Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

It was an incident that happened in 2004. We were assigned to design a bridge model which will be stress tested on its maximum load. The bridge that can take the heaviest load (weight) with the best design will get awarded. In our group, there was only one local student and the rest were international students from different countries. At first, we were very enthusiastic and excited about the project. We named the bridge “United Bridge”. We tried many designs and tested it in the lab with various loadings and observed which design is the best.

After a few weeks, one of our international student group members suddenly disappeared. We simply thought that she was busy. But a few days later she shocked us with her own new bridge design. It was the arch bridge and we knew it was very difficult to design as a model. She suggested that the design was perfect and that we should use it as our project model. Initially, we did not accept it as it was not our group’s work. But we all know that the arch bridge was the strongest bridge among all and we finally agreed to accept it as our group work. Surprisingly, on the actual day, our classmates pointed out that it was not our group’s work. They called it that person’s bridge. We did not know what she told to the rest of our classmates and we felt remorseful and sad. The other bad thing is the bridge even could not take half of the expected weight. As soon as the test was over, she mentioned it was her own bridge and she did not allow us to take pictures of the broken bridge for the follow up analysis presentation.

Luckily we had taken photos of our previous bridge models and managed to show them as evidence of our team’s work. Nevertheless, we all were able to score above average for this project as our lecturer knew of our contributions. We avoided her though we still talk to her superficially. How would you feel and solve this conflict if you were in our place??

Why developing effective communication skills is important!

Every mankind communicates everyday, but in different ways. Even a very simple matter cannot be solved without appropriate communication. Therefore effective communication skills are very essentials for all of us. There are many communication networks and channels we are using in our daily life such as oral communications, written communications, non verbal communications, internal personnel communications etc.

We have always noticed that those who are friendly and good in conversational skills get more popularity and get more chances to success than the rest. But for some, even though their own abilities are good, they are not success as much as they should be due to communications barrier like language problems, lack of active listening to others, lack of cultural self-awareness etc.

I believe most of the people are not perfect in communications. We always face at least one of the above communications barriers. However, as there is a saying “where there is a will, there is a way”, we can always learn to improve our communications skills through many ways. We cannot learn all those skills within a day or a year. It is a life long learning process, I believe. Our communication back in primary school level was definitely different from what we are using in university level today. Like wise, what we communicate at university level today cannot be the same as our communication ways as in our future careers.

Therefore as we grow older, we will need to communicate with more and more people for more purposes. In order to get more opportunities and success in life, we must definitely know well how to communicate effectively with people around us. For that, we should continue developing effective communication skills and practicing them in our daily life wisely.