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.