Post #10 Conflicts
In this post we have been told to talk about a time we had a conflict when working on something with a group. Although I have many examples to talk about from work, or from class projects, I feel like all those examples are minor. Minor as in they was a problem that arose and it wasn't something I couldn't adapt to, or my group couldn't adapt to. So in this example I will be talking about an example from when I was in high school. I know that the example is somewhat dated but I feel like this example is will have a lot of talking points I could use that go along with this weeks topic for the blog post.
I have talked about this club in a pervious post but I will explain it again so that the reader can understand what I am talking about. In high school I was apart of a club called E.P.I.C.S which stands for Engineering projects in community service. Our task was given to us at beginning of the year, which was we would meet with someone in our community who had a problem and we would continue to meet with them throughout the year to engineer whatever they needed. In our case I was in a group of 6 guys and all of them were my good friends. I mention that we were good friends because this will later make a difference when the problem arises. Regardless it was 6 in our group and the person we were helping wanted us to make him a dog treat dispenser for his service dog. The reason he wanted this was because he had sever arthritis in his hands and he had very limited mobility in his hands. So we started at the beginning of the school year and we made a ton of prototypes and met with the person we were making the dog treat dispenser to get feed back every-time we made a new prototype. The person who we were helping was very picky if im going to be honest, which is fine because the final product was for him to use. Every-time we would meet with him he would have something to criticize and this is when problems within the group started to arise. I think we as a group started to get frustrated with each-other because we felt like every-time we would make a prototype it would be good enough and we would have to scrap what we were working on. Also we were frustrated because it was already halfway throughout the school year and we had to start from scratch. Later on this would lead to more arguments within the group. I can recall a specific time that a couple of guys in our group couldn't work on the project for 2 weeks because it was final season. So the guys who could work on it felt like they were putting in all the work. One guy in our group even called the other guys out saying that they weren't carrying there weight. Although they had said they had to put school work in front of the project for sometime. Later the same guys who called out the other group members started to act more like manager and he started to boss people around and claim he was the lead of the project. For awhile we didn't say anything because we really just wanted to get the project done. But eventually towards the end it became to be too much. He would make decisions that the group wouldn't agree on as a group. Since we were all good friends, one day before we started to work again we called him out for doing things without asking and acting like he is the lead in the group because it started to get to his head. Although he was upset we had to be honest with him and even threaten to kick him out of the group. Normally it would be fine if someone took a lead in a project if they were a good leader but the thing is he wasn't and the fact that he thought that he was really got to his head. After the talk with him he was upset and he didn't come to help on the project for a couple of weeks. He eventually came back to help. Although it wasn't what he wanted we as a group decided to let him know that this was a group project and we are in this together. In this situation we tolerated it for a while but it quickly got annoying so we as a group dealt with the conflict together. Eventually we did get the project delivered and it came out great so, I would say the talk really helped. It was like a slump we as a group had to get over so that we finish the project.
I have talked about this club in a pervious post but I will explain it again so that the reader can understand what I am talking about. In high school I was apart of a club called E.P.I.C.S which stands for Engineering projects in community service. Our task was given to us at beginning of the year, which was we would meet with someone in our community who had a problem and we would continue to meet with them throughout the year to engineer whatever they needed. In our case I was in a group of 6 guys and all of them were my good friends. I mention that we were good friends because this will later make a difference when the problem arises. Regardless it was 6 in our group and the person we were helping wanted us to make him a dog treat dispenser for his service dog. The reason he wanted this was because he had sever arthritis in his hands and he had very limited mobility in his hands. So we started at the beginning of the school year and we made a ton of prototypes and met with the person we were making the dog treat dispenser to get feed back every-time we made a new prototype. The person who we were helping was very picky if im going to be honest, which is fine because the final product was for him to use. Every-time we would meet with him he would have something to criticize and this is when problems within the group started to arise. I think we as a group started to get frustrated with each-other because we felt like every-time we would make a prototype it would be good enough and we would have to scrap what we were working on. Also we were frustrated because it was already halfway throughout the school year and we had to start from scratch. Later on this would lead to more arguments within the group. I can recall a specific time that a couple of guys in our group couldn't work on the project for 2 weeks because it was final season. So the guys who could work on it felt like they were putting in all the work. One guy in our group even called the other guys out saying that they weren't carrying there weight. Although they had said they had to put school work in front of the project for sometime. Later the same guys who called out the other group members started to act more like manager and he started to boss people around and claim he was the lead of the project. For awhile we didn't say anything because we really just wanted to get the project done. But eventually towards the end it became to be too much. He would make decisions that the group wouldn't agree on as a group. Since we were all good friends, one day before we started to work again we called him out for doing things without asking and acting like he is the lead in the group because it started to get to his head. Although he was upset we had to be honest with him and even threaten to kick him out of the group. Normally it would be fine if someone took a lead in a project if they were a good leader but the thing is he wasn't and the fact that he thought that he was really got to his head. After the talk with him he was upset and he didn't come to help on the project for a couple of weeks. He eventually came back to help. Although it wasn't what he wanted we as a group decided to let him know that this was a group project and we are in this together. In this situation we tolerated it for a while but it quickly got annoying so we as a group dealt with the conflict together. Eventually we did get the project delivered and it came out great so, I would say the talk really helped. It was like a slump we as a group had to get over so that we finish the project.
Doing it the hard was is always easier - Corollary to Murphy's Law
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I never learned when I was an administrator is how to determine how long a project would take. I had to rely on others to tell me and I often felt they were just padding the time required to take some pressure off of themselves in case things didn't go so well.
I'm going to hazard a guess about the story you told that the 6 guys in your group all thought the project would go faster than it actually did. They expected to knock it off fairly quickly and then move onto something else. When that didn't happen, they had to confront their prior expectations as well as their reason for wanting to be part of E.P.I.C.S. I'm guessing here, but I'd bet that some no longer wanted to be a part of that, but felt some obligation for having started on the project.
If this makes sense, then there was an air of frustration within your group that conditioned everything else you wrote about. The one thing you might add here is whether they knew the guy who would be getting the dispenser and if they were aware of how picky he was. Without that knowledge the air of frustration makes a lot of sense. However, with that knowledge, there then is the question why they didn't anticipate the project taking longer.
When decision are based on faulty expectations, the outcome is likely to be bad and conflict can result. So this is a good example, for satisfying the prompt. But those expectations don't appear to have been rational, so explaining that would be a good thing to do.