Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

Living in a multi-racial and cultural society, we must be sensitive of each other's culture. It's better to understand a bit of every culture to avoid offending anyone and maintain racial harmony in Singapore. 

One incident that happened when I was in Primary School is still vivid in my head now. One of my classmate who was known for being mischievous in school was playing with scissors and attempted to cut some of the girl's hair off. He was successful in doing so and his next target was a girl with long braided hair which is a Singh and practiced Sikhism. He went to cut a few strands off when the girl was not aware and realized only after he was showing off to everyone what he had done. She went home and told her parents about it and the next day he was being punished for his act and had to apologize to the girl and her parents. Why he was punished was not only because he was playing with sharp objects and cutting people's hair but in Sikhism, Kesh is the practice of allowing one's hair to grow naturally as a symbol of respect for the perfection of God's creation. If the Sikhs were to cut any hair, they were not considered pure. That week, the principal announced to the school about this incident and urged us to be aware and sensitive of our cultural differences. 

It was through this incident that made me realized that every culture in Singapore should be taken seriously regardless of whether they are the minorities. Hence being aware of each other's culture and avoiding judgement would allow us to avoid such cultural taboos from happening. 

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

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.