Reflection

In the first post, I stated that my two objectives at the end of this module are to improve confidence for conversing with others and improve relationship building with others. As the module is ending, I am writing my last post to reflect upon what I have achieved. I realised that I had been able to achieve my objectives. This is a resultant effect of the knowledge imparted in each section of the module - verbal and non-verbal communications, emotional intelligence, and conflict management.

Firstly, the verbal and non-verbal communications had taught me how to effectively understand and convey a message. This led to my gain in confidence during the conversation as I find myself in more engaging conversations. For example, during lunch one day, I noticed my friend's unusual liveliness from his tone and facial expression. All I expressed was a little curiosity of what it could have been, and we went on to talk about it for almost an hour. He said it was about the wonderful weekend he had spent gazing at aeroplanes take-off at the Changi beach. Through that conversation, though simple, I found out what interests him.

Secondly, by understanding emotional intelligence, my social skills had been improved. By having more self-awareness and self-regulation, I can control my emotions and refrain from getting into a conflict. A few days ago, my team member with I had paired up for electronics lab was in a bad mood. I merely commented that his solutions were wrong, and he just got mad and told me to do it instead. While I was aware of my uprising temper, I kept calm and remain task focused. I took the time to analyse his solutions step by step to rectify, on the side, I allowed him to cool himself. When I was done rectifying his solutions and presents it to him, he apologised and clarifies that he was in a bad mood as he was feeling unwell. If I were to react impulsively, we could have gotten into an argument which would only hinder our progress

Finally, conflict management skills to maintain relations and progress during inevitable times of different opinions. Conflict management often requires emotional intelligence in order to have the empathy to understand the other party’s opinion.

Thus, I am satisfied with the results of this module which enables me to gain confidence and build rapport with others.

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

Relationships are like the weather. You can never predict its temperament. One moment it may be sunny and calm, the next moment there may be a storm. It is normal for people to get into conflicts, especially for couples who generally spend more time together. Today, I am going to share an ongoing interpersonal conflict between my girlfriend, Kristine, and I, to provide an analysis of the conflict to identify possible influences of the problem.

For those who do not know, I am a SEEMS ( System Engineering Electromechanical Systems ) student at Digipen, Singapore Institute of Technology. On top of that, I am an Infantry Officer of the Singapore Armed Forces. With that, I seldom have time for Kristine due to commitments from school and army.  Despite time constraints, I would meet up with Kristine to do my work, while she uses her smartphone to listen to music or browse the social applications for entertainment. Occasionally, she would giggle from the entertainments, but she would not share with me as it would be distracting me she said. This went on for 6 months now and I thought the relationship is going well as she seemed to enjoy herself with me simply being by her side. However, lately, she complains about my lack of commitment in the relationship and speaks to me sarcastically. Firstly, she would make a fuss that we are not able to enjoy a date properly like other normal couples do. Secondly, when she sees that I was active on Facebook moments ago, she would send me a message: “Amazing, you seemed to be free.”.

In my opinion, Kristine may have been feeling left out due to emotions like envy and frustration. Firstly, Kristine probably stumbled upon some couple’s sweet social post which is quite mainstream of the social media today. Seeing how some of her friends’ boyfriend could pamper them must have spiked her desire for attention. Secondly, she might be feeling frustrated from refraining herself to talk to me. I cannot deny that I am not updated with the events of Kristine’s daily life. With the above analysis, if you were in my shoes, how would you resolve the conflict?

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability to identify and manage emotions in self and others. Today I will elaborate on how I demonstrated EI based on Daniel Goleman’s 5 main components of EI – self-awareness, self-regulation, internal motivation, empathy, social skills.

Firstly, self-awareness is the awareness of your own feelings and how they can influence others. When I was still a teenager, I had minor anger management. If someone were to make fun of my name, I would get so irritated that I might start a fight. One day, my mum got called up by the school because I was in a fight. After which, she told me “the more agitated you get, the more entertained the bullies will be”. Ever since then, I paid close attention to my anger and noticed that being receptive to the bullies, made the bullying worse. On the contrary, when I choose to ignore, the bullying stopped. The end result of having self-awareness is having more control of the situation as shown in the example above, which could develop self-confidence.

Secondly, self-regulation is about controlling your impulses to avoid acting rashly and regretting later. Self-regulation is what comes after self-awareness. Using the same example above, having bad self-regulation would be to react to the bullies who made fun of my name, and starting a fight. No matter how bad the verbal bullying was, I would still be in the wrong for starting a fight. Eventually, I would be the one getting reprimanded the most. Whereas, if I practised good self-regulation by delaying my actions, be attentive to my feelings, and assess the consequences of that action, the situation would have an immediate difference. By resisting myself to start a fight, I was able to acknowledge my anger. Then, I was able to calmly assess the consequences of starting a fight and eventually look for alternative reactions which would lead to better outcome. In this case, ignoring was the choice, and it worked perfectly well. Therefore, we should always be mindful of our impulses and be rational in our actions. Having self-regulation would lead to characteristics like adaptability and conscientiousness.

Thirdly, internal motivation is the reason why we do the things we do. It is the drive that controls our behaviour. There are intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Firstly, intrinsic motivation is by personal desire. By doing something because you enjoy it, is an example of intrinsic motivation. Secondly, extrinsic motivation is to obtain or avoid an outcome. Doing your homework to avoid getting punished is an example of extrinsic motivation. Personally, I am more inclined to intrinsic motivation because I often make life decisions which put myself through tough and challenging situations simply because I find life more engaging this manner. Naming the most recent cases would be signing on as an infantry officer and enrolling in a joint degree program by Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) and DigiPen. Both of which are well known to be challenging, yet personally rewarding. Having good internal motivation results in characteristics like being initiative, commitment, and perseverance.

Fourthly empathy is the ability to be receptive of others’ emotions and able to anticipate someone’s needs and the appropriate reaction. I often practise empathy by putting myself in other person’s perspective. For example, I witnessed a couple, Mary and James arguing over what they should have for lunch. In general, Mary was angry because James had been the one choosing what they would be having for lunch for a week now, and she would love to make the choice once in a while. I would recall of my past arguments which are mostly due to some differences in opinion, and would only require both parties to reach a common understanding. In reaction to the scene, I stopped the fight telling them both parties have equal rights over this. To be fair, they should come to an agreement to take turns on the decision. From there, the mood of the situation was neutralised and they were able to come to a mutual understanding. Having good empathy would result in characteristics like proactive and perceptive.

Lastly, social skills are really just an application of the four components above. Firstly, self-awareness and self-regulation would ensure that we present ourselves appropriately. Secondly, internal motivation would help to create topics for conversations. While lastly, empathy would help us to handle conflicts. Taking a ballroom event as an example, we need to have self-awareness and self-regulation to avoid embarrassing ourselves by getting too agitated or excited, hence speaking too loudly. Whilst internal motivation would enable us to pursue our careers and pick up hobbies which could be common interests during a social event. Finally, empathy would allow us to neutralise heated conversations to reach a common understanding. This is crucial as sensible conversations are impossible with an emotionally unstable individual.

Active Listening and non-verbal communication

Revised

Today I am going to share a scenario of a conflict between me and my elder brother, Joseph. An evaluation of how culture or age could affect the verbal and non-verbal communication skills would be provided after the description of the scenario.

The scenario dates back years ago when we were still teenagers. We were taking turns to play a gaming console called the Gameboy. Due to budget issues, only one console was bought for us to share. When it was my turn to play, Joseph would often reply “ok, just a while more”.

I would usually allow him to procrastinate once or twice before starting a commotion by kicking, yelling, and complaining. Shortly after, my mum would often step in to say “Joseph, you are the elder brother, you should give in to your brother”. Only then, Joseph would let me have my turn.

Firstly, given that we were kids, we are generally more playful and inconsiderate. This explains why Joseph would hog on the Gameboy for prolonged hours and delay me of my turn. As for myself, by reacting like a kid and starting a commotion is also due to an influence of age. When kids are unable to get things their way, they would throw tantrums and make noise to get attention. My behaviour was an example of getting attention from my mum to resolve the issue. Lastly, the way my mum intervenes the conflict was by an influence of culture. My mum has five younger siblings. Thus, she grew up in the culture whereby elder ones should take care of younger siblings and be more mature. Therefore, she expects Joseph to be mature and give in to me.

In conclusion, under the influence of age, both of us are overly excited about playing games and caused us to react childishly to fulfil our playful desires. While for my mum, culture influence her to stereotype that with age comes maturity and responsibility for the younger ones.

Goals

Revised

In my opinion, communication is a key factor to be successful due to the importance of conveying, understanding and learning. My strength in communication are being a good listener and exercising intra-communication. While my weakness in communication is building bonds and cohesiveness with others.

Firstly, I believe in listening as one should always seek to understand, then to be understood. Everyone has their own opinions and perspective and longs to be listened and agreed upon. This is partially the reason there are arguments and how a debate could go on and on without an agreeable conclusion. Therefore, I have always believed that only by being a good listener, can one truly connect and relate with another to work under mutual understandings.

Secondly, I constantly reflect situations with my core principle – “To change a situation, first change ourselves. To change ourselves, first change perception.” In life, especially in the working environment, inevitable situations may arise and sometimes, there is nothing much that could be done. For example, a System Engineering Electromechanical System (SEEMS) student may find that the workload and expectations are too demanding. In spite of this, nothing could be done except for being more hardworking which first requires him/her to have a change of perception by having the foresight that he/she would be valued higher upon graduation by prospective employers. In addition, being emotional human beings, emotions may sometimes influence us to act against our values. Therefore, I also make it a habit of reflecting on my actions and try to understand the other party by putting myself in the other person’ shoe. For instance, when I get annoyed by someone constantly critisicing me, I would often critisice back. After critisicing and walking off, I would realise the negative emotions and acknowledge that I could have responded better. Moments after, I would usually follow up with an apology to maintain the relationship.

Lastly, challenges I face are building bonds and being cohesive with others. I have difficulty having interesting casual conversations with others as I am rather soft spoken and afraid of offending others. I tend to review my speech in my mind which creates a communication barrier. For example, in an attempt to know someone I have newly met, I may be afraid to constantly ask questions as I fear that they might find me annoying. Hence, I put myself in a contradictory position knowing that asking questions is the way to find common interests, yet, it may also potray myself as being too nosy.

My objectives by the end of this module are to improve on building rapports and gain confidence during casual conversation to resolve the communication barrier, hopefully improving work efficiency and relations.