Dispute...

Recently, I had a dispute with a team member whilst doing a group project. There were some heated exchange and a short period of time where we ignored each other. However, after cooling down, I realized the root of our problem. It all boils down to communication breakdown. Trouble brewed from miscommunication.

We were doing a project in a group of four. We worked hard doing the report and power point slides for the presentation. Work was divided equally among us and things went on smoothly. However, nearing the presentation day, one of our group members had an eye infection. She texted us saying that she may not be presenting because eye infection is contagious and did not want to infect us. Seeing that she mentioned the word ‘may’, we assumed that she will update us on her final decision. In this case, it is evident that symbols are ambiguous for we eventually learnt that she meant it as absolutely not presenting, while we understood it as just a possibility that she is not presenting.

Moreover, from our misunderstanding, I have also fully understood what it meant by meanings are contextual and that meanings are in people, not in words. When my team member updated us on her condition, she stated that she wanted to come to school but did not want to go ahead with the presentation. I was bewildered as I did not see the rationale of coming to school but not present on the actual day for the moment she steps out of house, there is already the possibility of infecting others. She insisted that it was for our good that she comes to school but not do the presentation because by presenting, she will infect the audience. Apparently we did not see eye to eye on this aspect and misunderstandings occurred. On hindsight, we could have resolved this by using extensional orientations instead of intensional orientation. As we interpreted each others’ words based on what’s inside of us, there were assumptions about meaning.

Reflecting on myself, I admit I did not engage in both feedback and feedforward. Firstly, I did not confirm if she was indeed coming to school or not, of if she was going to be presenting whatsoever. I did not make the effort to do the last clarification and get feedback from her. Secondly, I did not feedforward, anticipate her reactions and understand her feelings when I took it upon myself and decide to divide her parts to us, the remaining three members.

Besides, after we went ahead with the presentation without her, we resented the fact that she threw her tantrum on us when it was clearly her fault for not confirming with us or not making sense with her reasons. There we went on and on about saying how irresponsible and unreasonable she was. However, we failed to use indexes. We did not take into consideration the times where she responsibly handled situations and completed her work to perfection.

All in all, just a single dispute between my team member and I showed that misunderstandings do occur if we make assumption about the things we hear from others and it is important that we learn to prevent them rather than trying to find redemptions when things happen.