Reflective Writing
When I decided to enroll this course, my first goal
was to broaden my knowledge and understanding of conflict management: How can I
achieve a perspective that would enable me to handle these hurdles in my
professional and personal life? What key aspects should I focus on in order to
manage these conflicts? A few years ago, I had the opportunity to follow an
« Organizational behavior » course in my home university: the
learning experience of the course, as well as the significant knowledge about
how to influence people, has attracted me to discover more about the
fascinating task (or science?) of conflict resolution.
In this reflective paper, I will mainly focus on the
learning journey that I have been through during the « High Performance
Collaboration » class. The reason why I have chosen the class experience
to illustrate my learning journey is very simple:
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It is the first time that I have to experience and
manage so many conflicts and collaboration cases within such a short period of
time: in fact, every class has brought its amount of negotiations, conflicts
resolution, and self-positioning in a discussion. So it is basically the first
time I managed 13 weeks of conflicts in a row. Quite a performance!
-
The configuration of my own group, and the specificity
of the virtual collaborative project have given me new perspectives in conflict
management: working together with foreign teammates from very different
backgrounds and cultures (French, Bangladeshi and Chinese) is almost as
difficult as working with virtual teammates
The first thing that catches my attention when
starting to work with my teammates was the obvious opposition between our
personal conflict response. The Chinese member was culturally avoiding any kind
of conflict that might appear in a negotiation, while the Bangladeshi member
had a very collaborative spirit, trying to reach the agreement that fitted the
most his vision, but always trying to compromise his decisions. From my
perspective, I had a very assertive and unchangeable position that probably
rank myself among the confronting and competing characters.
In this writing, I used the nationality of each member
instead of names on purpose. One of the learning of this collaboration is that
many actions, positions or behavior are actually shaped by our cultural
background and our habits when interacting with others: it is a well-know fact
that Chinese often avoid conflicts, but it also true that French often show
over-confidence and assertive behavior when dealing with others. So, the first
outcome of the learning journey was in fact an understanding of my mistakes
through the collaborative and respectful behavior of my partners. In observing
their ability to establish efficient compromises and propose constructive ways
of solving conflicts, I learnt how to change my position: not meaning that
collaboration is about being aligned with your partner’s point of view, but it
is probably a lot about being in the same state of mind, and acting accordingly
to reach a satisfying solution.
The different role plays and short cases resolution in
which we participated over the weeks have also brought several conflict
situations that make you learn many things about yourself, the way you act with
others and how you should change your approach in order to improve your negotiation
skills.
During the learning experience, there is a term that
constantly popped up in the negotiation process: the « Win-Win »
solution. The notion of Win-win suggests that any discussion or negotiation
should end up with a solution that satisfies the needs of each parties involved
in the process. But I have to say that I was very skeptical with this
« Win-Win » concept. From my perspective, any element I should change
or remove from my initial requirements would be a loss that strongly affects my
satisfaction and reduce the interest of the new solution. It is obviously a
very personal position, and it is for sure not the most collective-thinking
point of view, but it was my perception of this conflict outcome. It was also
very disturbing, and sometimes annoying to see how much people relied on this
« Win-Win » concept as a real Motto that orient their actions. My
understanding of a successful negotiation was very different, considering the
fact that anyone who starts a negotiation fights to win something that the
other part will loose.
However, practical situations helped me to reshape my
vision of the « Win-Win » negotiation. When playing the role of a
young graduate bargaining with his manager about steady wage and narrow
opportunities of evolution, I had to change my perception of the negotiation,
and see it as a process that involves risks, changes, and adjustments more than
a fight. In fact, the exercise shows me that even though being compromising and
collaborative was not the most aggressive and convincing way to fight for your
own interests, you certainly have a lot to loose in being too assertive and not
listening to the expectation of your partner. The case of a negotiation with
someone above you in the hierarchy (the boss) requires to position yourself in
a different way, and to assess the risk of not listening the other part.
Through this new understanding, I consistently changed my perception of the
negotiation, and oriented my actions towards a more problem-solving attitude.
Thus, I realized how much I under-estimated the potential satisfaction of a
« win-win » negotiation: in fact, there is always more criteria than
what you think, and starting with a requirement list in his head is definitely
not the right approach in negotiation. In the example of the young graduate
dealing with his boss, I was obsessed at first by a significant salary raise,
which I did not get. But the amount of solutions we worked out in order to
satisfy my expectations were incredibly rewarding and motivating (Financing my
MBA, giving me responsibilities on a new project, and base my future salary
raise on the project’s results).
Another key step of the learning journey was to
understand and resolve interpersonal conflicts. This kind of conflict plays a
central role in my reflective writing because it is something that will
probably cause me a lot of troubles in my professional and personal life if I
don’t learn how to defuse it. Major conflicts and problems in discussions do
not come from the content itself, but from personalities and styles that often
diverge. As a person with a strong personality, often willing to confrontation
in order to make myself heard, I realized that this point has often been a
hurdle in my previous experience and inter-relations. I also identified that
this trend came from a belief that you should always step up for yourself, your
personal interest. It is a well-known fact that strong personalities usually
don’t get along. But when working on the final project of the course, I
realized people were going towards a different direction but similar
objectives: building an efficient virtual project that brings an innovative and
elaborated idea. So I decided to switch from a personal vision of the project,
where the only important thing was to align other people actions to my vision
of the final project, to a more collaborative position, where each member
initiative would be important for the project. Every time someone proposed an
idea that diverged from my vision or opinion, I always tried to think from his
perspective, what were the good things that could be interesting for the
project, and how to find a compromise between my expectation and his vision.
Even though it may sound very basic, this process is an important improvement
when it comes this process has significantly smoothed my personality and
improve the way people saw me and listen to me.
The virtual collaboration also brought its significant
amount of insights about managing problems and conflicts. My perception of the
exercise was quite basic: I first thought it would be much easier to work on a
project virtually since we are the « Y » generation and we perfectly
manage online communication tools. Sending e-mails is not rocket science, but
it changes consistently the structure of your interactions.
In fact, I quickly realized that virtual interaction
required much more attention and concentration than real-life interaction.
During my negotiation exercises, I usually rely a lot on my inter-personal
skills and my « body-language »: it is the most helpful way to make
yourself understood by others, and even if people don’t get the meaning of your
talk, they at least trust your commitment and see your implication Physically.
The virtual interaction learnt me that in a situation where I can only rely on
the precision of the content I share, I am definitely less confident and
convincing. Every word becomes important, and a conflict can pop-up for each
sentence that would not be interpreted well. The insight behind this example
actually reveals a weakness that I have not suspected: the lack of consistence
of my work and speech. I was relying too much on my ability to work out
conflicts through my genuine way of talking, and not enough with a clear and
constructed speech.
In term of Management, this perspective is to me one
of the most interesting insights of the learning journey. Working with people
is about catching their attention but also making them trust the quality of
your work. And if you rely too much on
your inter-personal skills and communication tricks, how can you build a
relationship that brings to an efficient collaboration?
I would conclude my reflective writing in saying that
this course has been the most relevant example I could use to describe an
insightful learning experience. During the 13 weeks of class, I have been
through many conflicts that surprisingly reshaped my vision of collaboration
and changed me a lot. I already knew that collaboration was about understanding
others, but I realized that the key was to understand which « collaborative
profile » you have. Understanding the way you think and interact with
others is from my perspective the key to achieve efficient collaborations in
professional and personal life.
