Structural

Structural Level in Conflict

The structural level of conflict intelligence concerns the underlying policies, practices, and systems within organizations that shape how conflicts arise, evolve, and persist over time. While it is common to focus on individual or interpersonal conflict dynamics, many of the most entrenched, recurring disputes are embedded within the organizational structure itself—woven into roles, norms, hierarchies, and histories.

Becoming aware of these deeper, incentivized sources of conflict—and developing the capacity to shift them—is essential for leaders and practitioners seeking sustainable cultural change. However, many conventional conflict resolution approaches emphasize solving isolated problems without attending to the structural forces that feed them. As a result, even after well-intentioned interventions, the organization often reverts to familiar cycles of tension, division, or exclusion.

Research on Conflict intelligence highlights several key elements that are particularly important for understanding and shifting structural conflict patterns: how polarization dynamics operate, how systems reinforce inequity, how organizational patterns sustain conflict behaviors over time, and how leaders can intervene strategically and adaptively rather than reactively.

Here, we explore two major structural challenges—polarization and systemic inequity—and introduce frameworks for working with them constructively.

Structural Polarization Dynamics

In polarized environments, conflict is no longer limited to discrete disputes between individuals or groups. Instead, polarization becomes an organizational condition—a conflict attractor that draws participants into reinforcing patterns of distrust, contempt, and identity-driven division.

Polarization is not simply about having different views; it is about how differences become emotionally and systemically entrenched over time. It is often amplified by factors such as fear, media exposure, cognitive biases, and institutional habits that reward certainty and punishment of ambiguity.

Drawing from Coleman’s (2021) research on toxic polarization, five core nonlinear practices have been identified for shifting polarized organizational patterns:

  • Reset: Disrupt habitual scripts and create space for alternative narratives and possibilities.

  • Bolster & Break: Strengthen existing positive relational dynamics while dismantling toxic attractors.

  • Complicate: Introduce complexity and contradiction to resist simplistic, binary thinking.

  • Move: Activate physical, emotional, and intellectual mobility to unstick entrenched conflict cycles.

  • Adapt: Engage in iterative learning through small experiments and micro-resets, adjusting based on feedback.

Research also distinguishes between "clock" and "cloud" problems (Popper, Morin, Coleman): while clock problems are mechanical and solvable through linear analysis, polarization represents a cloud problem—messy, adaptive, and requiring nonlinear, dynamic strategies.

Exposure to contradictory complexity, as seen in studies at the Difficult Conversations Lab (Phelps-Roper, Coleman et al.), can soften rigid positions and open space for relational re-patterning. Additionally, movement-based practices (locomotion, synchronization) have been found to help shift neural and emotional responses to conflict at the embodied level.

For CIQ purposes, polarization is treated not as a defect in individual character, but as a patterned system response that can be interrupted and redirected through carefully designed interventions.

Structural Patterns of Inequity

Similarly, organizational inequity is not simply the result of individual biases. It emerges from dynamical systems—the evolving interplay of beliefs, behaviors, norms, and structures over time.

Traditional conflict resolution models, which emphasize diagnosing needs and generating options, often fall short because they focus on the symptoms rather than the root patterns of systemic exclusion. Without addressing these structural attractors, well-meaning interventions (such as one-off DEI trainings) can fail to produce lasting change—and sometimes exacerbate underlying tensions.

The Constructive Multicultural Organizational Development (CMOD) framework offers a more systemic model for sustainable transformation. It identifies two types of attractors that tend to shape organizational life:

The CMOD model proposes five distinct modes of action for shifting organizational patterns:

  • Destabilization: Leveraging crises or tensions to unfreeze entrenched structures.

  • Visualization: Co-creating new visions of organizational culture and relational norms.

  • Deconstruction: Systematically dismantling policies, narratives, and practices that reinforce inequity.

  • Reconstruction: Building and embedding new, justice-centered systems and structures.

  • Adaptation: Sustaining progress through continuous feedback, accountability, and learning.

Research by Coleman and colleagues suggests that sustainable DEI change is most successful when organizations move beyond surface solutions to intentionally shift attractors—that is, the patterns that pull organizational behavior in destructive or constructive directions over time.

Conflict Resolution Insights for Structural Change

Building on these models, newer research (Coleman et al., 2023) has offered several important insights for advancing structural change through conflict work:

  • Blended Approaches: Combining conflict resolution tools with activist strategies that foreground power analysis and social justice goals.

  • Conflict Surfacing: Skillfully surfacing and working with underlying tensions, rather than suppressing them.

  • Opportunity Windows: Capitalizing on shocks (e.g., leadership turnover, public crises) as openings for systemic reform.

  • Pattern Recognition: Tracking patterns of behavior and relational dynamics over time, rather than reacting to isolated incidents.

Barriers to Structural Change

Despite best efforts, there are several common barriers that often impede progress:

  • Treating conflict as negative rather than as a catalyst for growth.

  • Ignoring or downplaying systemic power differentials.

  • Focusing too narrowly on short-term outcomes without addressing underlying relational and structural patterns.

  • Believing that awareness alone—without systemic intervention—will result in lasting change.

These barriers are not simply obstacles to avoid; they are signs of where deeper attractors may be at work.

Mindsets for Structural Conflict Work

Working at the structural level requires cultivating a distinct set of mindsets and habits:

  • Self as Instrument: Recognizing that one’s own biases, blind spots, and positionality shape how conflict is perceived and engaged.

  • Continuous Learning: Embracing setbacks and resistance as part of the adaptive change process.

  • Positionality Awareness: Understanding how one’s social and institutional position mediates access, authority, and influence.

  • Complexity Tolerance: Remaining grounded amid uncertainty, contradiction, and nonlinear progress.

Together, these mindsets form the foundation for conflict intelligence at the structural level, enabling practitioners to engage with complexity rather than retreating from it.

Structural Conflict IQ Toolkit