Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

Here is an interpersonal conflict that is happening to Mary, a 3rd year NUS undergraduate at this point of our semester.

Mary and her coursemate Jane have been taking several core modules together all this while. They and other coursemates started out as mere acquaintances and gradually became friends in classes. The tutorials for these modules happen to share a same teaching assistant by the name John. Coincidently, John and Jane have been in a relationship since 1st year.

It wasn’t until this semester that Mary could finally get a chance to work closely with Jane on assignments in the same tutorial group. Unfortunately, it is also a chance for Mary to learn about some of Jane’s bad personalities: she likes badmouthing other coursemates and spreading rumours while pretending to be friendly to everyone. For example, Jane would say how gay or dirty-minded certain guys in class are, how kiasu and eccentric certain classmates are. Even Mary is not spared from the badmouthing, which is something she only realised when revealed by other coursemates.
Mary feels so disgusted and upset about Jane’s two-faced personality after treating her like a friend all this while, that she feels like giving her a good tight slap in class. She even cried over the phone when she was sharing her feelings with another friend.

To rub salt into wound, John has been unprofessional in his teaching profession by sharing confidential academic information such as classmates’ assignment grades with Jane. With sensitive matters of grades at Jane’s disposal, the gossiping and badmouthing are straining the relationship between Jane and her classmates. Some classmates could no longer tolerate such insensitive gossiping that they even contemplate filing a complaint with the Dean’s Office about John’s unprofessional conduct.

After analysing the situation, I realise the main problems are Jane’s insensitive personalities and John’s failure to maintain confidentiality and integrity as a teaching staff in the premise of his relationship with Jane. It is in the interest of Mary and other affected classmates to achieve a resolution to this conflict so as not to hamper their studies and relationships.

Here is my question: How could Mary and other affected classmates approach this conflict in a systematic and controllable manner and come to an effective solution without straining the relationship between John and Jane as well as between Jane and the classmates?

Why Effective Communication Skills are Important for Me

Communication is a platform that facilitates the conveying of information and intention between functioning individuals in a community. To me, the ultimate goal of communication is to not only make others understand what we want them to understand as complete as possible, but also, conversely, to understand what others want us to understand.

Unfortunately, as pointed out in last Friday's class, contrary to this ideal, communication in the real world is subjected to barriers that distort and cloud the original information and intention to be conveyed. Effective communication skills are important in identifying and overcoming these barriers. Although it is usually difficult to achieve the ultimate goal of communication mentioned above within the short time allowed for response in real world communication, we could at least employ relevant communication skills to address and overcome the more serious obstacles.

One of the skills for effective communication is the 7 Cs of communication. Here are two of my experiences that illustrate how such an effective communication skills could be at disposal readily and easily in overcoming obstacles in communication.

In an interclass basketball competition back in my high school, after being defeated in the semi-final and emerged only as the second runner-up, our class instructor highlighted a communication breakdown among our players. During that lost match, players at the bench were keeping up with the game and occasionally shouted out reminders to players in the court to avoid fouls. One of the more frequent shout-outs was "Don't stand inside the line!" Our class instructor pointed out that in such an intense and heated game like basketball with all the cheering from the crowd, especially during semi-final stage, it is important to avoid confusion by sending a clear and concise message like "Stand behind the line!" instead. We were taken aback by this communication breakdown and realised the hard way how important effective communication skills are in teamwork.

The second experience in communication breakdown happened when I was in charge of my Hall's Dinner and Dance (DnD) pageants photoshoot. The theme conveyed by the DnD committee to my media committee lacked concreteness and completeness despite constant emphasis and intense follow-ups on my media committee's part. In fact, several unnecessary photo retakes ensued when the DnD committee turned down the photos for not meeting up with the theme requirement. To be honest, we strongly believed that the DnD committee lacked clarity and concreteness in the process of outlining the theme. As a result, the photo-"rush" became two-month overdue not without taking a toll on my members' time and effort.

These experiences in communication breakdowns are the reasons I am taking this module this semester -- to learn effective communication skills. I look forward to an exciting and fruitful learning experience in my last semester as an NUS undergraduate.