There's bound to be conflicts in our everyday interaction with people. It may be due to words being said or actions being made that indirectly hurt others. As Bolton says "To be human is to experience conflict" (1986).
I'm currently working in Zouk as a part-time service crew and in the service industry, the choice of words we use on customers are important to prevent conflicts and misunderstandings. Recently during work, a customer approached me and demanded a table for a purchase of a bottle of alcohol. I told him that under Zouk's policy, there is a minimum spending of 2-3 bottles if he wants a table unless he can make do with free sitting at other bars instead. He took it negatively and requested to see my manager. At that instance, I thought of what I've learnt during lecture about emotional intelligence and one of the characteristics of having emotional intelligence was self-regulation. I was offended but I suppressed my anger to talk to him nicely and he was still insistent on seeing my manager. I told my senior about the situation and told him I didn't want to serve that customer if he really buys a bottle. He went to talk to the customer and seeing the way he handled the situation sets me thinking of what I've done wrong since I've never said anything to offend the customer. He told me that customers don't like to be 'rejected' thus how we should handle the situation is to stand in their position and tell them amicably that their request cannot be done and work out to find an alternative solution together. This leads to another point of what we have learnt about emotional intelligence which is empathy.
That night, I was reflecting on the incident and did a self-evaluation of myself that I tend to avoid and not wanting to solve conflicts between people that I'm not close to as I have the mentality that the chances of me having a close relationship with them is slim that is why I don't bother to solve it. After attending all the lectures in ES2007S, I realized that building a good relationship with people is important in our lives as the saying goes "It's better to have a friend rather than an enemy".
Hence, there are many ways to resolve an interpersonal conflict. One method of doing so is to do active listening as it allows understanding between both parties. Thus, they can talk things out nicely and state their viewpoints so that the other party can see from their point of view. To prevent conflicts from arising, we must always consider the other party's feeling before doing/saying anything. One of the main reason to most conflicts are due to misunderstandings, thus it is best to prevent it from happening rather than salvaging when the damage has already been done.
In conclusion, having a strong human skills and EQ doesn't happen overnight. We need to experience all kinds of situations and at the end of the day reflect about it and learn how we can improve when the same scenario occurs again. Avoiding doesn't solve the conflict, talking and listening does.
