Thursday, October 29, 2015
Peter Diamond Econ 490: Conflict
One of the most recent conflicts I got into that meant a lot was at my internship this summer. During one of the projects I worked on we had to work in a group of six total. Once I was assigned my group, I knew we would have a strong team because everybody was very impressive, but I also knew that everybody thought they were the best and there might be some tension regarding making final decisions.
Everybody was working well, and the project was coming along well, right until the end. When the project was finished, we had to decide who was doing the conclusion. Myself, along with one other kid wanted to do the conclusion. I wanted to do it because I knew I was the best speaker of the group, and I wanted to leave a good impression with the audience. The other guy wanted to do the conclusion to make sure he was the last person in the minds of the executives watching. At this particular company interns don't get full time offers unless you absolutely blow away the execs. So my partner thought that if he had the last say, he might have a chance at getting an offer.
I didn't really care about his intentions, but I cared because if he did a bad job, it would look bad on all of us. And I knew this guy was not a good speaker. So that's when the conflict arose. This kid and I got into it a little during a meeting leading up to the presentation. We both said why we wanted to do the conclusion, and left it all out on the table. While I felt bad saying I was the best speaker, I had to do what was best for team. Just like I accepted I wasn't the best at other things, I thought they would understand when I hinted that they weren't the best presenters. Then the other guy pretty much put it out there that this is his presentation, he wanted to be the guy coming back for a full time job, and he wanted to have final say.
The other members kind of kept quiet during the meeting, but after would talk about it with me and the others. Three out of the four others came up to me and said they wanted me to do it, so what we decided was to have a vote. Myself and the other guy would present in front of the four other group members, and we'd bring in one other employee so that the vote wouldn't be even. After presenting, the vote came in and I won.
The guy seemed a little mad, but after he saw the final presentation and all the execs praising the whole group, he lightened up and told me good job.
Looking back on it, the situation could've been avoided if we both sat back and didn't say what we wanted to, but I'm glad we did, because you have to communicate and talk about things in order to lead to the best product. We had a great presentation, and the conflict wasn't a big deal after seeing the results.
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The way you told the story, the other kid had unreasonable expectations. That can be the source of conflict, no doubt. You end up overplaying your cards and then lose. If you tied this a bit to the reading in Bolman and Deal, you would have recognized that this is a fair common issue with people in Model 1.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there is a different issue with internships in particular that you didn't get at in the story, so it made it harder for me to understand what is really going on. You treated this whole thing as an audition, which perhaps it was, but it also might be considered as an experience to learn from, which is presumably a reason why you do intern in the first place. How do you become a better speaker? Presumably you rehearse a lot, but you also need to give live performance too. On that consideration, it sounded like you didn't need the practice but the other kid did.
One other part of this story didn't make complete sense to me, given this was an audition. My image of auditions for a play or a movie is that everyone is given a tryout. You made it sound like only one person would get the real audition. Why would senior management allow a practice like that, where it didn't have enough evidence on all the candidates for a permanent offer? That part I didn't understand at all. I wish you had made it clearer.
Regarding how you become a better speaker, I think it involves a bunch of things on top of just practice, rehearsal, and giving a live performance. Practice is one thing, where you get to understand the material better, get a feel for when to breath, and all that stuff. But in my opinion, if you practice too much you become a robot, and it seems very automated. A lot of kids my age worry too much and get very nervous. You have to stay loose, and understand that you are in a position of power when you speak. You have to have this sort of confidence to you where you believe you are the one in charge and the pressure is on those listening to you. For me, once I get into that zone, where I pretty much tell myself that I'm the man, that's when I do the best. So practice is good, but it's more of understanding that you need to be relaxed, stay loose, and have fun. At the end of the day it's just a speech.
DeleteTouching on the part about the audition which you didn't fully understand, it wasn't really an audition, it was just a presentation. We go into the presentation knowing none of us will get full time offers. Only one person ever has gotten a full time offer from this company, so for us it wasn't an audition. It was just part of our internship program. And everybody spoke in the presentation for the same amount of time, so senior management got to see what everybody could offer. But the one kid wanted to do the conclusion because he wanted to be the last one to speak. Everybody had their time to shine, so the company had enough evidence on everybody.