Interpersonal Conflict: The Lost Friendship

I believe that every one of us will definitely encounter at least one conflict in your lifetime, be it with your family members or with your friends. When that happens, what kind of approach would you want to take? Would you insist that you are right and wait for the person to resolve the conflict or would you take the initiative to solve the quarrel before it gets worse? Well, below is a scenario of a conflict in which I find myself once in.

I befriended friend A during my university life. We took a number of modules together and often hang out together. One day, he asked me to accompany him to sign up for some part-time student leader position at some NUS event. As there were many applicants, one can go for the interview session anytime between 1pm to 5pm. We arranged to meet at 1pm and on the day itself, knowing that I would be late for 15 minutes, I immediately sent him a message to inform him of the situation. I even ran from the bus stop at science to YIH to meet him.

Upon reaching the place, I realized he had already asked his other friends along and I was told by him that he had already signed up for an interview time slot with his group of friends. The interview session was to be conducted in groups of 5 and as I came late, I ended up with another time slot with 4 other people.

Here comes the conflict. I thought that none of his friends wanted to accompany him for this event; thus I agreed to accompany him. At the same time, I was expecting him to wait for me, since I already informed him that I would only be late for 15 minutes. My mentality was that one would usually wait for his friends to come before signing up for the timeslot. I felt that if I were him, I would have asked my other friends to sign up first while I waited for my friend to arrive before signing up with him. As such, I became agitated and asked him to explain why he didn’t wait for me. His reply was “Cause you are late. “ I felt that the reason was inappropriate, as a result, I was unhappy and did not speak to him in the following few weeks, waiting for him to take the initiative. However, he did not speak to me as well and the misunderstanding continued.

Things got worse as we had already signed up for one particular project in school. Due to the incident, I did not have his cooperation throughout the whole semester and he constantly thought I was against him which wasn’t true. Consequently, we did not score well for that module.

After the end of semester, I tried putting myself in his shoes and thought from his perspective. My thinking was that maybe that was his way with friends and since I was late, he did not feel the need to wait for me. Perhaps, nobody was really at fault. It was merely a difference in the way of thinking between the both of us.

After sorting this out, I tried messaging him to end the conflict. However, what I got from him was a series of messages filled with vulgarities describing me and the statement “It was my loss to lose him as a friend”.

Consequently, things were no longer the same between us. What would you have done if you were me? Will you approach this problem differently? Feel free to give your comments yea?

Importance of Effective Communication

Effective communication is an essential skill to have in today’s society as it not only affect the first impression of you by others, but also foster the relationship between you and others, be it on a personal or business note. By having good communication skills, ideas can be effectively understood by the listener and a good rapport can also be built.

I believe that everyone will remember the childhood game whereby kids gather in a circle and one starts the game by whispering a simple message to the person beside him. Very often, the final message is of minimal resemblance to the original. In this game, the more distorted the final message becomes, the funnier it is. However, in reality, the results aren’t so amusing. Miscommunication often brings about confusion and in some serious cases, conflict among people.

Thus, as can be seen, effective communication is needed in all parts of our lives, for both good human relations and successful businesses. Human relation is not possible without communication. Communication is the basic function needed in the management of any organization and the ability to communicate effectively will enable one to thrive in this competitive world. Such is even more important now that globalization has brought about a more diverse environment. People of different race and religion now work together and effective communication is definitely needed to bring ideas across efficiently, regardless of whether the message is communicated verbally and in written form such as emails or letters.

Communication is often a two way process and the exchange between the targeted audience is the key to effective communication. It is amazing to discover that others can deliver a presentation with ease while others struggle to capture the attention of the audience. It is inevitable that when one step into the working world, he needs to be able to present and communicate effectively to his business partners, clients or his superiors in order to sell his ideas or market the product. The ultimate goal of communication is to connect with another person so that he can understand you perfectly, conveying the information required when necessary and thus reducing the hassle of explaining oneself over and over again.

I believe that communication skills must be developed and good communication skills stem from experience. Be it whether you are a speaker or the receiver, such experience will aid one in developing more effective communication techniques. Personally, I‘m not a good speaker and I definitely hope that with the help of ES2007S, I will be able to improve my communication skills, particularly in the area of presentation.

My very first post!!

Hi everyone, I'm doing a test blog as this is my first time blogging.. haa.. have fun in the first class today and it was nice knowing all of you =)... Take care and see you all soon..