Interpersonal Relationship

I am in the committee for one of the adventure clubs in NUS and have had the first hand experience of leading treks and organising camps for the freshmen. Not only had I gained exposure throughout the past one year, I also managed to find valuable friendships in my fellow committee members.

However, there has been a recent turn of events. Relationships between friends have been strained and suspicion and distrust arose within the committee. It all started when Bob* decided to re-run for the next committee after the current members have stepped down.

Bob had always been everybody's friend. He was always the entertainer, the food expert and "the nice guy". Hence, you can imagine the shock the judging panel suffered, when he spoke ill of his fellow committee members during an interview, specifically of those who he had encouraged to re-run for the next election with him. He picked on their flaws and shortcomings, informed the panel of his ideal "elite committee members" and criticized the people who he wanted out.

His ideals for the club's future directions were also entirely different from what the club had been for the past two decades; it was as if he wanted a major revolution and transform the club into something corporate, something that will yield a high profit turnover.

After the interview, the panel came together and had many discussions about Bob. On one hand, Bob, with his experience,leadership skills and popularity with the candidates, he definitely stand a high chance of winning the election. On the other hand, the judging panel is reluctant to handover the reins to Bob and many have expressed concern and unhappiness towards his two-faced personality.

As I was not there during his interview and all that I know of are hear-say, I have no right to make any comments or to take anybody's side. Maybe Bob had the club interests in mind and he felt that he had to be honest during the interview but unfortunately, put his ideas across wrongly and was misunderstood? But fact is that his speech had outraged all 14 of the members of the judging panel. The panel wants him to withdraw from the election, but has no idea how to put it across to him without use of underhand methods, but nobody is brave enough to step forward to confront Bob in fear of causing bad blood between the club and him.

What do you think the panel should do? Do you think its fair to judge based on hear-say and be swayed towards the majority, since the majority cannot be "too wrong", right? Or not?



*Name has been changed.

Effective Communication Skills

Effective communication, in my opinion, refers to the thorough and accurate encoding and decoding of both verbal and non-verbal messages that one sends and receives in order for complete understanding. However, what if the parties involved spoke differing languages? Verbal communication is almost as good as none. This is when non-verbal communication comes into play. Imagining being in a foreign country where language is a huge barrier! That was exactly what happened to me when I was in Italy a few years back...

At one of the train stations in Italy, I did an action stunt ala Jackie Chan by leaping off a moving train with my suitcase. No damage done to my physical self as I was heavily padded by the coat I had on but was emotionally shakened. I was brought into the station office by an Italian officer who asked me tons of questions in Italian but all I could do was stare at him wide-eyed, unable to recover from the shock plus I could not understand him anyway. He exchanged a few sentences with another lady officer who spoke a little English and was told that they needed to photocopy my passport as they were convinced that I was either trying to commit suicide or was an illegal immigrant! I wished I speak Italian at that moment, honestly! It was a huge misunderstanding due to the lack of verbal communication!

So, for the next week or so in Italy, I tried to learn as much Italian phrases as possible but alas, I got so hooked on Italian that when I bought my Metro ticket in France two weeks later, I blurted out "Grazie" instead of "Merci". This was when non-verbal communication worked for me. I doubt the counter lady could make out the distorted pronounciation of "Grazie" even if she knew Italian but my smile and little goodbye wave made it known to her that I meant "Merci"!

From these two incidents, I realized the importance of both effective verbal and non-verbal communication skills, especially for someone like me who enjoys travelling to different countries. When language barriers exist, flash a smile!

And just in case you may be interested to know, I alighted at the wrong train station which meant I jumped for nothing! ): Here's a picture of a very unhappy me at the said station:

Testing

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