MY CONFLICT STYLE
Conflict is everywhere no matter what type of job you have, conflict happens at home, work and school. It is important to learn about conflict. In this class I have learned to understand conflict a little bit better and understand how I see myself and how others see me, my self assessment and peer assessment is a little bit different. This means people see me different than I see myself. I see myself as a competitive person I don’t like people trying to tell me what to do and I hate making mistakes. If somebody tells me I can’t do something is like they are challenging me to do it and I have to prove them wrong. I have learned that it is important to learn to meet half way it shouldn’t always be about what I want. It is very important to learn to separate the people from the problem, I think that’s where a lot of people mistake, I have done it where I am having problems at work and I take It personal. After taking this class I have learned how to understand people better and understand that one thing shouldn’t have anything to do with the other.
From myself and peer assessments it seems like my style is control. I am a controlling person, I blame it on my parents I am the youngest in my family and I always got what I wanted no matter what. I remember one time my grandmother sent my sister a beautiful doll and I wanted it so my dad gave it to me instead of my sister just to make me happy. My sister didn’t find out the doll was for her until she saw grandma and she told asked her about the doll. I always get my way, sometimes I want to do act like that at work but I try to meet people half way just because at work I have to be more professional but I have to deal with a lot of people who want to get their way or no way and it makes it hard to deal with. I work with an old man who is used to doing everything his way and nobody can tell him he is wrong. When I started working with him we were having a lot of problems since I am the type of person who expresses my feelings the difference between him and me was that whenever we got into an argument I would still do my job, but he wouldn’t do his job anymore he felt like that was a way of teaching me a lesson. I think The biggest problem we had was that we have the same style we are both controlling and we don’t like people telling us what to do or when we are doing something wrong I have had a lot of problems with people for being who I am, but I don’t feel like I should change I know I need improvement in some areas. This course taught me how to be able to compromise and communicate instead of just shutting down.
Before this class I didn’t really communicate with my coworkers I went to work do my job and ignore a lot of people. I am a team leader so I have a crew of about five people, a lot of times they make me mad because they don’t do their job or make a mess but I never let them know what they were doing wrong. Last Saturday I had a guy who made a mess in my machine and thanks to him we got off one hour late. I was upset but I didn’t know if he knew what he did wrong so I went up to him and asked him if he knew what had happened he had no idea and he felt bad for making us run late I told him it was ok everybody makes mistakes and I explained what he did wrong and told him if he ever have any questions to ask there is no stupid questions. Before I would just yell at him and not telling him what he did wrong.
I am controlling and competitive which I think they go close together. Some positive futures about my style are that I know what I want; I always set goals and always try to beat them. I don’t let people take advantage of me and I am willing to go above and beyond to get what I want. Some negative futures are that people see me as if I think I know it all, it’s hard to meet half way with people because I always want to get my way, there has being times when I put people down to get what I want. I think every conflict style has its positive and negative things, the point is that we need to learn how to use it in a positive way and be able to understand what the other person thinks, how they feel and how to negotiate with them. The last chapter in the Interpersonal Conflict book talks about forgiveness, I don’t know how I feel about forgiveness I think it is possible but it depends on the subject and how serious the problem was. We have to learn how to forgive if we want others to forgive us for our mistakes; I just think it is hard to do so.
I learned a lot about myself from the Interpersonal Conflict and Getting to yes books. I learned how to separate the people from the problem which I think is very important, how to focus on the interest, how to work together with people to come up with a better solution, how to negotiate. I still need to learn how to communicate better with my boyfriend, I have being able to apply what I have learned in this class at work but for some reason I can’t when it comes to my relationship I feel like my boyfriend should know what I am thinking without having to tell him how I feel. I will keep working on that. I am hoping to keep applying what I have learned in this class in the future.