatically triggers negative associations and experiences due to our hard-wired sensitivity to perceptions of threat (neurological; Cikara et al. 2015), our primitive unconscious fears (psychological; Deutsch 1993), and the fact that it tends to initially tax our energy levels (metabolic; Barrett 2017).

3. Conflicts add up emotionally over time. Our experience of conflicts in particular situations and relationships is accumulative and formative (Gottman et al. 2014)—establishing reservoirs of positivity and negativity that shape our reactions in those situations.

4. Our first responses to conflict are crucial. How new conflicts are initially responded to (Kugler and Coleman 2020) and managed (Coleman and Chan 2023) are critical determinants of whether their energy brings a higher ratio of positive-to-negative consequences.

One note: A core premise of the dynamical-systems approach to social conflict (Vallacher et al. 2013) is that the energy that arises from conflict—when unfettered—tends to flow in generally constructive or destructive directions (Deutsch 1973). When conflicts are experienced as mostly satisfying by those involved, they can open hearts and minds (Fredrickson 2001), build trust (Tjosvold et al. 2016), increase innovation and productivity (Tjosvold 2008), and set expectations for similar exchanges in the future (Deutsch 1973; Nowak et al. 2010). However, the longer they move in more detrimental directions—increase tensions, escalate, alienate, and impair communications and relations—the deeper, more entrenched, and more constraining they become, restricting thinking, feeling, hope, and a sense of options (Coleman 2011b). When this occurs, intractability and feelings of helplessness set in (Vallacher et al. 2010b). This is precisely when reintroducing movement and complexity to open things up becomes paramount.

This complexity-science informed approach to thinking about more mercurial conflicts extends our basic conflict-engagement toolkit to offer a series of novel, practical techniques for navigating our increasingly messy world. These techniques include managing contradictions, adapting fittingly, locating hidden levers for change, and playing the long game.

Recognizing that our current world often presents us with conflict scenarios filled with contradictions, tough trade-offs, and dilemmas (I really need this staff member and they drive me nuts), one CIQ technique encourages alternating, intentionally and strategically, between seemingly contradictory responses to conflict. Such responses include competing and cooperating (Liebovitch et al. 2008), escalating and de-escalating tension (Coleman et al. 2017), being self-focused and other-focused (Kim and Coleman 2015), and exploring common interests and advocating bottom-line positions (Kugler and Coleman 2020), and doing so in a manner that seeks optimal ratios of responses that help to manage trade-offs.

One example of this optimal approach is John and Julie Gottman’s positivity-to-negativity ratio in marital conflict (Gottman et al. 2014). Decades of research in their Love Lab has found that optimal ratios of five positive interactions during conflictual encounters (which reflect a robust baseline for positivity in the relationship) to one negative (which allows for learning and growth through conflict) result in more thriving marriages. We have found ratios of 3-to-1 positive to negative interactions to be optimal during conversations over moral differences between strangers (Kugler and Coleman 2020), and other researchers recommend similar ratios for optimal workplace interactions (Robinson 2020). The higher the baseline reservoir for relational positivity in any conflictual encounter, the more likely the disputants will be able to tolerate and learn from negative tension between them. Dynamical interventions derived from this research typically aim to adjust this ratio between disputants toward optimality, with sufficient positivity levels to allow for learning from differences.

Building on classic research on contingency approaches to dispute resolution (Walton and McKersie 1965), this class of CIQ models begins by identifying the most defining aspects of different types of conflict situations (see Wish et al. 1976), and then offers a series of distinct strategies that have been found to be the most fitting and effective in each. Adaptivity is defined as the capacity to adapt to distinct or changing situations, but in a manner that maintains the integrity of the needs and interests of the conflict resolver (Mitchinson et al. 2009). We have developed approaches to adapting to conflicts across significant power and relational differences at work—as seen in Making Conflict Work (2014)—when helping to mediate conflicts in more extreme, “derailing” situations (Coleman and Flax 2022), and for navigating disputes across profound cultural differences effectively (Phan and Coleman 2023).

Across a variety of studies on these models, conflict adaptivity has been found to be associated with higher levels of conflict satisfaction, positive affect, well-being, and lower levels of job stress and intentions to quit (Coleman and Kugler 2014), an enhanced sense of empowerment and satisfaction when mediating challenging disputes (Kugler and Coleman, forthcoming), and an increased capacity to work in foreign cultures respectfully and effectively (Phan and Coleman 2023).

The CIQ approach starts with the premise that more chronic, demanding conflicts are rarely caused by one thing, and the longer they last the more likely they are fed by an increasingly broad constellation of drivers and constraints (Coleman 2011a). Therefore, it is often useful to begin with a listing and mapping of the cloud of forces driving and constraining these tensions at the local (and therefore more actionable) level (Coleman et al. 2019).

However, this approach also posits that such “wicked” conflicts often evidence “order parameters,” which are basic aspects of situations that can affect the trajectory of conflicts in critical ways (Nowak 2004). For example, the order parameter that affects transitions in water (H²O) from gas vapor to liquid to ice is temperature. With conflict, transitions from minor tiffs to escalated disputes to more chronic patterns of enmity can be determined by differences in order parameters such as the physical distance or boundaries between disputants (Rutherford et al. 2014), the degree to which they are dependent on one another for important outcomes (Harris et al. 2015), the relative size of the groups involved (Lim et al. 2007), and the level of “cross-cuttingness” (Selway 2011), or common connections between disputing groups within the community structures in the shared environment. These types of “dynamical-minimalist” levers (Nowak 2004) are often much less obvious with regard to presenting conflicts and so more difficult to identify, but can be game-changing.

When longer-term, high-intensity conflicts appear to become stuck in repetitive, destructive patterns, despite the desire of the disputants to escape them and good-faith attempts to resolve them by capable intermediaries, they are thought to have become trapped by an attractor dynamic. Attractors are relatively stable, multiply determined patterns that emerge in systems (people, relationships, organizations, communities) slowly over time, but, across some threshold, can become very hard to change but very easy to lapse into (Vallacher et al. 2010b). Think of them like an advanced addiction or unruly obsession, which, despite the adverse consequences they bring to our health, livelihood, and relationships, draw us into destructive patterns of behavior again and again, leading ultimately to catastrophe. When strong attractors capture a conflict dynamic (Coleman 2011a), it becomes necessary to pivot attention away from the presenting conflict episodes and toward the surrounding context of forces fueling them over time.

The good news about attractors is that most ongoing relationships and organizational cultures evidence more than one type of attractor simultaneously—what are known as attractor landscapes (Heino et al. 2022; see the Attractor Landscapes Game (Case 2018) for an interactive tutorial). So, even when a community becomes deeply divided and antagonistic over a moral or political difference such as the Trump presidency or the Israel-Hamas war, chances are there are alternative kinds of attractor patterns latent in the culture of the group—ones that were established under different, more agreeable circumstances—that may be able to be rekindled. The primary strategy here is to identify and block the drivers and enhance the constraints that affect destructive divisions (Coleman 2011a), while also highlighting and bolstering the bright spots—the people and groups already working effectively to move the conversation forward constructively (Sternin and Choo 2000).

This new class of CIQ-techniques becomes increasingly important when navigating more volatile and contentious differences, or when simply facing toxic conflicts that persist over time. They also require a retooling of the underlying competencies necessary for leveraging them effectively.

Research has identified a set of core competencies for increasing CIQ (Coleman 2018), which involve four nested levels of experience:

1. Self: Knowing and being able to check our more chronic responses to conflict.

2. Social: Developing the knowledge, attitudes, and skills to work out social conflicts constructively and optimally.

3. Situational: Becoming more strategic and adaptive when facing fundamentally different types of conflict situations.

4. Systemic: Learning the limits of direct methods of conflict resolution and when and how to employ systemic wisdom.

These four types of competencies work as a set of building blocks from more basic and foundational to more advanced, although each of them can help to bolster CIQ independently. Across a variety of studies (Coleman 2018), research has found that higher levels of these aptitudes lead to better outcomes in dispute resolution (Coleman and Lim 2001), more satisfaction and well-being among employees (Coleman and Kugler 2014), a stronger sense of empowerment and efficacy when assisting others to resolve conflict (Coleman et al. 2017), more constructive and innovative work cultures (Coleman and Lim 2001), and more effective decision-making in highly complex, turbulent situations (Redding 2016). Ultimately, the more skilled we become at each level, and the more conducive group and organizational cultures are for employing them, the better able we become at rectifying and leveraging more taxing conflicts.

Below, we share how these four sets of competencies have been found to promote more effective and satisfied leaders, managers, and employees, and offer reflection questions and toolkits to assess and increase CIQ at each level.

The most basic component of conflict intelligence is the awareness of and ability to regulate our own go-to responses to disagreements. We are all unwitting students of conflict from birth, and have gradually developed a set of basic assumptions, emotional reactions, and behavioral tendencies that shape how we show up when conflict strikes. Becoming mindful of these inclinations, and developing the capacities to check them when they fail to serve us, is a critical step. However, many approaches to training in conflict resolution skip over this step and move us directly into learning new interpersonal conflict management techniques. Then, when we fail to actually change our patterns, we become frustrated or disillusioned.

Although there are countless individual differences that may be relevant to knowing and managing our automatic-conflict repertoire (Tehrani and Yamini 2020), here is a set of three basic elements that research has found to be particularly determining and amenable to change: how we think about conflict, how we respond to the anxiety it triggers, and how well we use feedback about our tendencies to steer our responses to conflict.

In the Fundamentals of Conflict Resolution course I teach at Columbia, the first assignment I give is an automatic writing task (Kets de Vries 2014) on the topic, “What is the essence of conflict?” Students are instructed to put pen to paper and write continuously on the subject for a few minutes without thinking, composing, or stopping, and then to swap their essays with another student and begin to mine and discuss their most basic underlying assumptions. This is often their first glimpse of their own implicit theory of conflict.

Implicit theories (Dweck and Leggett 1988) are the often-unknown premises that we hold about important abstract concepts like intelligence (Hong et al. 1995), leadership (Offerman and Coats 2018), followership (Sy 2010), power (Coleman 2006), and conflict (Halperin et al. 2014), which shape our understanding, goals, and behavioral responses to them. Most of us hold various assumptions about conflict (it’s never good, it’s always competitive, it depletes our energy), but the most-studied aspect is differences in beliefs about the essential nature of conflict: as a fixed-pie entity versus an incremental-growth dynamic. In general, fixed-pie conflict theorists assume that conflicts, and the people and groups involved with them, are inherently static, fixed, and never really change, while growth theorists see conflicts as more dynamic, mutable, and in fact as always changing.

This simple difference in what we assume to be true about conflict has far-reaching consequences. Research has shown that when disputants hold fixed implicit theories, they tend to view conflicts as fixed pies and so approach them more competitively, see change as unlikely and so tend not to voice their concerns (Kammrath and Dweck 2006), perform less well in negotiations (Kray and Haselhuhn 2007), and when facing more intractable conflicts, have higher levels of intergroup hatred and anxiety and less willingness to interact or compromise with members of outgroups (Halperin et al. 2013). In contrast, growth theorists tend to be more open to constructive conflict resolution, show lower levels of chronic aggression, and be more open to promoting cross-race relations (Dweck 2012). While some people hold either chronic fixed-pie or growth theories of conflict, most hold some combination of both—and so are more affected by social cues and norms that make one or the other more salient.

For purposes of CIQ, note one critical difference in these assumptions: one frames conflicts as stable and stuck, while the other highlights their dynamism and openness to change. CIQ by definition requires an awareness of changing situational dynamics. And given that most conflicts likely involve both durable and mutable elements, some form of optimality with regard to employing both theories may be merited. In fact, one study found that negotiators holding both fixed and growth theories achieved the best joint outcomes in negotiations (Katz-Navon and Goldschmidt 2009). (Reflection Question 1: Do I believe this conflict will really ever change?)

Because conflicts, especially tense ones, tend to elicit physiological arousal and anxiety in most of us (Brittle 2024), or feelings of fear, dread, or uneasiness, it is also critical to become aware of the different ways we tend to respond to these emotions. Research has identified six bipolar dimensions on which people tend to differ in responding to spikes in conflict-induced anxiety (Deutsch 1993):

• Excessively involved to chronically avoiding;

• Hard and unyielding to soft and unassertive;

• Rigid and rule-bound to loose and improvisational;

• Rational and intellectualized to emotionally saturated;

• Maximizing and escalating to minimizing and denying; and

• Compulsively revealing to chronically concealing information.

Recent research found that across most of these dimensions, more extreme responses to conflict anxiety resulted in lower levels of psychological well-being, increased feelings of anxiety, and more negative emotional states, in particular when responding with more involved, escalating, soft, emotional, concealing, and rigid responses (Coleman and Chan 2023). However, more moderate or balanced types of responses (e.g., at times more rational, at times more emotional, or both together moderately) were associated with more positive outcomes. This suggests an optimality effect, or the benefits of more moderate reactions to conflict anxiety. As Aristotle wrote, “Virtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency.”

In addition, clinical observational research found that becoming more aware of one’s predisposed reactions to conflict anxiety allowed for the modification of them when they were extreme or inappropriate (Deutsch 1993). Such moderation can be achieved through reflective practices aided by the use of self-assessments and reflective feedback profiles (like the Brief Conflict Anxiety Response Scale found at conflictintelligence.org/CARS.html), conflict training and coaching, and psychotherapy. (Reflection Question 2: When I face tense conflicts, how exactly do I derail?)

However, in order to take advantage of the increased awareness one gains from experience and feedback on our implicit conflict theories and responses to anxiety, CIQ requires the capacity for self-regulation when in conflict, or the ability to manage our emotional and behavioral reactions. Self-regulation can serve as an essential check on our more chronic reactions.

In fact, studies have found that the perceived threat inherent to conflict often triggers our “hot” emotional arousal system and moves us away from our “cool,” more contemplative, cognitive system associated with more effective, strategic modes of problem-solving (Mischel et al. 2014). Scholars recommend a set of techniques, including “time-outs, reflection, exposure to effective models, planning or rehearsal, and role-play” (Mischel 2014: 326), to cool the hot system and mobilize the cool system in service of achieving our longer-term goals. Such techniques, they suggest, can help mitigate our more damaging automatic responses to conflict and allow us to employ our more self-aware, tolerant, constructive skill sets. (Reflection Question 3: When I face hot conflicts, am I usually able to pause to keep myself in check?)

Researchers have found that each of these components of our self-conflict dynamics—our implicit assumptions, anxiety responses, and capacity to self-regulate—is associated with more and less constructive conflict processes, and is susceptible to change in response to individualized feedback, training, and consultation. They also affect and are affected by changes in or adjustments to one another. Taken together, they constitute our internal micro-system of conflict management, or Step 1 on our journey to enhanced CIQ.

Building on the self-focused competencies, the second and most well-known set of competencies for CIQ involves the capacities for constructive resolution of interpersonal and intergroup conflicts. These are often the standard focus of basic trainings in conflict resolution (Deutsch 1993), integrative negotiation (Lewicki and Tomlinson 2014), and dialogue facilitation (Krauss and Morsella 2014). However, in addition to standard conflict resolution skills, CIQ adds the capacities for enacting more optimal types of contradictory conflict responses and an awareness of the effects of one’s moral scope on who we see as deserving of fair treatment when resolving conflict.

There are a variety of models and measures that have been developed to assess, instruct, and offer feedback on constructive, win-win interpersonal conflict competencies. Many of them stress basic social problem-solving skills like active listening, respectful inquiry, flexibility, and remaining fair, firm, and friendly. My colleagues and I developed a holistic framework (Coleman and Lim 2001) for assessing basic conflict resolution competencies at the individual level in relevant cognitions, attitudes, emotions, and behaviors, and at the systems level in conflict outcomes and organizational climate.

This framework culminated in a comprehensive assessment technique called the Conflict Competency 360 (CC-360; go to conflictintelligence.org), which combines a self-report survey with a multi-rater approach to assessment, offering a more holistic view of oneself in conflict—how we view ourself when in conflict with colleagues, how they see us, and the similarities and differences between these perspectives. The survey instructs us to envision three recent conflicts—one at a time—with a) an employee or supervisee, b) a peer or friend, and c) a boss or supervisor, and then to respond to a set of questions regarding how we tend to react when in conflict with each. We are then encouraged to email a survey link to each of these individuals, where they are asked to respond to similar questions about their experience of us in conflict. This allows the survey to assess differences in how we approach conflict across different power relations at work, and to explore the differences in how we think we react in conflict and how others see us reacting. We are then encouraged to discuss these differences with each colleague or peer.

In a study using the CC360 to evaluate the effects of a 20-hour training in constructive conflict resolution (Coleman and Lim 2001), the measure was found to be valid and reliable, and the training showed significant positive effects on the participants’ collaborative negotiation behaviors, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, outcomes, and work climate. Results showed a significant increase in use of constructive conflict behaviors after training, with less attacking and negative evading behaviors employed, less negative emotion in conflict, more cooperative and less competitive attitudes, and more constructive thinking about conflict than participants in the control condition. We also found a significant increase in constructive conflict outcomes and work climate, and a decrease in destructive work climate, with the conflict training also evidencing positive delayed-effects one month after the training.

These findings suggest that even one-off trainings in constructive conflict resolution, when evidence-based and well-delivered, can provide a sturdy foundation for building CIQ. (Reflection Question 4: How big is the gap between how I think I come off in conflict, and how my peers experience me?)

However, purely constructive approaches to conflict sometimes fall short and may need to be enhanced by an ability to respond more optimally to disputes, defined as “the capacity to navigate between competing motives, or combine contradictory approaches to conflict, to achieve desired outcomes” (Coleman 2018: 14). For example, conflict management methods that evidence more balanced ratios of inquiry behaviors (exploring the other’s positions, interests, and needs) to advocacy behaviors (arguing for one’s own positions, interests, and needs) have been found to be associated with more fruitful outcomes in the context of discussing difficult moral differences (Kugler and Coleman 2020). Another study found that more effective police officers often employed more blended approaches to resolving disputes, combining problem-solving and dominance styles when necessary (van de Vilert et al. 1995). In negotiations, optimal tactics like “logrolling” or taking a strong position on something important to oneself while accommodating on something that is more important to the other disputant, have also been shown to result in more beneficial outcomes (Mannix et al. 1989).

Organizations can also benefit from combining seemingly contradictory conflict engagement methods. For instance, most approaches to workplace conflict management focus on reducing tension and seeking agreement between disputants, while many approaches to advancing justice agendas like DEI initially aim to increase tension—through activism, consciousness raising, and social mobilization. Such tensions can increase motivation to address needs for increased equity—but only when they reach an optimal threshold—tense enough but not too tense. Too little tension and those in power often fail to attend to the concerns of those with less power (Fiske 1993), while too much can lead to higher levels of resistance to change (Schein 1993). Conflict intelligence requires the capacity to navigate between both. One such approach frames employee activism and conflict management as parts of a holistic set of complementary activities—advocacy, subversion, facilitation, and healing—which can function as checks and balances in organizations to help guide them toward more fair and fruitful internal processes (Chen-Carrel et al. 2021).

The capacity to work optimally between contradictory goals and tactics in conflict is clearly a more advanced skill, but a crucial one when navigating more demanding conflicts. (Reflection Question 5: How comfortable am I with switching or combining different tactics when in conflict?).

Rounding out the three-legged stool of social conflict competencies is our moral orientation to others in conflict. People have been found to differ in the degree to which they view members of certain outgroups as deserving of fair and moral treatment in conflict (Opotow 1995). For instance, many of us view violent criminals, child sex offenders, or terrorists as falling outside the realm of moral treatment. Often, in times of extreme hardship or threat, our views of members of previously acceptable outgroups—immigrants, Communists, Arab Americans—can shift to where they become seen as threats and so lose their perceived right to fair treatment. This is currently a concerning trend across the Red-Blue political division in the U.S, just one example of the shrinking of our moral scope toward exclusion of others (Elliott 2023).

However, awareness of our personal tendencies toward moral exclusion of some groups, and of the conditions and processes that drive them, has been found to have implications for our ability to manage conflict constructively (Opotow and Weiss 2000). Research also has found that moral exclusion can be mitigated when people view the other as a member of a higher-order ingroup (Americans, humans, Earthlings; Bruneau et al. 2012) or share strong cooperative goals or interests (Coleman et al. 2014). (Reflection Question 6: How inclined am I to have different standards for fair treatment when I’m in conflict with people I feel morally opposed to?)

The social realm of CIQ has received the most attention in the field of conflict management by far, and deservedly so. How we show up socially in conflict, especially during our early encounters with our colleagues, goes a long way in setting the course of our relationships (Kugler and Coleman 2020). Establishing a baseline of constructive conflict resolution skills, enhancing them with the capacity to employ more optimally balanced tactics when necessary, and becoming mindful of how our moral scope may limit us, will serve us well on our journey to a higher CIQ.

Building on the flexibility and constructiveness promoted at the self and social levels, the situational level offers a set of CIQ competencies focused on conflict adaptivity, or the capacity to employ distinct strategies in different types of conflict situations in a manner that achieves goals and is fitting with the demands of the situation.

Conflict adaptivity has three basic components: 1) the capacity to understand the fundamental dimensions that distinguish between qualitatively different types of conflict situations, 2) skills in shifting and employing different conflict resolution strategies, and 3) the ability to assess fit: knowing which strategies work best in which types of situations. Three models of conflict adaptivity are outlined here for illustration—one for managing interpersonal conflict across power differences, one for mediating disputes between others in more “derailing” types of situations, and one for resolving conflict across major cultural differences.

The first and most basic approach to adaptive CR is derived from the situational model of conflict in social relations (Coleman et al. 2012), which is built around three fundamental aspects of interpersonal relations: relational importance (How important is this conflict/relationship to me?), goal type (Are the other disputants typically with me or against me—or both?), and power differences (Are they more or less powerful than me in this situation?). These basic differences combine to offer a model of seven basic types of interpersonal situations (Coleman and Ferguson 2014). These include one where the conflict is of low importance (independence) and six situations of high importance: compassionate responsibility (high power, cooperative goals), partnership (equal power, cooperative), cooperative dependence (low power, cooperative), command and control (high power, competitive), enemy territory (equal power, competitive), and unhappy tolerance (low power, competitive). Research has shown that each of these situations tends to elicit from us a particular orientation to conflict (Coleman et al. 2010), which is culturally normative or expected for each situation (Kim et al. 2021). These orientations are, respectively, autonomy (in situations of independence), benevolence (in compassionate responsibility), cooperation (in partnership), support (in cooperative dependence), dominance (in command and control), competition (in enemy territory), and appeasement (in unhappy tolerance).

Although research has found that most people tend to get stuck in particular chronic conflict mindsets, depending on their background, position, and training, it also finds that being strategically adaptive—or intentionally employing a conflict strategy that works best in each situation—leads to superior outcomes in the workplace (Coleman and Kugler 2014). These include higher levels of satisfaction with conflict and coworkers, job-related well-being, less stress, and lower intentions to quit. Importantly, this research also found that a chronic use of more cooperative, win-win strategies in conflict was not related significantly to satisfaction and well-being at work when accounting for the effects of adaptivity, a finding that challenges the popular assumption that win-win is the best response to conflict. Similar findings on adaptivity in work settings were replicated in a study with managers in South Korea (Kim et al. 2021). (Reflection Question 7: How adept am I at scanning new or changing situations and shifting my responses to conflict according to basic relational differences?)

Having the capacities to mediate disputes effectively and efficiently, or to help others work things out when they are unable to do so themselves, is a core leadership competency. In fact, managers spend approximately 24% of their time resolving employees’ conflict at work (American Management Association 2021). However, at times the context of mediation (defined as acceptable, third-party conflict facilitation; Coleman et al. 2014) can present a unique set of challenges to navigate. Research has identified the four most challenging conditions or “derailers” of mediation as (Coleman et al. 2015):

1. High intensity conflict: higher levels of destructiveness, emotionality, and intransigence;

2. High degrees of constraints or limitations on the mediation: including legal and time constraints and constituent pressure;

3. Highly competitive relationships between the disputants; and

4. The covert nature of the issues and processes, including the degree to which hidden processes and agendas are feeding the dispute.

These four qualities of mediations were found to be related to dramatic differences in the strategies employed by expert mediators as well as to mediation outcomes.

This research led to the development of a model of adaptive mediation based on the need reported by experienced mediators to respond differently to five distinct mediation situation-types: standard mediation (low intensity, cooperative, unconstrained, with overt issues), high-intensity, highly constrained, and highly competitive, and mediations entailing important covert issues and processes (Coleman et al. 2016). The narrative that emerged through a series of focus-group studies with mediators (Coleman et al. 2017) was that most of the time they are simply trying to help disputants reach agreement through applying a more standard approach to mediation (essentially facilitated win-win negotiation). However, when any of the four derailers obstruct this objective, mediators are forced to address each of them independently by leveraging alternative strategies, in order to eventually get back to standard mediation.

Accordingly, mediators were found to take on dramatically different roles and respond with different strategies and tactics when facing the five distinct mediation situations, including:

1. The (Standard) Mediator: backing off, observing, and facilitating in a more relational and nonjudgmental way when relations are more moderate;

2. The Medic: responding in a stronger, more controlling and demanding manner when encountering high levels of intensity and destructiveness of conflict;

3. The Fixer: responding with more preparation, efficiency, and transparency and by lowering aspirations when the situation is highly constrained;

4. The Referee: responding like a hands-on referee or arbiter when the level of competitiveness of relations between the disputants was high, and;

5. The Counselor: responding in a more private, probing, therapeutic fashion when the issues and processes in the case were found to be covert and inaccessible publicly.

Note that four of these five mediation strategies diverge considerably from the standard integrative problem-solving methods commonly offered in most mediation books and trainings.

In a recent study, mediators who reported an ability to employ a broader repertoire of behavioral strategies (standard and adaptive) when required experienced higher levels of self-efficacy and empowerment during mediation and reported significantly higher levels of satisfaction with mediation outcomes (Kugler and Coleman, forthcoming). Taken together, this research suggests that individuals would do well to enhance their capacity to adapt to substantive changes in the four basic challenges to mediation, as yet another rung up the ladder toward enhanced CIQ. (Reflection Question 8: How comfortable and effective am I at mediating disputes when intense, constrained, competitive, or covert?)

A major question faced when navigating significant cultural differences in negotiation and dispute resolution, especially when abroad, is “Whose culture should be privileged?” In other words, when they differ substantively, whose mores, norms, practices, and preferred procedures should dictate how to proceed in addressing the dispute—those of the local stakeholders or the outsiders? Prior research offered the distinction between the more common prescriptive approaches (outsider) versus more elicitive (localized) methods to intercultural conflict resolution intervention and training (Lederach 1995). More prescriptive approaches privilege the information and strategies introduced by those external to the host culture, while more elicitive approaches favor local contextual knowledge and expertise. Although Lederach (1995) advocated for more localized approaches as a check on the Western cultural bias often evident in many popular conflict management methods, he also conceded that it is often not feasible or practical.

Recently, researchers began investigating the conditions conducive to using more elicitive versus prescriptive approaches to cross-cultural conflict (Phan and Coleman 2023; Coleman et al., working paper). In general, although prescriptive methods were found to be more efficient, elicitive methods tended to produce more effective, culturally appropriate, and sustainable outcomes.

However, three basic conditions seemed to dictate the relative appropriateness of each approach:

1. The relative importance of efficiency vs. effectiveness/sustainability in the outcomes for stakeholders;

2. The degree of fairness and functionality of local cultural conditions on the ground (such as conflict management processes or legal procedures); and

3. The degree of tightness versus looseness of the local culture (strong or weak norms about using the “right” conflict resolution approach).

Essentially, the study found that when a) more effective and sustainable outcomes are prioritized, b) functional local practices are in place, and c) the local cultural norms allow for the introduction of new methods, then more elicitive methods work best. However, when efficiency is key, or local conditions are dysfunctional or not conducive to foreign methods, resolving disputes with the methods most familiar to the cultural outsider are recommended. Again, adapting to these conditions seems to pay off. (Reflection Question 9: How comfortable am I working in unfamiliar cultures according to local mores?)

To summarize, the situational competencies—or enhancing one’s capacity to manage more dynamic conflicts—requires broadening one’s orientation to conflict beyond the self and social levels to gaining knowledge of the basic ways negotiation and mediation situations are likely to change and the strategies necessary for navigating these changes effectively. CIQ also requires us to recognize when these strategies and skills prove repeatedly inadequate to addressing more intractable types of conflict, and therefore when to take a radically different approach.

Some conflicts feel impossible to solve. Despite repeated good faith attempts to work them out, including bringing in outside experts, they seem to crop up repeatedly, wreak havoc, and run away with your life. These more intractable types of conflicts can be particularly exhausting and dispiriting (Coleman 2003, 2011a). Research has found that attempting to solve them directly—through negotiation, mediation, diplomacy, or even domination—often has little lasting effect or brings about unintended consequences that serve to perpetuate the problem.

We have found that when facing more intransigent conflict, it is useful to learn to shift one’s focus from the figure (the presenting crisis or dispute) to the ground (the constellation of upstream forces giving rise to the conflict), and from the short term (reaching an agreement, resolution, or victory) to the longer term (altering the chronic patterns that arise repeatedly). This is a dramatic shift for most of us, akin to learning a new language for conflict engagement similar to principles of organizational development and community engagement. It requires us to act on the level of “awareness of the nested, interconnected nature of the world in which we live,” which the renowned anthropologist Gregory Bateson called systemic wisdom (Bateson 1972). Here, we offer a set of competencies and strategies associated with developing this more advanced level of CIQ, this systemic wisdom, which may also be described as the capacity to understand the inherent propensities of the complex, dynamic context which gives rise to intractable conflict, and how to work with the dynamics of the system to support the emergence of more constructive patterns.

In recent years, scholar-practitioners have developed a host of complexity-informed approaches to addressing more wicked problems, including models for working on institutionalized bias and discrimination (Johnston 2019; Coleman et al. 2022), complex community challenges (Coleman and Ricigliano 2017), toxic political polarization (Coleman 2021), enduring international conflict (Coleman 2011a), and UN peacebuilding (Day 2022). Common across these approaches is a set of three competencies for working with demanding conflicts more effectively: complexity aptitudes, systemic agency, and adaptive action.

Increasing the capacity for systemic wisdom involves the ability to 1) zoom out from the presenting problem to identify key drivers and inhibitors of conflict and the interrelations between them in a system, 2) zoom in to identify the main leverage points where changes to the system may be most impactful, 3) anticipate the potential unintended consequences of taking action, and 4) learn to benefit from setbacks and act adaptively in changing contexts.

Research has found higher levels of five related competencies to be associated with improved capacities to work effectively in complex conflict environments (Redding 2016). These include:

1. Integrative complexity: the ability to zoom out to differentiate the multiple aspects and perspectives relevant to a problem and then to zoom in to integrate this divergent information into a coherent plan of action (Suedfeld 2010);

2. Emotional complexity: the capacity to make subtle distinctions between different kinds of emotions and to tolerate experiences of contrasting emotions (Kang and Shaver 2004);

3. Tolerance for ambiguity: the ability to experience highly ambiguous situations as manageable, even desirable (Endres et al 2009);

4. Consideration for future consequences: the ability to consider and be influenced by the potential distant effects and outcomes of current actions (Hevey et al. 2010); and

5. Behavioral complexity: the ability to employ opposing or contradictory behaviors when appropriate for engaging with the shifting dynamics of a system (Lawrence et al. 2009).

Research investigating the relationships of these five aptitudes with participants’ capacities for effectively navigating a computer simulation (The Peacemaker Game) of a complex intractable conflict (Coleman et al. 2019; Redding 2016) found support for the value of all five aptitudes. Participants with higher levels of integrative complexity, tolerance for ambiguity, and consideration for future consequences were more likely to simultaneously employ multiple approaches to improving the situation—a strategy found to be associated with more effective decision-making in complex systems (Dörner 1997). Those higher in emotional complexity tended to identify a broader range of actors involved in the conflict and relied less on coercive measures that would have long-term negative impacts. Lastly, those higher in integrative complexity, emotional complexity, and tolerance for ambiguity employed more constructive actions throughout the simulation—focusing their actions more on enhancing communication, building trust, coordinating efforts, and responding to both sides’ needs.

This and other related research on the effects of these five competencies point to their benefits for bolstering capacities for navigating more intractable conflicts wisely. (Reflection Question 10: How comfortable am I addressing high-risk, complex, unpredictable situations?)

Building on these abilities, systemic wisdom offers practical, complexity-informed methods for addressing more intractable conflicts that can provide a sense of agency and efficacy. For example, elsewhere, we contrasted the more common problem-solving framework of a direct Mastery-oriented, “fix it” approach to conflict with an alternative method of working in Harmony or “in sync with” the dynamics of a problem-in-context (Coleman and Ricigliano 2017).

The Mastery approach derives from the belief that humans have the capacity and responsibility to control the social and natural world around them (Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck 1961). In general, it holds that “problems are best resolved by identifying which elements to change, and then changing them. If you control the environment, you will have fewer problems.” In contrast, a Harmony strategy assumes that humans can exercise partial but not total control of their environment—but only by becoming familiar with and living in balance with its surrounding forces, cycles, and trends. This implies that “problems are best resolved by adjusting elements in a large system to achieve and maintain balance over the big picture and long term.” These strategies tend to have fundamentally different objectives, processes, and outcomes, such as the following.

1. Harmony Objectives. Typically, problem-solving begins with clarifying what you and the community you are serving hope to achieve. However, in contrast to the narrower goals of the Mastery approach (“Fix the problem!”), working systemically recommends aiming more broadly toward improving the functioning and well-being of the system that is giving rise to the problem—mostly by enabling it to self-correct. For instance, rather than trying to fix a pattern of persistent enmity between two departments in an organization, perhaps aspire to establish an organizational culture where departmental relations are seen to complement one another and thrive together and destructive tensions are uncommon. This shifts the focus from problem-centered outcomes to more systemic-process goals, which helps direct us to address systemic causes rather than just presenting symptoms.

2. Harmony Processes. Mastery approaches to problem-solving encourage zooming into the conflict: analyzing, isolating elements, and focusing in on the target problem to determine what needs to be fixed or changed. In contrast, working systemically recommends zooming out first and developing a more holistic understanding of the relationship between the issues we care about (e.g., interdepartmental hostilities) and the forces in the surrounding environment that may give rise to them (history, incentives, culture, policies, modeling, training, etc.). This is essentially the approach that physicians who practice functional medicine take when they shift away from the standard medicine of “what’” (What disease do you have? What drug do I give?), toward the medicine of “why” (focusing instead on etiology, on causes and mechanisms for the illness; see Bland 2022).

   However, once an initial understanding of the fuller system of forces is clarified, it becomes critical to identify the specific actors and activities already driving change in the local environment. Rather than trying to take control of the problem, you identify others already doing so effectively. Here, local information is everything. For instance, individuals and subgroups within your organization that evidence positive deviance—those who have managed to channel tensions from interdepartmental hostilities into creative energies for innovation—should be identified and supported (Sternin and Choo 2000).

   Once the broader systemic nature of the problem is better understood and the agents of change are located, the next most important step is not to mess things up. Rather than trying to fix complex problems and trigger other unintended consequences, working in sync encourages learning to work with the flow of the situation in order to leverage how it is unfolding and facilitate desired outcomes (like supporting, scaling up, or replicating examples of positive deviance that emerged on their own). This thinking goes against traditional change theories and is much less direct, obvious, and heavy-handed. It can be realized by working at the margins or away from the primary presenting problem on more peripheral upstream conditions that can eventually help address the problem, or taking multiple actions while attempting to achieve one goal, which research has found to be more likely to result in more effective and sustainable changes with complex problems (Dörner 1997).

3. Harmony Outcomes. Decades of research has shown that leaders who have a more nuanced understanding of the complex environments in which they are operating—who are less dogmatic in their thinking, identify or implement more types of interventions, pay continual attention, and make more decisions over time—ultimately fare better (Dörner 1997; Tetlock and Gardner 2015). (Reflection Question 11: Mastery or Harmony? What is necessary here?)

Working in sync with chronic, complex, context-driven problems is often replete with failure. So, the question should not be how to avoid failure but how to learn from it most effectively and efficiently and with the fewest negative consequences. Dietrich Dörner’s research (1997) on decision-making in complex environments has found that this can often be achieved by using tactics like:

1. Gaming systems: testing solutions through initiating multiple pilot projects and embracing failures as a means of learning the underlying rules of a system;

2. Making more decisions: taking a course of action, but then continually adapting: staying open to feedback and to reconsidering decisions and altering course as needed; and

3. Remaining focused but not inflexible: identifying the most critical local issues early on and staying focused on addressing them, without developing a single-minded preoccupation with one solution.

(Reflection Question 12: Is it possible to fail in my role? If not, should it be?)

To summarize, systemic wisdom is the capacity to understand and transform more entrenched conflicts by working with the systems from which they are originating. Research suggests it can be cultivated by enhancing our capacities for cognitive, emotional, and behavioral complexity, tolerance for ambiguity, and future thinking; by honing our skills for working with the propensities of systems; and by practicing more adaptive forms of decision-making and action. These represent a core set of competencies and methods that are less familiar to many working in conflict management, and so require new means of education and skill development.

This call for enhancing CIQ has direct implications for how we approach leadership development today, suggesting that self-awareness models, socially oriented conflict resolution models, situational adaptivity models, and approaches to systemic transformation be viewed as progressively complementary modes of instruction. I recommend offering assessments and education on the self and social levels for all employees, adding the situational level for management, and introducing the systemic level in leadership development for any and all staff involved in strategic planning and complex problem-solving.

Integrating conflict intelligence into the fabric of our institutions and communities is no longer merely a strategic choice; it is an existential imperative. It is the road map to not just survive but thrive in the dynamic landscape of the modern world. Perhaps if Harvard’s former president Claudine Gay had had the time, training, and a conflict-intelligent team supporting her, she may have been able to address the multiple fronts of the conflict firestorm she faced in the fall of 2024 more adaptively, systemically, and effectively, and could have navigated through the crisis more successfully. Today, as we all stand on the precipice of a new era of complexity and conflict, the question is not whether we will encounter firestorms, but how well-equipped we will be to leverage and navigate them, emerging stronger and more resilient on the other side.