Just like what I have described in the previous group blog that we
experienced a period of contradictory time when three individuals had been put
into a team by randomly selection of professor. I am mainlander who was born
and mainly received education in mainland but with a long-time working
experience in American bank by which I had an opportunity to go through western
culture and interpersonal relationship style that are quite different from traditional
Chinese culture. Eddie is another team member who has got similar background
and experience just like I myself, whose mother tongue is Mandarin but also has
the sense of culture differences as well as the divergence of behavioral
mindset. Kristina is a local mother-student who shows her differences
unintentionally not only through her Cantonese accent, but also her behavioral
characteristics although we share the same oriental culture and entire social
values.
Conflict Review
After a period of time for us getting know one another, we realized
that there were some differences on behavioral mindset among three of us which
had led to some problems by which would cause potential conflicts possibly. Kristina
always was late for class even was absent for several times because she has the
obligation to take care of her baby, while Eddie and I both thought there is no
excuse for you to absent from class despite you have to take care of your
family member. Although all two of us had negative emotions toward Kristina
when we held meeting discussing the team assignments, it didn’t evolve into a
conflict at last for we had reached a consensus that every member in the team
should make compromise to each other and commit to the common goal as well.
Strategies in Conflict
Resolution
Working out solutions solving this kind of potential conflict caused
by different behavioral mindset to improve our team morale and the productivity
ultimately has become an important task that has to be achieved. At last, Eddie
and I chose the approach of “persuasion “with the aim of changing Kristina’s
behaviors to align with two of us to better achieve the team work objectives.
Among the “Three P’s “of social influence which represent three different
approaches --- power, payment and persuasion ----that can change other people’s
mindset and behavior, we regard the “persuasion” as the most proper way in solving
the potential conflict within our team for several reasons as below:
Firstly, given that three of us are students with equivalent power in the team,
no one has command or assertion power over others to carry out all the code of
conduct and discipline. Meanwhile, we student team don’t have any financial
resources to conduct material incentives or compensation to motivate members
heading to the right direction.
Secondly, considering the personalities of team members, Eddie and I who possess some communication skills based on working
experiences can express the idea clearly and understandable, and Kristina as an
open-minded well-graduated people also has the opportunity to be influenced and
persuaded.
Finally, the LEAPS framework about important components should be taken into consideration when you are about to use
persuasion as a basic tool to influence others has inspired us a lot on how to
achieve better persuading effects. We have put some important principles into
persuading process and have got obvious improvement eventually. I will
elaborate more on details on how we conduct persuasion with the help from LEAPS
framework and do the analysis about what we have done well and what’s the
improvement we should make. Within the LEAPS framework, we will focus on three
factors that are ethos which is referring to character and credibility of
messengers, pathos which means emotions and other predispositions of audience
and logos implies the content of the argument.
Problem-Solving Process Analysis
l
Pathos
Just
like we described before, our audience
Kristina is the pathos who has positive emotions as well as the strong
cognitive ability, and this kind of personality lies the possibility and foundation
for the application of persuasion. The diagnosis step comes first is because
that Eddie and I would set different goal and procedure based on her
personality, and it would be effective as long as we understand our audience
well though observing and chatting before the persuasion process.
l
Ethos
Given
that Eddie and I with different gender, personality and working experience
respectively, we strategized the
persuading methods for which the focus and emphasis are varied from one to
another. Eddie used to be a HR professional who has to be assertive to confirm
himself and to influence interviewee as well as the employee, so he placed assertiveness as his first priority in
persuasion process, which means he should pretend to be firm when he persuade
Kristina to accept our expectations to show our determination. For instance,
Kristina said she was late for lecture or discussion due to she had to take
care of her baby as a refutation of Eddie’s criticism on her frequently absent,
but Eddie responded to her immediately that it’s your obligation coming to
lecture on time as a student no matter what your excuse is. Eddie had got a
prevailing over Kristina after this round of conversation, and he continued to
persuade her by giving examples from his previous experience. After that,
Kristina began to promise that she would not be late for lecture any more for
she acknowledged her attendance is important for the whole team and her own
performance as well.
Besides
the assertiveness Eddie had implemented during the process, he also try to be
humorous supplementing his tough style overall. Humor evokes reciprocation and liking principle as well as adds
interestingness to the persuasion process, so it cannot be regarded as the
opposite side of assertiveness but enhance the effectiveness of it. On the same
topic of being late for lecture, Eddie said jokingly that he would take along
his baby with him attending class on time to demonstrate there is no excuse at
all to be late for lecture. Kristina accepted his humorous persuasion method
with any embarrassment.
As
for the persuading style of myself, I choose to be likable firstly, which means I pretend to be easy-going and
considerate when I confronted with Kristina and her persistence toward her
privilege to be late for lecture. Kristina and I are at almost the same age, so
I chatted a lot about my travelling experiences with her and exchanged opinions
on it for a while, and after that, we got to know each other much better than
before. It became more natural for us to discuss the topic on being late for
lecture, and I just expressed my idea on how to be a student-mother in the same
way as I shared my travelling experience to her. After a friendly chatting,
Kristina was unconsciously influenced by my talking as well as the expectations
to her attendance.
In the whole
persuasion process, I paid fully
attention on listening to Kristina and trying to figure out her mainly
concern about why she chose to be late for lecture. Firstly, acknowledging the
speaker’s concerns, strengths and feeling would be critical first step in the
whole process. Without this step, the gap between Kristina and I would be there
always which is an obstacle on the way out of the problem. Secondly,
paraphrasing my understandings of speaker’s words and asking questions for
clarification at proper time would be important to show my real concern for her
statements, and also made myself well understand her meanings. By this
interactive communication, the psychological bridge had been build up for the
further agreement. Lastly, being an active listener and suspending judgement
would be beneficial for the whole process as well. Being an active listener
refers to that we should avoid rehearsing our next response while listening and
spend full attention on speaker’s words. When Kristina expressed her opinion, I
just listened to her story and tried to understand her starting point about why
she chose to be late for lecture without delivering our persuasion at that
moment.
l
Logos
After
the analysis about “pathos” and “ethos”, it’s time to pay attention to “logo”
as the third component within the framework. It will get half the result with
twice the effort once the “logo” doesn’t match the style of “pathos” and
“ethos” simultaneously. In our practice, Eddie always tried to keep his content clear aligning with
the assertiveness in strategy, and made the whole process to be more systematic
and cohesive which turned to be effective in persuading process. I chose to do
my persuasion in a story-telling way
that was aligning with my liking style, and also showed its efficiency in
influencing audience unconsciously.
What Can Be Improved
Due
to our joint efforts on persuasion with the guidance from the LEAPS framework,
the bad emotions among our team members didn’t evolve into a conflict
eventually, but we still can make some improvements to make the whole process
more effective and smooth. Taking the experience of myself for example, I had
said to much words spending on sharing my personal experiences in order to
build up relationship, I should slim my
statement to be more precise and focused by which will not reduce the
effectiveness of persuasion but add up its efficiency overall.
