Conflicts can occur anywhere and with any kind of party. It can be a loved one, friends, acquaintances and even strangers. Due to differing worldviews, characteristics and thought processes, conflicts will occur no matter the bond between the parties involved.
In this situation, there are a bunch of friends hanging out together. Although there are some who listens attentively, there are a few that wants to speak their thoughts and be heard. Generally, a number of people wants to be heard and have the attention of the group on them. However, this only works if the rest of the group listens. When a few people wants to speak at the same time, it results in a clash and the rest has to stop or the conversation will be very difficult to follow. In addition, if the topic spoken is of little interest, people would not want to listen to the speaker.
In this bunch of friends, there are a few people who seemingly wants to speak their mind and frequently cut each other. When that happens, everyone will stop before someone continues and gets the attention of the group. However, one person in the group constantly talks about his area of interest and the others lost interest after hearing him mention it many times. This results in the group focusing their attention on another person talking and ignoring him. He caught the drift after many occasions and felt ostracized by the group. In turn, he reacted by speaking in a rude manner to the group. This behavior led to the group disliking him and shutting him off more than before. This continues on in a vicious cycle of 'revenge' and ended up with cutting him off from the group.
The main cause of this problem is the lack of patience and selflessness. With the desire to be heard but not contributing to hearing others, that selfish approach led to the guy being cut off from the others. In the same manner, the rest of the group were also not patient and selfless enough to bear with him and to teach him to listen to others. If everyone were to think less of themselves, the situation would have a better ending.
If you are a part of that group of friends, how would you help both the group and the guy to prevent that scenario from happening?
Thanks for this, Wei Tian.
ReplyDeleteThe description is sufficiently detailed for a clear picture of what happened. The analysis, though, could be deeper; you could draw on other communication processes, for e.g., group communication. Consider such questions as: Is this conflict a result of personality clashes? Could it be the result of different working styles? Or is it due to ineffective use of listening styles? To say the main cause is impatience and selfishness is not necessarily wrong. It's just that there seems to be insufficient evidence for us to draw this conclusion.
Your question to the reader, though, is relevant.
On language - Although this is a blog post, it is nevertheless writing that will be graded. Therefore, note tone, i.e. avoid overly informal language - e.g. para.2: 'a bunch of friends'; and accuracy - e.g. para.2: 'some who listen (not 'listens'), ... a few who want (not 'wants')...'