Conflict Resolution

Personally, I think it is by so far the most interesting and useful topic we have been given through the class. I will first share my personal story with conflict, and then I will break down and talk about how I understand the impact of conflict resolution, interpersonal skills on leadership and management.

       The first time I actually thought about conflict is when I was having an interview for a campus leader position. The interviewer asked me, “could you tell us a time that you faced with a conflict, and what was the outcome?” I didn’t expect that question when I am preparing the interview. I thought a while, and I gave an example when I was a Teaching Assistant for a transfer student seminar class in Stony Brook University. Professor ABC assigned me a project to do a presentation for the class. She didn’t get me any instruction besides asking me to do a presentation. I have never done any presentation in a formal way. So I e-mailed her and hopefully to gain more information for me to prepare for the presentation. After I e-mailed her a couple of time, she finally responded as: “I am not sure what you are talking about. Let’s talk about it in person sometime.” Then we sat together and talked about the miscommunication there. After the one-on-one discussion, we found out that she thought all the TAs had given decent training before we got this position, and I was expected that she could provide more information. It was not something I particularly did wrong, and she also didn’t think it coming that we didn’t get the training program that year. Finally, everything cleared out and we then she utilized my strength of being a good tour guide, so we ended up changing the format of presentation, and students really enjoyed the lecture that day.

       From this experience, there was not necessarily a conflict, but there is some miscommunication. The source of the problem occurs with different volume of information and context. Professor ABC took an initiative to move the virtual communication to face-to-face interaction. Although she acted like she was really angry and annoyed by the fact, but she broke the bridge by emerging the space between us. The resolution of this conflict went well when the main reason of the conflict was discovered by both of the parties. When comparing our type of personality in the workplace, Professor ABC is more a little bit assertive, but open-minded person. I am more accommodating type. It is important to understand that in the workplace, people’s behavior differentiate, and sometimes it is not anyone’s problem, because a lot of our personalities also come from the environment where we grow up, our family, and our friends and people around us. These factors all will impact on our personalities. In a word, people bring different patterns of behavior to the workplace that has roots in early life.

       For people who are going to work for an internship or full time job sometime in the future, it is vital to have “interpersonal competence,” which means we understand some basic difference of personalities in different people, and we learn to observe and how to deal with people differently.

       Another experience I would like to share is a conflict happened recently in my RSO. I am the Vice President and there is one girl, who is one of the four department chairs, and when I am discussing with her about business on phone, I also gave some suggestions for her personal leadership improvement. She responded directly “I really don’t like the way you address to me, because it makes me feel uncomfortable and hurt. For the business, you could just handle to me, and then when I am done, you could give me advice for improvement. And about everything you said about my personality, I would really appreciate that if you address this problem to me as friends instead of a boss.” I was a little bit shock and had no idea of how to respond to her for a moment. I apologized to her immediately after I took some seconds to observe, and told her I will pay more attention on my tones and the way to address to her problems, especially the difference between pure business and pure personal suggestion. Something I realize in a leadership role is that it is super important to improve my interpersonal competence because managers’ effectiveness is often impaired because they over control, ignore feelings, and are blind to their impact on others. In my situation, it is obvious that her personality is more direct, and mine is more observing. But there is more than just the type of personality. I think what I can improve in the situation is that I should give her more space to do things in her way. I was a little bit rush to tell her everything and keep her updated because my boss just updated with me about things we need to do. I am trying to be efficient but actually it hurts her feeling. Another thing I could improve is that for pure personal suggestion, I was about to schedule a coffee chat with her, and then discussed in a nicer way. Due to the tight schedule of the time, as well as my urgent wish to hope her to change a little bit about her management style, since I heard a couple of complaints and concerns about her from others, I rushed again. Not everything in the name of efficiency comes with great results. In this situation, I over control a little bit, and ignore her feeling. Another interesting insight I found out later is that my position from a “broker” to a “VP” has influenced the way other committee members treated me. When I was a broker, I seem to be more open and easy to approach. When I took more responsibility as a VP, and also the task is to make sure everyone get through deadline, and detail oriented, my influence, as a broker was weaker. Sometimes being very open-minded could be also risky, uncomfortable or frightened, but after a while now, I am definitely more comfortable of doing it, compared to when I started. 

        My effort recently is to work on how to motivate people in the committee, how to make them feel this is a more comfortable environment that you are free to share any resources and ideas. I can definitely see the improvement, such as someone directly e-mail to me to give great ideas, the discussion during the meeting is less awkward, and etc. And I am also try to get my “broker” personality back to me too. I hope you enjoy reading my post and feel free to give me any suggestions or comments.  

Lower Your Future Risk

We are all in some stage of college education, and we have a variety of different experiences coming from college as well as outside, including paid and non-paid job, volunteering, campus involvement and etc. To keep an eye toward the future and reducing income risk, you could either continue doing what you are doing and making wise choices yourself, or you could also get some assistance from people you have network with, such as your older sibling or friends, or relatives, so on so forth.

Personally, I am doing both. I am making effort to continue making my own campus experience to help me in the future career, and at the moment, I also consider doing something else to make me more competitive in the job market when I graduate, as well as to avoid some income risk. I have a campus paid-job and there are some committees I am involved with that have great workshops or trainings to enrich my knowledge for future. They usually invite some guest speakers to campus, to talk about their experiences right after college, or people who are in the industry for a while. A lot of time, they will share their own experiences of how they deal with some of the struggles, and what are some tips they can give to us, as college students. What some of other students do is to pick up a major that can lead them to better placement or income in the future. This might works but the trend is always changing so there is some risk if you decide to do it. My cousin studied Biology Engineering in University of Michigan when he was an undergraduate, when a lot of anticipation of how this area is going to be more popular and can make a lot of money. After he graduate, the economy is not doing well, and the field was not longer popular and he can't find a job because of the big context in the job market. I suggest people to pick up something they like, or at least not hate, and continue doing it. It might be a wiser choice to just follow the trend because trend is something unpredictable. 

From there, I also kind of make some network and connections with people from LinkedIn, from career fair, and as many resource I can utilize as possible. To share a little story that once I have asked a recruiter from Bank of America that if she could go through my resume and give me some suggestions. One of the feedbacks she gave me was that it is good to get suggestions from people who are more experienced than you, but always keep in mind that different people have different pathway, that sometimes what is beneficial to some people won’t necessarily have benefit to you.

So my point is that there are a lot of ways we can develop to reduce risks for future through pushing yourself to do more stuff and also taking suggestions from other people, but do make sure keep in mind that first, you may not get benefits from other people’s experience; and second that those people who you ask suggestions from, they haven’t been through everything either, and they are trying to learn to lower their risk for their future too. Lastly, when we are talking about lower future risk in anything, a lot of times we are talking about in short term, but not long term. Some of the things might help with lower risks in short term, but not your whole life. You will have to keep your eye opened and always learning.

Team Production VS Sum of Individual Production

The article uses a very typical psychology experiment to try to explain some of the issues on Economics and Politics. In my summary, I will use two formulas to conclude: team production equals to the sum of individual production when there is no gift exchange, or shared rewards. The second formula is that team production is greater than the sum of individual production when gift is exchanged in the right way, and rewards are shared.

            I find the topic very attractive to me because a lot of thinking I am doing recently is very close to the theory. I would have to share my story about my committee again.

            The International Student Advisory Committee (ISAC) I am involved with is a pretty new organization. We started from last semester with only 6 people, and we expanded to 25 people this semester. We are events and workshops basis, which means most of the effort we put into is plan events, make them happen and learn from events we planned and improve. With the closure of recruitment, we finally have a lot of regular routines, such as weekly general meeting, proposals for events we plan to have this semester, and etc. As a Vice President, something I really struggle with, or to say think deeply is that how to get our committee members share resources with each other? How to motivate everyone to be more involved with our committee? 

            Think every of our committee as an individual, and their resources and experiences as individual production, so what the whole committee has is team production. The thing is sometimes it is hard to make people realize that if every individual product more, the team will product better. I believe something missed here is motivation. So I consider strategies such as giving them some great resources as a gift, and sparing time during the meeting to exchange great resources with each other, to make everyone feel free to share. I also consider having some rewards, both non-financial and financial. It is restricted to give financial rewards, but I try to buy some moon cakes and snakes to the committee, and it provides a better environment, for people to trust each other more, and more willing to share. A lot of time, it is human’s nature to share something with people they are more familiar with, and more comfortable spending time with. Some non-financial rewards, such as providing a star-reward of the month, appreciation from words are all on my radar. I am not entirely sure how it will work, and I am sure there are more I would have to do. I also take advantage of my role as a “broker” to communicate with my members very frequently, to see what great ideas they have it for the committee, or just for anything. There are some great feedbacks I get from people, which I believe will also help me to come up to a “gift-exchange” and “reward” plan.

            I agree with the author that things are collaborative might not be fair. You have to dig more to understand people’s behavior and people’s action through figuring out what is the motivation behind their behavior and give them the right reward or gift to provide them a chance to contribute to a group. In another word, to be collaborative, it needs everyone’s contribution, but it also needs some leaders to make it happens, to act as a “trigger.” If leaders can make it happens, they can lead a great team with the team production is greater than the sum of individual production.

Illinbucks

          Many things on campus are allocated to students on a first come first serve basis. I would like to share a little bit my experiences with this policy. In college life, most of us will experience making appointments with advisors, professors, and even with classmates too. Let’s take office hour as an example. Office hour is usually students bring questions or concerns to a certain time to find professors, and to have conversation with professors. There are usually two types of ways to do so. You can either make an appointment with professors ahead of time, or you can walk-in and first comes serve first. This is a great example that “making an appointment” is kind of like an allocation of “Illinibucks” and walk-in is more like the policy of “first come first serves.” Some professors will take both appointments and walk-in and appointment at the same amount of 1 or 2 hours. Others will usually write down on the syllabus of certain date for walk-in and certain day for appointments.

          Students who are taking advantages of “making appointments with professors” are kind of using “Illinibucks” to move to the head of time. Enable to utilize “Illinibucks” in this situation, I think students have to have the characters of eager to learn, willing to take initiatives, and plan their time earlier and more efficient.

           Another experience I would like to share will be more in the category that I use “Illinibucks” to be in the head of the line. There was a time when I was still in Stony Brook University; I made my decision to transfer to here, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Admission office called me to let me know that I was not qualified for the Hospitality program, so if I would like to be admitted, I had to submit an appeal form. I had no idea how to write an appeal form at that time, and I really needed someone to help me out. So I e-mailed my writing professor Hugh and asked if I could make an appointment with him. It was kind of at the last minute so he didn’t get a chance to reply back. Then, with the urgent situation, and because of the close relationship we have developed throughout the year, I texted him and he responded back saying that he would delay his appointment with another students, and I was ahead of the line to meet with him. He spent 3 hours to help me to polish my appeal form, which fortunately also contributed to my admission process to UIUC. That was a time I used “Illinibucks” to cut the line, and to be ahead of the game.

           Personally, I will spend my “Illinibucks” when I really need help and it is kind of emergency. I think the administrative cost will definitely be higher, because it takes more effort into managing and reorganize the time and effort. It requires a look of work for time management especially. 

          Lastly, relate back to our life, in every hospital, most of the chances that there will be an emergency department. Emergency Department will be under more efficient administration and low cost if people only use it with emergency. Or the hospital might make more money by the truth that more people are visiting, but patients has to wait more time, and there are more transition cost happening in this process. It will be less efficient too.