Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Conflict Resolution

Conflict resolution is important in your everyday life as you will run into anywhere from the grocery store to the office, and it is important for individuals to know how to deal with this situations properly. A main example in my life was the conflict that arose on my football team a few years ago. The team had its least successful season since the new coaching staff had taken over and there was a lot of finger pointing going on. People that were once great teammates had quickly become bad apples and were destroying the team chemistry that had been built. To help resolve this problem the coaching staff set up a leadership committee to help think of ways to get the team back on the winning track, as well as, regain the team chemistry that had been lost. I was one of the 12 people appointed to this leadership team where we talked daily about different methods to use and how we could become better leaders of the team in order to make sure that once resolved these conflicts would not come back. One of the main things that this committee came up with to help resolve the problem was to have more team "bonding" activities, these were basically activities where the team would get together and simply hang out and communicate with one another. This helped to build stronger relationships that would be harder to break and also helped grow a level a trust and respect among the teammates. After a year of these activities the team came back and had the second most successful season in school history winning 10 straight games and qualifying for the national playoffs. This showed me that the work the team put in merely to trust and grow as a group helped us to get back into a winning way, as well as, building a great team that was more like a family.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Respect

Respect is treating others in a way that you would want to be treated. This means that you should treat everyone that you come in contact with professionally and with the up most courtesy. This includes but is not limited to saying please and thank you, not using profanity, and of course not talking with your mouthful. I first learned respect from my parents; they taught me this mainly by example in the way that they carried themselves. I also learned more as I grew up, from my teachers and coaches, who would very quickly correct me if I was being disrespectful. I believe that everyone can improve on being respectful towards others, as we all make mistakes and will forget to act in a respectful manner at times.