Conflict Intervention & Transformation for Leaders

Hitotsubashi University Business School, School of International Corporate Strategy Japan

Read interview with Professor Robinson

Most managers find conflict at work to be very uncomfortable. Why? Because often we don’t know how to intervene to support team members to resolve their conflicts. Interpersonal conflict arouses feelings, opinions, and decisions that may be uncomfortable to deal with. However, the best time to catch conflict is early, before it escalates. Often team members just need a little support to discuss the conflict and come to their own solutions. And frequently, conflict can be transformed into stronger relationships, or a more open culture, better communication, and increased innovation. That’s where this course comes in. While other courses focus on dealing with your own conflicts, this course helps you as a leader step in and facilitate conversations to repair relationships and transform interpersonal conflict among their team members.

Using skills and structures that have proven successful in millions of interpersonal conflicts, you will learn to intervene more skillfully in conflicts across culture, functional expertise, gender, age, sexual orientation, and work style preferences, among others. This experiential course will provide you with the leadership and EQ skills, structure, and practice to support your team to resolve work-related conflicts, repair relationships, and feel heard.  Through learning by doing, you will learn and hone managerial skills that should be part of every leader’s toolbox. 

We will work in small groups of 3-4 people to apply EQ skills and techniques to real workplace conflicts through role-playing conflicts that commonly occur on diverse teams. As the course progresses, you will have the chance to bring (disguised) conflicts of your own to work on in class.  Along with developing and polishing useful conflict resolution skills, you will also leave this course having gotten to know some very interesting people!

Course Date & Time

Saturdays (JST) -- March 22  - May 10, 8am -1pm (JST) with April 19-May 10 ending 1 hour earlier: 8am -12noon (JST) 

March 22, 29, April 5, 12: 8 a.m. - 1 p.m. (JST) - 5-hour classes; April 19, 26, May 3, 10: 8 a.m. - noon (JST) - 4-hour classes

Next session (9/20 - 11/15)

Saturdays, 8:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.(JST/Tokyo time)