Effective Communication 101

Forums are a great way of displaying effective communication! This is a clear example of someone asking a clear and concise question, and being replied to in a similiar manner.

Reflections on meeting 1

If the above picture describes why you hold meetings, then you'll probably need a lot of help at work because your perception of holding meetings is eschewed! Thanks to www.funnymail.co.za/wp-content/u...e-10.jpg for the picture.

After observing the meeting with Abinav and Frank, I'm embarrassed to say that I feel that my body language in the meeting was very unprofessional. I was regretfully leaning on my hand throughout most of the video, hopefully I'll be able to restrain myself from doing that in future meetings so as to put up a more professional front.

On to other matters, I feel that the meeting was quite successful in that all 3 of us were actively discussing how we would be tackling the problem. Abinav and Frank both injected their opinions and perspectives, so that the momentum of the discussion would be sustained.

We managed to settle each issue rather swiftly, but i feel that is due to the 'problem' not being a actual problem yet, so it was within our scope and we thus resolved each issue we faced rather fast.

Particularly, in my team, i knew that my programming skills were not exactly top notch, so I was unsure of how to go about solving the problem. Thankfully, when I brought up issues that we had to face for the programming, Abhinav and Frank were receptive and responsive as well, providing insight on how we were supposed to go about doing the code, helping me decide exactly how to do the programming aspect, unfortunately this was not done on camera, but happened after the meeting.

I feel the meeting was very objective and we cleared our objectives set in the agenda very fast, before moving on to other businesses. This I feel is attributed to my team's preparation before hand, as well as every one's discipline to work along the agenda's outline.

On the whole, I would say that the meeting was mostly positive and beneficial, we all knew what we had to do at the end of the day, with minimal fuss and we accomplished it faster than expected!

Resolving interpersonal conflict

If every conflict you come across leads to this, then you're probably going to be the lonliest person on the planet! Credit to www.videogamesblogger.com/wp-con...sion.jpg for the picture.

The most recent 'conflict' i had was around last december, where i had a disagreement with my best friend of 6 years. It was quite a minor trigger factor to be honest, the both of us were very keen on a new computer game in the market. When the exams in semester 1 had ended, we went to Bishan's Junction 8 to look for the game, only to reach there too late, the shop had closed. We were both disappointed and decided to get it as soon as possible. So the very next day, i was out at Marina Square, so i decided to look for it, and i texted my friend asking him if he had got the game already. He replied saying if i got it, then he'll go get it also, since he lived opposite Junction 8 and he could just go over and buy the game. So what resulted was a frenzied search for shops that sold the game, but there were none that did in Marina Square, so i walked over to Suntec City and combed the entire place. Unfortunately they didn't have it too, so i resolved to take the train all the way back to Sengkang(where i live) and try my luck at the shopping centre there.

In the end i did manage to buy the game in Sengkang, and when i texted my friend telling him i got the game, he replied 'good for you! I'll go get it sometime'. His reply greatly annoyed me, because he had implied that once i got the game, he would go over to Junction 8 and get it so we could try out the game together.

So i pressured him to go get it, but he kept saying he was lazy, so in the end i got so annoyed i just gave him a sarcastic comment. To me i felt quite 'cheated', because it seemed like he said he'll do something, and i went the extra mile to uphold my end of the deal only to see him flip over and change his mind. I felt very frustrated with his nonchalant attitude towards my efforts to get the game, but on hindsight i suppose on his part, he would think that since we're such pals, i wouldn't have minded his sudden change of mind, he actually thought it was quite funny.

In the end though, the issue was quickly resolved because i think he knew he had irked me, because the next day he texted me said that he got the game too. While i feel that this is actually not a 'conflict' per se, but it does highlight how things can go wrong without us knowing that it did.

It seemed that the main problem was that there were expectations on each other's part, especially between close friends, when there is a breech in behaviour, it would surely hurt much more than just a normal friend, likewise the assumed 'acceptable' behaviour within close friends is greyed out, meaning that we might actually offend our close friends while not meaning to.