Blog Post #2 - Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

I worked as an assistant engineer 2 years ago. It was the first job in my life after completing 15 years of education in school. I was adopted for a newly set up factory and Mr. Tan was my manager. He used to assign his subordinates to perform “out-of scope” tasks such as floor sweeping, window polishing, photocopying and sorting of documentations, which I felt uncomfortable with since those were not the jobs that I applied for. I started to murmur against my given tasks.

One day, I was assigned the task of receiving and sorting carton boxes in the warehouse. I told him that I felt uncomfortable carrying out all these tedious yet time consuming jobs that were not within my job scopes. He just left without saying a word which showed his ignorance towards his subordinates.

The conflict occurred in a group meeting; a few of us from the engineering division were assigned to clean the factory floor. I was the youngest and the least experienced among the group; I did not understand why the others did not speak out what they really had in mind as they felt uncomfortable with the arrangement as well.

Therefore, I volunteered to be their representative and objected to Mr. Tan’s arrangement in front of everyone, pointing out that we were always assigned non-related jobs which violated the job scopes stated black and white in our contracts. I threatened him that I would report to the HR department for this issue if he still insisted on it. I won this argument since Mr. Tan assigned this job to another division instead. I felt I did nothing wrong since I thought I had the right to strike for what I deserved.

Thereafter, almost everything that I applied which required Mr. Tan’s signature was rejected. I failed to get my leaves approved, I failed to participate in training programmes for further advancement, I failed to be selected for overseas posting, etc. Therefore, I decided to leave the company right after my contract with the factory had expired.
This phenomenon is commonly seen in the workplace; once you have offended someone with a higher rank in an organization, your life is going to be difficult! There are many more examples on conflict-related issues that can be extracted from real workplace such as jealousy from your colleagues and sabotage among your colleagues.

Imagine if you were me in that situation. What would you do?

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Possible solution from me (added @ 2nd September 2008, 23:20pm):

This story was my previous experience with 40% of hypothesis. When I first came to work, what was in my mind were remunerations, policies, contracts, rules and regulations. I omitted the human factor, I was so straightforward to fight for what I thought I deserved for.

If I were to know the consequences, I would have told Mr. Tan nicely to reflect on my concerns instead of pointing him out in the meeting which has embarrassed him. I should try to put myself in his position and say the right thing at the right time. I would have asked around my colleagues for advices and alternatives to solve my problems instead of just blindly complaint on how Mr. Tan treated me.

In an organization, it’s inevitable that someone will be assigned to carry out certain unrelated tasks which are not within his/her job scopes. Personally, I don’t prefer to keep quiet and just do whatever your superior assigned to you, because no one will be happy and perform well under this situation. However, I prefer to voice out my unfair and non-reasonable treatments to my superior directly or indirectly by reasonable reasons and valid points without offending my superior. I hope this will solve my problem, if it doesn’t, I may bring this issue to the next level of management in order to seek further clarifications and solutions. By doing this, you can’t prevent that some people may get hurt, however, in real situation, we can only do our best to minimize the offensive level to others, or else you yourself is the only one who cannot perform your tasks happily and satisfactory.

Blog Post #1 - Effective Communication Skills

Criticizing and judging are both the nature of human beings. Conflict and argument are often the consequences that come after criticizing and judging.

For instance, Jacky tends to judge something which he thinks is unfair; he criticizes someone who had done something bad to him or his friends. He will try his very best to show his anger and dissatisfaction towards that person by sarcasm and poisoned words. However, the results are usually the reverse of what he expected since the person that he judges also try to defend themselves by attacking back with poisoned words as what he has done to them.

What is the result that I want from a conversation? When something bad happened to me, how do I express myself? Do I go from being mute to being a brute? These are some of the questions that you have to ask yourself before you communicate to others effectively.

Sometimes, people will try to act in a reverse way of what they really want since they are totally driven by their negative emotions. For example, John never turned up for the project discussion but he kept criticizing the project during the formal meeting in front of the supervisor. This caused me to scold him by denying all of his contributions in the past, making him quit the project group the following day. This was not what I wanted but I was driven by my anger, and could not retract back what I had said to him.

Therefore, effective communication is a very important skill in our daily lives as we often need to share thoughts, ideas and feelings with one another. So, I’m looking forward to having an effective communication environment in our ES2007S class! ^^