WEEK 5 - Communication and Conflict management.
Disagreements
are real in every relationship. As I work with families, colleagues, students
and other supporting staff, I see issues come up often that require my
understanding, cooperation and intervention.
Recently, our
head of nursery section has had issues with her caregivers on punctuality and management
of drop offs and pickups of the children on particular days. Some parents come
in very early and unfortunately there are no care givers to receive the children
because the staff on duty has arrived late. Despite her efforts to discuss and
make a new roster that should work well with the caregivers, things have not
changed much, and she decided to issue official warning which unfortunately has
generated personal conflicts. She has been accused of lack of sensitivity and
others too are accused of incompetence and inability to follow laid down procedures
My involvement was to do a basic analysis of what went
wrong and why we are unable to cope with the scheduled time. My new learning of
nonviolent communication paid off. I decided to be compassionate and listen to
the needs of everybody while establishing the concern of the management. I
found out the root cause of the conflict which in my opinion has to do with
unclear needs, lack of fairness, and insensitivity. I had one on one
discussion with the people involved and communicated clearly the expectation of
the supervisor and management, and we were able to come to agreement on the way
forward. I contacted the parents who have complaints and we resolved by
providing alternatives, everybody was happy.
I was able to resolve this conflict because I learnt
to pay attention to the needs of the people involved and did not ignore the
pains of the other person or consider it not important. My focus was on
compromise and not on punishment which helped everyone to cooperate. The 3Rs
helped me in my approach. Being respectful and responsive to needs of the
people really helped me to discover the depth of their personal problems which
we were able to resolve.