Having been in such a situation before, I would like to share my story here. I hope that if you have time to read it, you will take precautions in what you say/do so as not to hurt your friend, like what I did...
Just recently, I was managing the welfare team for Vietnamese community. We have been through a few events together, from organizing the Mid-autumn festival to organizng a vacationm camp for the Vietnamese students, and the Lunar New Year gathering also... Another special activity that we do is a radio show, in which you send wishes or thoughts (anything you can write, basically) to people you care, accompanied with a song. Handling the creation of the studio is me, AAA - my event organizing buddy and four member of the welfare team: BBB, CCC, DDD and EEE.
We have been doing 5 shows so far, all receive a moderate amount of response. And then, the next week is already 14/2 - VDay, so we decided to make a special program for it. Everyone was excited, and we talked a lot about making it as special as the day itself. I even went out photographing a picture and crafted somekind of teaser-picture for the show.
We received around 10 request in total (around the same as our previous shows) and proceed to making the show. While I was writing the script with AAAPhu, the image part is given to DDD and CCC, while EEE and BBB was in charged of the publishing part.
All gone quite well. We finished writing the script, the image took a bit longer and we finshed getting all the material at 8. So I called BBB and asked him to publish the show.
Then we waited, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour... and then it was already 10:45. Wondering what has happened I called BBB (for the 5th time) to check, and he was still doing it (normally, it only takes 10 minutes to publish the show). As VDay is almost over and the show was still not on, we get lots of question from those who sent us the request, and somehow, that frustrates me and AAA, having us complaining about the attitude of the publishing team. Plus, they have not been active so far, so we get even more irritating...
In the end, the show went on air at 11:20, with us having to jumped in and do something else as well. And we are nowhere happy about that. Thus, I and AAA called the guy and scolded him!
In the next day, he quit! ....
After a few days, we actually calm down, getting back to our sense and started talking to BBB. We found out that at that time, he has just returned from his part-time work, tired because of a lot of work and complains from the boss also. Hence, that slowed his progress a greate deal. After that long lunch, we decided to let the guy go and take care of his work him. In addition, the mental injury that we made him gone through (by what we said) is somewhat healed (not completely), as we came down to a common understanding. But the aftermath is that, we lost a team member and almost destroy our relationship with BBB also, just because we did not understand his situation...
That's story of mine. Though it might not look like a conflict case, but I think this one is qualified as a conflict in interest and ideas, as his need and ours was different at a time, so do our expectation of his performance. And since we was not able to come to a common solution for that, the conflict was not solved effectively, leaving the result like that.
Nevertheless, we walked away with big lesson but paid a big price as well. In short, what I can say is that when these kind of things happen, be it conflicts in your interests, our ideology, or anything else, please take a deep breath first, be calm and analyze the pros and cons of each actions. Moreover, you will need to keep a warm heart to accept others's faults also, as they also have their limts and can't always do what you want them to.
P.S: As I am writing in a rush while traveling back home, the article is not organized very clearly. Please excuse for any errors I made and points them out so I can fix them :)
Hello mark!:)
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing with us the lesson you learnt from this experience. I am sorry to hear what had happened :( but I believed if that time I were in your shoes, I would probably be angry too as this concern the whole show, the publishing team's efforts and also the promise you all made to the 'audience' who sent in their request. With all the pressing calls and under such tight schedule, I guess its really hard to keep a cool head and be calm enough to analyze the situation. No doubt, many a time, if one was able stand in the shoes of the others and see things in another perspective, all these could have been prevented but I believe its really hard to not be angry as it happened too last minute and the show was delayed by nearly 4hours.
I feel that the situation could be better resolved if Dat were to share with you all about his concerns earlier, so that the three of you would be to help him out with his workload or come out with a back up plan for publishing. I believe this is not entirely your fault, so you need not blame yourself for that:) cheer up!:):) This friend is not lost yet! Though the friendship may have soured cause of this event and cause of the not so pleasant words, sometimes after resolving a conflict together, the friendship can even be stronger than before :) Maybe you can also share with him how you were feeling, how worried you were for the event, the accountability to the audience for the show, and also the anxiety you were feeling that point of time and you really did not mean to sound so unpleasant or hurt his feelings. I believed if he were to stand in your shoes, he would understand it too as this event is important to all the four of you! :) have faith and I hope to hear good news from you! :)
Again, this example you shared with us reflects the importance of communication among team mates when running an event/doing a project. It is something that all of us should learn and practice :) Personally, I really like your ideology of keeping a cool head and not forgetting to take the situation with a warm heart :) I would like to share with you a quote too: “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.” ~ Albert Einstein
Cheers!
Lastly, I feel that maybe it would be better if you replace your friends name with XXX or another nick as this is a public blog and may be a little sensitive to post the real names online :)
Hello,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your suggestion, especially the naming part.
For the previous two day, me and my friend (AAA) have quite a lot of things to do: our project, preparation for sport competition/cca event and I guess some how our frustration built up beyond control. We wished the situation was handled differently, but what's done is done, and we will have to proceed with the lesson learned here.
Anw, thanks for your concern and sharing also :)
Mark,
Hi Mark!
ReplyDeleteI believe we share the same sentiments. I posted on my blog on what I should have done to avoid a conflict.
All of us tend to act rashly and end up with the thought, "I should/shouldn't have....". Somehow, we all tend to place our own interests first and when we find that our own interests are conflicted, we tend to act irrationally.
Thus, if we can make an effort to find out why things happen, maybe we could prevent ourselves from doing things that we regret in the end. Fortunately for your warm heart, I believe your friend may have felt it and understand your plight for being angry.
Yes, I too advocate that understanding is the key to resolving/preventing conflicts.