This week's assignment was to think about a conflict, whether personal or professional, and apply some of the conflict resolution techniques we have been learning about.
Last night, my dad and I got into a little conflict. I had arranged for my kids to be with sitters so I could attend a conference. I was going to do a little Christmas shopping afterwards since I had already arranged for someone to watch my kids. I don't get out often, maybe once a month, so I wanted to take advantage of the time I had away from my kids. My dad had two of my kids, and two other sitters had the other two. I called and checked on the kids after the conference around 5 and everything was ok. About 30 minutes later, my dad called me and told me to come to his house because his Christmas tree fell over. I asked if he could wait a little while because I wanted to do a little shopping and wasn't planning on getting the kids until closer to 8. He got an attitude and yelled at me before he hung up on me. Needless to say, I stopped what I was doing and went to help him. In the end, neither of us were happy.
The first thing we could have done to resolve this more peacefully would have been to communicate our needs. I understood his need to get the tree back up but he did not understand my needs. If we could have communicated better in the initial conversation, I think the negative feelings we had could have been avoided. The other thing we could have done was respect the other person. He could have not hung up the phone on me and I could have been more willing to change my plans in order to help him.
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