MasterClass, the personalized learning platform unlocking human potential with the world’s best, today announced the launch of The Conflict Playbook, taught by Amanda Ripley, conflict mediator, investigative journalist and bestselling author. Ripley draws on two decades of reporting to show members how to stop conflict from derailing their careers and relationships, and start using it as a tool for growth and deeper connection. The class is available now exclusively on MasterClass, where subscribers have unlimited access to 200+ instructors with an annual membership.
Ripley’s class arrives at a critical time. According to research from the Society for Human Resource Management, U.S. businesses lost an estimated $2.7 billion per day in the fourth quarter of 2024 due to mismanaged conflict and incivility. This follows a study sponsored by Quantum Workplace and Fierce Conversations in which 53% of employees said they handle toxic situations at work by ignoring them. Through real-world case studies, personal stories and research-backed frameworks, Ripley provides a practical playbook for navigating conflict in high-stakes moments and in the everyday tensions that wear people down. Members will learn to recognize the difference between high conflict, the kind that traps people in cycles of contempt and retaliation, and healthy conflict, the kind that surfaces real problems and makes teams, families and relationships stronger.
“Your instincts about how to handle most kinds of conflict are probably wrong,” Ripley says. “In really dysfunctional conflict, any intuitive thing you do will make the conflict worse. This class will give you counterintuitive, practical tools so you can stop conflict from hurting your career and your life, and start using it to get stronger, smarter and more connected.”
Lessons include:
- The Roots of Conflict. Ripley introduces the First Five Minutes Rule, a framework for responding intentionally rather than reactively when conflict erupts. Members will learn to slow down in heated moments, shift fraught conversations away from group settings and text-based communication, and buy time to access clearer thinking. She also breaks down the four conflict personality types—the Avoider, the Mediator, the Fighter and the Conflict Entrepreneur—and shares specific strategies for members to recognize each type in themselves and others.
- High Conflict vs. Healthy Conflict. Ripley shows how conflict escalates from productive tension to destructive warfare and how to reverse that spiral. Members will learn to spot the two forces that drive most high conflicts at work, humiliation and splitting, and learn techniques to build more resilient teams and relationships.
- Getting to the Root of the Understory. Ripley teaches looping, a three-step active listening technique developed by The Center for Understanding in Conflict that helps people identify what a fight is really about beneath the surface. Members will practice listening for what matters most, reflecting it back in their own words and checking whether they got it right, a process that builds trust, defuses tension and reveals the deeper drivers of conflict: respect and recognition, power and control, care and concern, or stress and overwhelm.
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