Some background information
I was from the batch of 80/10 Golf Wing Platoon 3 when I attended the Officer Cadet School(OCS) during my National Service(NS) days. My 9 months there has definitely taught me a lot in terms of how to handle interpersonal relations and how to manage conflicts so that the platoon/company can remain cohesive and therefore able to work better when we fight on a mission.
The interpersonal conflict situation
I will be talking about my experience during the Jungle Confidence Course in Brunei, where me and my team of 6(Wei Quan, Nian Deng, Sebastian, Shawn, Benny, Japheth, Albert and myself) have to navigate in the treacherous jungles of Brunei for 9 days, with 1.5 days worth of rations(food and water). In these kind of high stress environment, the risk of interpersonal conflict is high, and indeed it happened almost every single day.
On one of the days, after trudging through miles and miles of unforgiving terrain, we decided to take a rest since it was getting dark. It was raining heavily and we needed to set up our shelter for the night as soon as possible. Everyone was tired but we continued setting up the shelter, except for Shawn. Overwhelmed by stress and exhaustion, Sebastian started scolding Shawn for being lazy and not helping out the team in building the shelter. In fact all of us felt the same way, and treated Shawn like he was not part of the team after the incident. Shawn made things worst when he was the first to enter the shelter and sleep while all of us were still in the rain preparing firewood and finding some food for the night. This made us dislike Shawn even more. The constant quarreling and pointing of fingers over the next few days took a toll on the team as our morale fell. Shawn became even more unmotivated and he became a liability to the team. This affected our movement speed, and ultimately almost caused us to fail the course.
The lessons
From this situation we can see that interpersonal conflict can arise due to environmental stress. However more importantly, the interpersonal conflict could have been avoided or minimized, if effective communication was practiced.
For example, Sebastian should have managed his emotions better, instead of scolding Shawn right away, he should clarify and ask Shawn why he is not helping. Maybe Shawn had a reason for doing so, maybe he was injured or was feeling unwell. If clarification was done by the team, we could have found the reason for Shawn's action and could have helped him if he had any problems. Therefore, in a conflict situation, one should not assume. Clarification would be better choice.
Scolding Shawn also did nothing but make him even more demoralized. Instead of putting him down, maybe we could have encouraged him and help him along the way. After all we are a team trying to pass a course together. If one man goes down, all of us go down too.Therefore, encouragement and empathy could have made Shawn feel better and more motivated to push on during the course which in turn makes the team stronger.
Shawn should also have been more appreciative of his teammates efforts. Instead of just looking on while the team was building the shelter, he could have cheered the team on. He should also have said thank you, or show other signs of appreciation to his teammates. This would have made the team feel better and may have prevented the conflict.
Shawn should also have been more appreciative of his teammates efforts. Instead of just looking on while the team was building the shelter, he could have cheered the team on. He should also have said thank you, or show other signs of appreciation to his teammates. This would have made the team feel better and may have prevented the conflict.
Conclusion
Therefore, from this situation we can see how self-awareness, empathy and appreciation can play an important role in resolving interpersonal conflicts. If you were me in this situation, what would you have done?
