The Conflict Intelligent Leader (CIQ-L) Executive Education Program
Program Description:
The Leadership Masterclass for Organizations Who Can't Afford to Get Conflict Wrong
In an era of unprecedented complexity—where identity differences divide, teams fracture under pressure, and entrenched conflicts drain billions in productivity—most leaders are playing defense. They're managing symptoms, not transforming systems. They're avoiding hard conversations instead of catalyzing breakthrough change.
You're here because you know there's a better way.
The Conflict Intelligent Leader program from the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (MD-ICCCR) and TC Academy at Teachers College, Columbia University is the advanced training for executives who understand that conflict isn't a problem to solve—it's a strategic asset to leverage. This isn't conflict management. It's conflict mastery at the highest level.
Why Conflict Intelligent Leader?
- Beyond the Basics: Advanced frameworks for the complex, systemic challenges that derail organizational performance
- Columbia University Excellence: Access 70+ years of pioneering research from the world's leading conflict resolution institution
- Proven Models, Immediate Results: Deploy cutting-edge frameworks like Adaptive Mediation, CMOD, and the Attractor Landscape Model
- Systemic Thinking: Move beyond individual disputes to transform organizational culture, dynamics, and outcomes
- Executive Peer Network: Learn alongside senior leaders tackling similar high-stakes challenges across industries
- Measurable Impact: Drive change in team performance, inclusion metrics, and organizational resilience
Your Transformation Journey: Eight Advanced Modules
| Modules | Critical Challenge | Your Strategic Edge |
| Module 1: Managing Yourself in Conflict | Leading under pressure when emotions run high | Master self-regulation and composure. Transform your internal landscape so you show up with clarity and purpose when stakes are highest. Conflict becomes your catalyst, not your constraint. |
| Module 2: Developing Your Interpersonal Conflict Skills | The gap between how you think you lead and how others experience you | Leverage the Conflict Competency 360 Assessment to close perception gaps. Align intent with impact and build relationships that withstand intense pressure and disagreement. |
| Module 3: Holding Difficult Conversations | High-stakes dialogue across deep divides that threaten relationships and outcomes | Navigate identity, power, and emotional reactivity with surgical precision. Turn the conversations everyone avoids into breakthrough moments that accelerate progress. |
| Module 4: Navigating Power in Conflict | Power dynamics that create winners and losers instead of collaborative solutions | Deploy the Making Conflict Work framework's five strategic approaches. Adapt fluidly whether managing up, across, or down—and expand your influence at every organizational level. |
| Module 5: Managing Teams in Conflict | Team disputes that spiral, stall, and sabotage performance | Master Adaptive Mediation to recognize and overcome the four critical derailers: emotional intensity, hidden agendas, constrained options, and competitive dynamics. Build psychological safety that unlocks team potential. |
| Module 6: Leading in Divisive Times | Toxic polarization that fractures culture and paralyzes decision-making | "Escalation-proof" your organization with research-backed strategies to disrupt divisive patterns before they metastasize. Lead with clarity when everyone else is choosing sides. |
| Module 7: Leveraging Conflict in Multicultural Organizations | DEI initiatives that stall because systemic dynamics remain invisible and unaddressed | Apply the Constructive Multicultural Organizational Development (CMOD) framework to uncover hidden forces sustaining inequity. Channel conflict as the catalyst for authentic, lasting inclusion. |
| Module 8: Unlocking Impossible Conflicts | Intractable conflicts sustained by deep systems of identity, history, and power | Crack the code on "Five Percent" conflicts using Dr. Peter Coleman's Attractor Landscape Model. Deploy advanced strategies like Complicate to Simplify and Change to Stabilize to transform what everyone else calls unsolvable. |
What Makes This Different?
Most conflict training stops at interpersonal skills. The Conflict Intelligent Leader program goes further equipping you to recognize and reshape the systems that generate and sustain organizational conflict. You'll learn to see patterns others miss, intervene at leverage points that create cascading change, and lead transformations that stick.
This is the training for leaders who:
- Mediate high-stakes team conflicts that make-or-break strategic initiatives
- Navigate polarized environments where traditional approaches fail
- Drive culture change in diverse, global organizations
- Tackle "impossible" conflicts that have resisted every previous attempt at resolution
- Build organizations where difference becomes a competitive advantage, not a liability
Dates & Registration
Dates: TBA
Price: TBA
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Instructor
Dr. Peter T Coleman is Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University where he holds appointments at Teachers College, and the School of Professional Studies. Dr. Coleman directs the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (MD-ICCCR), is founding director of the Institute for Psychological Science and Practice (IPSP), and is co-executive director of Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4).
Dr. Coleman is a renowned expert on constructive conflict resolution and sustainable peace. His current research focuses on promoting conflict intelligence and systemic wisdom as meta-competencies for navigating conflict constructively across all levels (from families to companies to communities to nations), which includes projects on adaptive negotiation and mediation; cross-cultural conflict adaptivity; optimality dynamics in conflict, justice and polarization; multicultural conflict; intractable conflict; and sustainable peace.
In 2003, Dr. Coleman became the first recipient of the Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association (APA), Division 48: Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence, and in 2015 was awarded the Morton Deutsch Conflict Resolution Award by APA and a Marie Curie Fellowship from The European Union. In 2018, Dr. Coleman was awarded the Peace Award from Meaningful World, in celebration of their 30th anniversary and the UN’s International Day of Peace, and in 2020 a Lifetime Commitment Award from the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies association. In 2023 he was elected to be 2023 Fellow of the International Association of Conflict Management.
Dr. Coleman edits the award-winning Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice (2000, 2006, 2014) and his other books include The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts (2011); Conflict, Justice, and Interdependence: The Legacy of Morton Deutsch (2011), Psychological Components of Sustainable Peace (2012), and Attracted to Conflict: Dynamic Foundations of Destructive Social Relations (2013), and Making Conflict Work: Navigating Disagreement Up and Down Your Organization (2014), which won the 2016 Outstanding Book Award from The International Association of Conflict Management. Most recently he published a book with Columbia University Press on breaking through the intractable polarization plaguing the U.S. and other societies, titled, The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization (2021).
As featured in the Harvard Business Review cover story on power and conflict.
Dr. Coleman has also authored well over 100 articles and chapters, is a member of the United Nations Mediation Support Unit’s Academic Advisory Council, is a founding board member of the Gbowee Peace Foundation USA, and is a New York State certified mediator and experienced consultant. In 2017, he received the International Association of Conflict Management 2017 Best Conference Theoretical Paper Award for his article Conflict Intelligence and Systemic Wisdom: Meta-competencies for Engaging Difference in a Complex, Dynamic World, and in 2018 The Emerald Literati Award for the paper Adaptive mediation: An evidence-based contingency approach to mediating conflict.
Dr. Coleman also founded and edits the MD-ICCCR Science-Practice Blog, the WKCR (89.9 FM) monthly radio program Peace and Conflict at Columbia: Conversations at the Leading Edge, and is a frequent blogger on Psychology Today and The Hill. Dr. Coleman’s work has also been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The Chicago Tribute, Nature, Science, Scientific American, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Wired, This American Life, Time Magazine, Fox Business, CBS, Fast Company, Chicago Public Radio, the PBS Newshour and various international outlets.
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of the Conflict Intelligent Leader program, participants will be able to:
Who Should Attend
The Conflict Intelligent Leader program is the advanced executive intensive for senior leaders who must navigate organizational complexity, drive systemic change, and solve conflicts that resist conventional approaches.
Ideal for:
- Senior Executives & C-Suite: CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and other executives leading organizational transformation and culture change
- Vice Presidents & Directors: Senior leaders responsible for multiple teams, divisions, or strategic initiatives
- Chief Human Resources Officers & HR Leaders: Executives driving DEI initiatives, managing organizational conflict, and shaping workplace culture
- Change Leaders & Transformation Officers: Leaders responsible for large-scale organizational change and innovation
- General Managers & Business Unit Leaders: Executives managing complex stakeholder dynamics and P&L accountability
- Global & Regional Leaders: Executives leading multicultural teams and navigating cross-cultural organizational dynamics
Perfect if you:
- Lead teams or organizations through polarizing issues and divisive environments
- Drive diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that keep stalling
- Mediate high-stakes disputes between senior leaders or departments
- Face "impossible" conflicts that have resisted every previous solution
- Need to transform organizational culture and systemic conflict patterns
- Build competitive advantage through collaboration across deep differences
You've mastered the basics. Now master the systems.
The Conflict Intelligent Leader program is for executives who don't just manage conflict—they leverage it to unlock organizational potential, accelerate innovation, and create lasting competitive advantage. If your organization's most complex challenges demand a leader who can transform entrenched patterns, this program is your next move.
Upon Completion
Participants who successfully complete this program will earn a verified Certificate of Participation and an official Digital Badge—valuable credentials that showcase your commitment to professional growth and can be shared on LinkedIn or digital portfolios. View our sample program badge and certificate below.
Important Notice: This is a non-credit program. Completion does not provide academic credit toward any degree program at Teachers College or other institutions. No transcript credit will be awarded.