有道理

Tuesday, March 13, 2007.

How many of you had been in conflict? And how many of you enjoy it?

Conflict is like stress. Little bit of it is good for you but too much of it can be destructive.

How will you react when you are in a conflict? What are the negative and positive points of conflict?
The negative points of conflict are as much as trees in forest. You name one positive point and I can name you ten negative points. So let’s forget about it. Basically, what conflict does is to make you thinks more. It makes you realize your strength and weakness, and understand the strength and weakness of the so-called opponents. Then ultimately it will make you be the one up. This process is what we called improvement. It makes you become more competitive.

What do you do when people scold you?
The usual answer is scold them back lah. But, hey! Listen! To scold them back, you must have points. Every people want to scold people to make them upset. No people want to see that when they scold people; the people just say “scold lah!” and walk away happily. This will makes you even more upset.

And as a manager, or observer, conflict between group members is good. Conflict increase competitiveness and create understanding between people. Of course, more ideas will be generated during the process. As an observer, you probably will just say:” Heck care lah. Let them quarrel and they will eventually sought out themselves. Why don’t I just sit back and watch movie?” (I think Jia Vei will say such things)

But as a manager, you had better make used of the situation. Don’t try to stop the conflict but, to control it. Conflict increases competitiveness. You wake up early in the morning; reach your office and see two reports (by the two workers who have conflict with another), well-written some more, lying on your table happily. You got two workers, conflict with each other. And they are good, they are night worker, and they work so hard, just to prove that they are much better than the other. For the sake of company or organization, don’t stop it. Just control it.

But things are out of hand, you’d better stop it. Conflict is like fire, it is good in some sense. But when you cannot control the fire, go get a fireman.

Lesson learnt from Prof Ting during HRM tutorial: When you cannot control the fire, go get a fireman. If you can control it, play with it.

p/s: according to Myers Briggs' test, I am ENTJ.