Сonflict in Personal Life Reflection Paper Sample

Paper Instructions

Academic level – Undergraduate 3-4
Type of paper – Reflection paper
Topic Title – Сonflict in personal life
Instructions:

Describe a conflict that either you or your department experienced at work (or in your personal life).

Discuss why this conflict occurred and its outcome.

Do you think that this conflict was harmful to the organization (or the task at hand)? information about myself: Asian, female, undergraduate student study in commerce.

Reflection Paper Sample

People have different worldviews, values, and attitudes toward various issues, explaining why they frequently face conflicts. A lack of mutual understanding and the inability to analyze the problem from another perspective are the primary reasons for quarrels and the deterioration of relationships between individuals. Thus, when I had to complete a project with my classmate at school, we experienced a severe conflict due to different approaches to the working process and failure to adapt to each other’s needs.

My school teacher gave the class a task to complete a project in pairs a few years ago, explaining why I had to cooperate with my classmate. Although I communicated with that person before, we did not complete the tasks related to our learning process. Hence, since we lacked awareness of each other’s learning and working styles, we faced numerous misunderstandings when working together. The teacher gave us one week to complete the project, and I believed we had to start working on that task immediately to submit it within the deadline. However, my classmate preferred to start working on the project two days before the deadline and attempted to persuade me that we would complete it on time. Different working styles and overall approaches to the established tasks caused a severe conflict between my classmate and me, explaining why we spent a few days determining who was right and solving our conflict rather than starting to work on the assignment. The working process started only when we realized that if we did not begin completing the project immediately, we would fail to submit it. As a result, we performed the task within the deadline, but the overall working process was stressful, and the project’s quality was unsatisfactory.

The Thomas and Kilmann model and the interest-based relational approach can be used to analyze the reasons for this conflict and its possible outcomes. The Thomas and Kilmann model focuses on five conflict-handling styles depending on the concern for self and concern for others: competition, collaboration, compromise, accommodation, and avoidance (Nunkoo & Sungkur, 2021). According to this approach, my classmate and I initially focused on our own concerns and avoided considering another person’s interests and working styles, explaining why we spent an enormous amount of time finding a common language, which adversely affected our ability to complete the task effectively. Nevertheless, realizing the possibility of our common failure made us focus on avoidance: we worked on the project without concentrating on our interests and desires. Likewise, the interest-based relational approach requires individuals to collaborate despite their differences to find a win-win solution to the conflict (Bond, 2022). This method determines that people should establish effective relationships and focus on solutions rather than misunderstandings. Therefore, my desire to complete tasks in advance and my classmate’s preference to work on the project before the deadline have become the conflict’s primary causes, while the understanding of the necessity to complete the assignment has enabled us to join our efforts.

In conclusion, the Thomas and Kilmann model and the interest-based relational approach demonstrate that misunderstanding, personal differences, and inappropriate communication have become the reasons for the conflict between my classmate and me. Although we have completed the project, our work’s quality has been unsatisfactory, explaining why we have received lower grades. Nevertheless, this situation has made me realize that considering each other’s interests and adequate communication are integral parts of effective interaction, explaining why I always aim to find a common language with my team members.

References

Bond, G. (2022). Culture and mediation: A 2020s perspective on early criticism of Western paradigms. The Routledge Handbook of Intercultural Mediation. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003227441-3

Nunkoo, D. K., & Sungkur, R. K. (2021). Team conflict dynamics & conflict management: derivation of a model for software organizations to enhance team performance and software quality. Global Transitions Proceedings, 2(2), 545–552. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gltp.2021.08.007