ES2007s Blog #2

Interpersonal conflict is one of the most common situations we will face in our daily lives with our family members, friends or spouse. One of the examples of interpersonal conflict that I had came across was when working in a pharmacy department in one of the local hospital during my vacation.

During my stay there, some of the new nurses were told to approach Mike, one of our staff, to obtain a booklet from him urgently. Mike was the only person who distributes the booklet to the nurses at a certain time of the day. However, the time for collecting the booklet had passed. Mike, who tends to stick to his working principles, immediately refused to give in to them as he afraid others might take advantage of it. On the other hand, the nurses, who were strong-headed and new to the job, refused to give in too. Moreover, it was an order from their supervisor to collect the booklet. As anger got built up, one of the nurses started yelling at Mike, saying “Can you just give it to us as it is your duty to do so.” Mike raised his voice in a defensive manner and replied, “no means no, which part of it you do not understand.” I was just two rooms and yet I could hear their yelling.

Out of curiosity, people started to gather around Mike’s room to see what actually had happened. The yelling from the nurses continued for quite sometime. At last, they finally gave up and went off. Mike was very shocked about the nurses’ bad attitude towards him as they are new. He felt that he should be respected as he has been working in the company for more than 30 years.

Every individual working in an organisation has to follows rules and regulations, are they mend to be broken so easily? New employees being rude to senior staff, what should be done? Does yelling back at them helps? Is Mike in the right position to make his stand such that others will not take advantage of him in the future?

ES2007s Blog #1

In my opinion, developing effective communication is very important as most people will spends great amount of their time in an interpersonal situation such as in school, workplace, family, friends, etc. It is an unavoidable situation that happens in every day life. Hence, developing good communication skills is essential when one interact with another. For instance, when trying to get things done as soon as possible in a group project. Regardless of one’s job scope area, races and even status in the company, it is an advantage over the others if one has better communication ability. In the case of written lab reports, being able to explain the theory behind the process will yield better clarity/results as opposed to mere regurgitation of information

By practising effective communication to improve and promote interpersonal relationship is a successful strategy to most situations faced. Advantages that effective communication could bring about are far way too many to be mentioned. Be it personally or professionally, the capability to communicate well will tend to change a great aspect of our life. Knowing how to converse with people is a totally different idea as compared to effective communication. The doubt is how can one communicate effectively? Effective communication help to strengthen the ability to share information with people, to understand what the information is about and to feel what others are trying to convey. Needless to say, effective communication skills are essential in any sphere of human being interaction.