Individual component of career project done!

When i was working on my individual part for the career project, i had really discovered lots of different things about myself, such as personalities, values and working styles. I thought it was really valuable and appealing to me because before taking this course, i did not conduct many personality tests to reflect how i perceive others or myself and my favorable working style etc. I had gained my knowledge on the personal traits and strengths i have which i believe would be helpful when i have interviews that need to present myself based on the strengths i have. I actually believed that the level of interest I have for my career would be the main factor that leads to my work motivation and performance, i had never actually try to identify my personality traits to see if I'm suitable for my ideal career, Marketing. I also have the opportunity for developing a basic network that might help me to get into this field as well.

Personal Conflict Management Strategies

When i have conflicts with friends/families, i tend to use the strategy of yielding/accommodating. Because i believe that if i have the ability to reduce the conflict level by sacrificing a bit of myself, i would be able to maintain the relationships. I think most of the conflicts i encounter, they don't usually last for so long and by using that approach, i would feel better for myself because that way it would be easier to reduce the conflict intensity and i usually want to have a good solution so there's nothing left over for me to worry about. On the other hand, if i got into conflicts with colleagues or group members, i usually try to aim for the problem solving strategy, because i want to have a good final output at the end, so if i don't take this approach, but forcing or avoiding the conflicts, i would end up tangling all my problems but never solving them. And by using forcing strategy especially, I'm being self-oriented,which means i don't value the others' benefits, and as a group, i should aim for gaining advantages for all members while solving problems logically. I'm not an ambitious or self-centered person who needs everyone to follow what i say or everything i say is right. I believe such person would have higher possibility of getting into conflicts, especially when working in a group. I always want to try not to react emotionally when i really see those people. But if i can't really control this situation and it gets worse, i tend to show all my dislikes toward such person without hiding, or even speak out what i really think about him or her. I hate to put up a fake mask and say "right, i agree with you and I'll do it" when i don't really mean it. i usually have my own way to express what i really think straightforwardly, instead of trying to please others. But in the business world, i know it is reasonable to stay within the boundary and say what is appropriate. So i really need to work on that by keeping my own belief or point of view at the same time, because i know by speaking without thinking how my words would affect others, i would be suffering in maintaining good relationships with employer and other colleagues.

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GIVE ME ALL THE ORANGES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was in the group that play the role of Dr.Roland, who needed all 3000 oranges from Ms.Cardoza. During the negotiation with the group who play the role of Dr.Jones. We did not really arrive to a concrete solution at the end due to the limited time that we had. But we managed to find out Dr.Roland needed only the rind of the oranges while Dr.Jones needed the rest of the oranges to make juice. I thought our group figure out this information quite early of the whole negotiation. I think by stating the essence of our expectations or what we needed in a dilemma would be a good starting step, because both parties would understand each others' perspectives and thoughts.

In this lecture, we talked about mainly conflicts in workplaces, which involve two people. But in my opinion, knowing how to deal with personal conflicts are important as well. Because i think personal or emotional conflicts would directly affect work performances and lower level of interaction or communication with others. For example, when i had a bad day, i tend to keep myself quiet for the rest of the day, but if i seen someone who did something that i dislike or i don't appreciate, i tend to just speak out all the negative thoughts i have, probably in a bad manner too. This would ruin the relationships with others and probably more difficult to find a proper solution to settle my conflict. When two people get into a conflict, it is hard to solve the problem when none of them yield the other, or even try to solve the problem logically. Although the best way to solve the conflict is by first leaving the conflict and let each other control the negative emotions first and then try solving it again at a later time. But sometimes i think it is hard to leave the conflict, because for the person who tries to get out of the conflict first would tend to be the "loser" or the weaker person who doesn't know how to argue or the one that did everything wrong. I just thought this would make the person who kept fighting feel very proud of himself/herself because he/she could manage to defeat the other. I thought of this kind of scenario is because i had once seen two ambitious and competitive people got into conflicts, and they both did not want to yield each other, and ended up breaking their relationship by not finding each other anymore. But from my expereience, i had never suffered in such big bigggg conflicts that i chose to stop communicating with the other person before. Although mini conflicts i sometimes would encounter, but i always try to yield the other person because i thought it's pointless to drag on the conflict when it is solvable.

And I thought by mentioning how the other person live his/her life or dissing their personal apperances are the worse approach to take when people got into conflicts, because it has nothing to do with the conflict and the more negative comments toward their lifestyles, apperances or past mistakes , the more difficult to solve the conflicts in a win-win situation. Therefore, i had learnt to deal with conflicts in a more logical way and try to keep the emotions of anger or disappointment to the lowest level as possible.

X & Y

The game that we played in class was "Win as much as you can" ...my team was suffering for the whole game because we always valued "trust" and intended to win as much as we can as a group for the whole class. But we failed, because all other teams kept putting up "X" cards. I agree that once trust breaks, the whole project will not function and for those who still believed in "Trust" will suffer the most; just like my team did =(

I admit that i have poor listening skills, because i can only pick up some points as people speak, selective listening is one barrier that i always encounter in my life. I always believe that if i can get the most important points, then I'll be successful in doing all other things. But however, what i think is important might not be perceived as the most important to my other team members...so when i need to communicate with others more effectively, i should consider writing down or remember as much as info i can when i need to deliver the same message to others. Especially in the future, i might need a strong communication skill in my career, and if i don't improve it or bring those barriers along with me, i would be missing out lots of important information or not be able to communicate well with my managers or colleagues.

building the tower =]

soo fun to play that tower game!! but it was actually quite difficult if you do that blind folded..involve LOTS of team work too. But I had fun cooperating with my team members. Although i don't know them that well, but we trusted each other and did better and better each time. From that activity, i found out that i presented myself as a more task-oriented leader, because i was very focused on getting the task completed, but did not give many encouraging feedbacks. This is very interesting, because i had always thought i'm a people-oriented leader. But maybe i wanted to achieve more than i had set as my goal, so i neglected the fact that i should give constructive feedbacks to my team members so they would feel more valued and comfortable to continue to complete the tasks. Like Lori mentioned, it is very very rare for leaders to have a balance porportion of both people-oriented and task-oriented leadership, but hopefully i can train myself to give more useful feedbacks to others more frequently while maintaining the quality of work.