One of the conflicts that I had recently was with my cousin. He is a teenage, and goes to a local school with the Austrian program. He is meant to go to Australia to finish his college degree. He is a nice boy, but he cannot compose English paper to pass his exams. One day he came to me for help. He gave me all the resources and materials in hope of letting me write a paper for him as a draft of speech. I was shocked, as that was a heap of resources to study. I asked him if he knew anything about the topic and the assignment. He knew nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was disappointed, as he came to ask me to write his homework without knowing anything about what the homework was. I refused to do it for him, as it was his responsibility to do it. I wouldn’t mind correcting and polishing his work, but I wouldn’t want to do it for him. He was unhappy and couldn’t understand why I did not help him.
After that conversation, I had a reflection on what I had done with the boy. I figured out that actually I should have done it in a better way to solve the conflict with him and to make a compromise. I think there are some strategies that I could have used in this case. For example, I could be an active listener to listen to his needs and the reasons of why he needs help. I needed to clarify his requests by asking him more questions to dig out his real needs. Secondly, I should have created a supportive climate ( O’Hair & Wiemann, 2012). Once I made the clarification of his needs, I could make the compromise to gain a win-win situation. Instead of working for him, we actually could work together on the assignment. We could be like to team. The third thing that I should have done was about empathy. I care about that child, and I care about his emotions and feelings. I should have shown more respect to his feelings, as he must have been very struggling about that assignment.
The 3 R’s communication model means responsive, respectful, and reciprocal. In that sense, I think in my case, I should have given enough information of what I can do for him, and what I wanted him to contribute to the assignment too.
Therefore, the compromise that I finally made with him was to work together as a team to work on that huge exam assignment together.
References:
O’Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2009). Real communication: An introduction. New York:Bedford/St. Martin’s
I like the way you took the challenging situation with your nephew and worked towards making a positive resolution. He probably also gained an understanding of support and responsibility from your interaction. In conflict there is the possibility of learning and gaining new skills for interpersonal interaction. Thanks for sharing!
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