As we wrap up this course, I want to take a minute and thank each of you for coming along with me on this learning process together these past 8 weeks. It has been such a joy to learn alongside and through each of you in blog posts, discussions, etc. I wish all of you the best professionally and as you work to complete your degree. I'm sure my path with cross with many of you again in these courses, and I look forward to it!
The adjourning stage of team development is the final stage. It is the final wrap up, the time for evaluation, recognition, and sometimes the celebration... it's kind of the final goodbye. As with any goodbye it is important because you need closure before you can move on.
When I think about groups that I've worked in, whether it was personally, professionally, or academically, some have been harder to see end than others. When I think about why that is I think there are two factors that affect this for me:
1. How close was I to the group. In the groups that I made connections and developed trusting relationships, this was hard. In groups that I performed well in either as a group or even just personally, they are harder to see come to an end.
2. Do I feel like there was more that I could of done either personally or overall? I struggle with the "what ifs", I like to know the plan, the options, really all the things that could happen or should've happened. So for me personally, I think these are harder to let go of, if I think there was work or ideas that we missed perusing.
When I think about closing rituals for these groups, I think it's just important that you get closure. I want to have time to share with the group my thoughts as well as give and receive constructive (and hopefully) positive feedback so that I can learn from the experience to grow in the future. I am a pretty emotional person, so I get attached to others pretty easily when I am given the time and opportunity to know them, so goodbyes are usually pretty hard for me regardless of the setting. It's also nice to find ways to connect with others even after the group is complete. Sometimes they are people that you will encounter in your day to day without any thought or planning. Sometimes they are people that you connect with to network and grow through. And sometimes they are people that are now your friends who you will stay connected with moving forward.
Conflict, unfortunately, is a part of our everyday lives. Even with our best of intentions, there will come a day, time, and or situation that will cause us conflict in our lives. Sometimes it may be professionally, sometimes personally, and sometime even an internal conflict. Though we can try to navigate around conflict and avoid it whenever possible, we still need to be prepared to handle and resolve it in the best ways possible when the situation presents itself.
If i'm being honest, the biggest conflict lately in my life is on a personal level with my husband. There is a constant push and pull between us, and we are having times of conflict almost daily. I know that there are a lot of contributing factors that have us in this current spot, none of them being huge or terrible, but mostly revolving around both of us being busy, over-worked, stressed, and feeling under appreciated by the other person.
This weeks learning, regarding conflict resolution has given me some pretty good insight into some of the disconnect between us, that is causing some of this conflict to occur. The first thing that I'm seeing is the need for mutual respect between us. Let me break it down a bit more though, because the term "respect" is pretty vague. There's respect between us, however there is NOT respect between us for how the other person is feeling. If i'm being honest with myself (and now anyone reading this) I don't respect how he's feeling, because I think that he should be doing and giving more. I'm not respecting his thoughts, feelings, and as a result it's causing conflict. And on the flip side (in my opinion anyways) he isn't respecting my thoughts or feelings either.
If neither of us can acknowledge respect for the others person thoughts and/or feelings, how can we ever truly resolve this conflict? We cannot. As I shared in my discussion post this week, I am a firm believer that I don't to agree with someone else thoughts, beliefs, and/or opinions. However, I do have to show them respect for having strong feelings/opinions on different things. And this is something that he and I both need to work on.
I also think that we need to work harder to come to compromises on many of our conflicts. We both passionately believe that we are "right" and the other person is "wrong". And that is our roadblock. However, generally speaking there is a bit of truth in both sides, and if we can come together, meet on middle ground and compromise in our resolution not only will the conflict go away but it'll show both of us that we respect each other enough to work through it in a positive way.
It's interesting and maybe a bit "funny" how easy it is for me to come to this realization when I look at it in this way. Obviously when feelings and emotions are involved it isn't always so black and white and certainly isn't so "easy". I feel like the more you care and are emotionally invested in something/someone the harder it is to resolve conflict. Our passion and care makes resolution harder to reach... Anyone else feel this way?
