https://mayrsom.com/tag/conflict-resolution/
Conflicts between students in a project group is valuable to their productivity because it helps to further enhance closeness and mutual respect between them. Generally, when brainstorming and pitching an idea for a project, conflicting of ideas between students will happen. In my opinion, empathy is the most effective technique to handle a conflict because it allows one to have a better understanding of another person by trying to be in the other person shoes. To illustrate further, allow me to share with you a conflict between students, which I have personally witnessed recently, and how empathy could be used to resolve the conflict and strengthen their bond and mutual respect.
----------------------------------------------------------- Start of story ------------------------------------------------------------------
Joey's group were tasked to create an automotive robot that could launch a capsule at a specific height. The tension was high for his group as the due date for the proposal was approaching near. Jackson Joey's group have not come to an agreement on an idea to propose to their program chair, Dr Lee Paul Shaun, because Joey's his idea was conflicting with the one given by another group member, Joel. They argued over whose idea was better and both refused to back down. In the middle of the argument, Joey, who was frustrated, raised his voice and barked at Joel asking as to why couldn't Joel accept his idea. Joel, with arms crossed, retaliated with a vexed look, " Why must I accept your idea? Why can't you accept mine instead?". Joel then continued, " Can't you see that my idea is more creative than yours, and could even impress Dr Lee? Yours is just basically boring!". After hearing such insulting words from Joel, Joey eyes started to cast down. He was deeply hurt. Joey responded with, " Do you know how much the group approval of my idea means to me? Do you ever stop to consider how I feel towards this entire project?". Joel, with body faced away, ended the argument by ignoring Joey's response and researching more on his idea instead - showing how uninterested he was with Joey's idea. No agreement between either ideas were made but more importantly, the feeling of frustration and distrust, were present between the two by the end of the argument.
---------------------------------------------------------- End of story -------------------------------------------------------------------
The main problem in the story above is that both Joel and Joey does not want to accept each other ideas. I believe that the main cause was that both refuses to see from each other point of view. The conflict could easily be resolved by using empathy. As a third party, I knew that Joel did not want to back down because he wanted to show his contribution to the group and not feel "useless" while Joey wanted people the group to acknowledge his sense of creativity. I believe the solution to this problem is that Joel and Joey should both take each other feelings into consideration and compromise their ideas. This approach allows them to respect each other more and strengthen the bond between them.
In conclusion, conflicts happen all the time in school and in my opinion, empathy is the most effective way to approach it. By effectively using empathy to resolve conflicts, one could gain mutual respect and strengthen bond between group members. These are important especially when dealing with fast paced, agile, and highly-stress projects. However, empathy is just one out of many communication techniques that I normally use to approach a conflict, what could yours be?
