Adjourning

There have been many groups that I have been apart of that were hard for me to leave - my college roommates (who were my friends since elementary school), high school friends, and past co-workers. I feel that all of these relationships have helped me grow in various ways and we were apart of each others success and failures. There was a sense of trust among all of the individuals, which gave us the courage to try new things. 

Saying good-bye to my colleagues at Walden will be difficult - we have been able to open up to each other and grow through each of our mistakes/life experiences. I never thought I would be a "blogger" and was a little nervous to start this process but I have learned to love it. This is an informal method of sharing our success stories, and even some failures. I truly believe in the power of learning from others experiences and love to hear about everyone's life journeys.

This past week I was at a training out of state and we did not have time in the "forming" stage to get to know each other - we spent the first 5 minutes on Monday introducing ourselves and saying one thing about us that nobody would guess by looking at us. This was a good ice breaker and conversation starter for later in the week. We all became close and really connected with each other (going to lunch and out to dinner after the training), so saying good-bye on Friday was hard - we all want to stay connected but living in separate states makes that hard. Learning about team building and trust this week was helpful especially being apart of such an amazing group of individuals. 

Conflict Resolution

After thinking back to a conflict I have had recently I decided to focus on one from my personal life – between my brother and I. There was a comment made to my sister in law as we were all leaving a family birthday party - instead of confronting the situation right then she had my brother text message us an hour or so later. Text messaging is the worst way, in my opinion, to discuss a situation where feelings were hurt. 

The strategies I learned this week that could have helped me in this situation are:

1. The Third Side has been an important tool so far in this class and my life. In this particular conflict situation I could have listened from the Third Side. I did not learn or listen to all of the perspectives (sister in law and brother). I become annoyed and defensive because the wording my brother used became an attack on my husband. 

2. I am going to start focusing my communication skills around the NVC model. I feel that I am a compassionate communicator with individuals outside of my family structure but tend to be a little more blunt with my family members. This approach could have helped with my conflict because I could have addressed his text message and her concern with more compassion and from the heart. 

There have been multiple instances where my brother and sister in law have verbally attacked all members of my family, which makes it difficult to want to communicate with them in a compassionate manner. But as we all know, two wrongs don't make a right.