Be Open and Truthful

This past month, we have been going through a process of evaluation. We’ll share some of the issues that keep coming up in the past year, because chances are, some of these issues are rather typical in a work and social setting.

So here they are: how we could appreciate one another, how we could be more helpful, how we could argue about an idea but avoid personal conflicts, how we could be more mindful about other people’s feeling, how we can be more discipline with our time, how can we improve synergy between production and marketing, how we could improve communication with other departments (not that we have that many people in our office), etc., etc.

We were thinking about what actions we could do in the next year to overcome these problems, when Petra , our customer relation manager came up with this brilliant idea: we just need to be open and truthful to one another (why did we not think of this before!!)

The lack of synergy between departments can be bridged if we are open about our intentions and discuss them together. If we feel that someone is not appreciative, is not helpful, is not mindful of our feeling, is not discipline with their time and tasks, then all we need to do is being open and truthful to that person.

Conflicts can be avoided. To begin with, of course, we need to first have open communication. And when issues arise (which are unavoidable), we can be truthful about our feelings and views about the situation.

When you find yourself cornered in this situation, here’s tips from Kayee:
1. Try to see the situation from the other person’s perspective
2. Start with “I” statement. For example “X, I feel that …” (“I” statement would lessen the chance of the other person feeling defensive)
3. End with a suggestion: “It would be great if …”

As the person on the other side of the table, what you should do is listen and defer your judgment during the process. Try it out! It seems to be working in our team!