Last week, my lab partner A told me a story
about himself.
Last semester, A was in a project group
with other 3 classmates. One of his group mates B did not participate actively
while doing project. He used excuses to delay his submission frequently. As a team,
that affected everyone else’s plan. So B was given a lot of pressure.
As the due date getting closer, A got more
and more anxious because their project was extremely lagged. A tried to push B to
perform better, but B seemed not giving any positive response. One day they had
a big quarrel after A accused B for missing group meeting again. B said A did
not understand his situation (B was trying to switch course because studying
engineering was too stressful for him). The workload assigned to him was too
much and he already tried his best.
A did not told me the rest of the story. Luckily,
they submitted the project on time at the end, but I can tell that A was still
angry at B.
I use this story as an example because I
think most of us may have similar experience as a university student. There are
a few reasons contributing to this conflict. The first one is both A and B were
in a very stressful state. A was pressured because of the due date. B was
pressured by A. Therefore the conflict outbroke easily. The second reason is
they did not understand each other’s position. When B could not submit his work
on time, instead of helping him with his work, the rest of his group mates added
more pressure on B. They did not know that B was actually putting in the same amount
of effort (or maybe more). The third reason is B did not sound out when he
noticed he could not finish the work on time. He affected the whole team
because of his self-esteem. That was very selfish.
To solve an interpersonal conflict, staying
calm is the first thing we should do. Communication and sense of sympathy are the
keys we should use. If I were A, I would ask B whether he needed any help with
his work rather than assuming he was too lazy to finish it arbitrarily. If I
were B, I would ask for help when I knew I would not finish on time.
For anyone who is reading this post, do you
have any similar experience? Were you A or B? What will/did you do in this
situation?
Always stay cool.peace.
Hi,I agree with you on that many of us have encountered this kind problems before.And most of the time,we always tend to blame them because we are all working in a team especially when there is a deadline for what we are supposed to achieve.However, you made me realize that we are often standing just in our point of view when dealing this kind of tough issues. For example, when one of our team members failed to finish his work two or more times, we always think he or she is not willing to do his job. However, sometimes it may not be the truth for the situation. They, just like the person B in you blog,may have some troubles when they are doing their job. It could be the stressful workload from the other modules or even the problems from their families. But as is often the case,those people feel too shy to let others know their difficulty and they just push themselves harder in order to finish their work at all cost, of which the result is not always want people want.So what I want to say is that resolving the interpersonal conflict is not just about forgiving others, but also putting yourself into others' shoes.This is very important for us to avoid even worse conflicts.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteI agree with Yang Mo on this- when someone has trouble completing his work, there could be a number of factors underlying that- that's why it's useful to talk to the person first to find out as a first step.
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