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Interpersonal conflicts can arise in any situation, whether at home or at school, or between family members or friends.
For this case, an interpersonal conflict occurred between Jason and Tim, two colleagues working in the same marketing team. Both are of around the same age but Jason is the head of the team and has a dominant personality. On the other hand, Tim is merely a team member.
During a recent marketing campaign for an important client company, Jason submitted his report to his boss, thinking that it was the best and had all the relevant points, without consulting the rest of his team. After finding out about this, Tim became upset and resentful that Jason had made the decision for the team without discussing it with them. He felt that the rest of the team were entitled to their opinions as well and could perhaps have added more good ideas to the report.
As a result, Tim started persuading other team-mates to join him and gang up against Jason during meetings so that there would be a majority vote on his side against Jason’s decisions.
However, this in turn led to a feeling of anger and ostracism on the part of Jason as he felt that he was being unfairly attacked by his team. Consequently, he became defensive and accused Tim of trying to get his position as team-head. This certainly did not help matters. Since then, the work relationship between these two has worsened, with tensions running high during group meetings.
As a fellow team-mate and close friend of the two people concerned, I ignored the problem between them. What could I have done instead to help resolve the interpersonal conflict between them?
As I intend to work in different countries, being able to communicate well with others is important to me. This is especially so since I plan to work in the finance industry where proposals and negotiations are part and parcel of the job description. In such situations, any miscommunication might result in costly repercussions or put a kink in our clients’ confidence in us. This is a lesson that was drummed into my head last year while preparing for a law presentation. One of my group-mates had abruptly changed some points in the PowerPoint slides a mere day before the presentation and had neglected to inform me about it, assuming that I had already been notified of the change. As a result, I presented a redundant and out-dated law to the class, resulting in a ferocious tongue-lashing from the tutor and a loss of confidence in our group.
Effective communication is important to me not only in the business sector, but also in my friendships. I enjoy interacting with people from other races and nationalities, as I am fascinated in learning more about their unique cultures and their different backgrounds. As such, I have a variety of friends ranging from Malays to Caucasians and coming from Vietnam, Mauritius, Hungary, Hong Kong and Thailand. It is thus necessary to have good communication among ourselves as they have different customs and some of them may only have a rudimentary grasp of English. There is a higher chance that they may misinterpret my message and be offended. As I also plan to travel overseas in the future, effective communication would be essential in building good relationships with the locals. Meanwhile, I suppose practicing my communication skills on the unsuspecting citizens of the multi-racial and multi-religious Singapore would have to suffice for the moment.
