Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

When I was at college, I had a closed friend. Let’s call her name as “B”. One day, I saw B was crying at one corner of an empty classroom. I approached and asked her for a reason. B told me that she had a nightmare that was always threatening to her since childhood days. She thought that there was no bright future for her life and she felt hopeless. I felt bad after I heard about her. She asked me not to share this news to anyone and keep it as a secret .I encouraged her not to give up easily and I will do my best for her whatever she needs a help.

After 2 weeks, we were having a lunch at school canteen with our classmates. One of our classmates, a bit naughty girl, was also in the group. She liked to joke with everyone in the class. We all called her as “a “JOKER.” On that day, she was joking with another classmate and suddenly she teased to B with a word. All people thought that this is just a normal joke that she used to do it. But at that time, B looked at me and her eyes were telling that I was such a kind of untrustworthy person. B suddenly walked out from the table and everyone was looking at me.

B went into the toilet and she was crying at one corner. I asked her for the reason. B did not look at me and told me that she was very angry to me for breaking up of a promise. I realized that the joke was somehow concerned with her nightmare. Therefore, B thought that I had told her secret to the whole class. I explained to B that I did not tell to anyone. Finally, B told me that she did not need a friend like me, our friendship should end from now.

I tried to explain her several times but she did not accept to me at all. At first, I was thinking to solve the problem such that I will bring my joker friend and ask her to prove for me that I did not tell anything about B's secret to her. But at one side, if I explain to the joker friend, she will know B’s secret and the news would be spreading and the condition would become worse. Therefore I decided not to explain it to anyone. But, our friendship was ended just because of an unintentional joke and until now B thought that I am such a kind of untrustworthy person.

How would you react if you were involving in that conflict? What personal skills would you follow up for that conflict to improve the situation and not to spoil the friendship?

The ways that developing effective communication skills are important for me

Communication skills are very important for us. Everybody has to interact with each other in our daily and social lives. Moreover, we still have to interact with other colleagues in our professional lives. The methodology to develop the effective communication skills is interactive and participative. It is also important that we can convey our messages clearly and effectively to other people, so that they can understand what we are talking about.

Effective communication skill is very important for me as an international student. I faced many barriers in communications especially in public speaking, non-verbal communication and the language itself.

When I first came to Singapore at 2003, I have some language difficulties in communicating with local and foreign people. English is not my mother tongue and I took English as a second language in Myanmar. English is not the priority language except for English classes in my school. Moreover, the local slang confuses me as I am a non-Singaporean. I could not catch the local accent for first few months during my school days. It was until I had more local friends to talk to before I can overcome my language barrier.
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During my poly days, I had to give oral presentations for projects. At first, the inconvenience in language translation made me very nervous in explaining my work in front of my classmates and lecturers. Therefore it made me to realize that we must practice more to develop our oral presentation skills. It also further emphasizes that the public speaking skill is an important tool for work presentation too.

Appearance, movement, facial expression and voice convey mean non verbal communication. We always make interpretations from these actions. Therefore, we should fully understand the usage, characteristics and function of those non verbal communications effectively. In face-to-face interactions, cultural differences can complicate the framework of understanding within the interaction. In my country, we know that pointing with a leg is a kind of very bad behavior and we try to avoid doing it. However, it is a normal for someone to do it in Singapore. Therefore we have to adapt ourselves to different cultures when we explore different places or people.

In Summary, we should learn to know and understand the concept of effective communications especially across cultures. If we can overcome those barriers of communication, we will become the competent communicators in our daily interactions.