Interpersonal Conflict

The story here is from my friend's real-life experience.

There are two girls working in a CCA group in NUS. Girl A is the leader of a project team whereas Girl B is the officer reporting to A. Both of them had to earn some CCA points in order to secure a campus accomodation in the following year. After some weeks, A noticed that B does not like to attend any CCA meetings. B often gave excuses after the meetings were ended. Usual excuses are "got other things on", "got lessons" or simply "not feeling well". Trying to be considerate, A accepted all B's excuses. A called, emailed and sent messages to inform B of what she ought to do, but B simply did not give any responses. The reason B gave was that "Oh, I don't check emails often and my handphone went out of battery". With no choices, A had to do all the work in the project.

After some time, A happened to be involved in a recruitment drive and came across B's resume. B states in her resume that she is the "chief organiser" of that project mentioned above. A was furious about this. Some weeks later, after A was elected the President of their CCA group, B emailed A and requested to be promoted and demanded more CCA points.

I believe most of us had similar experiences as Girl A. My question here is how should she respond in this situation?

Peer Teaching Feedbacks

Hi friends,

It was really a pleasure for us to run the very first peer teaching session today. We hope you enjoyed that 30 minutes. We are very new teachers, so we do need your feedback! Please comment here to let us hear from you. Thank you very much.

Why effective communication skills are important for me?

I have been pondering about the goals of my life for a long time. “What do I want from life?” I asked. My answer to this typical philosophical question is a happy family and a fulfilling career which provides financial support for a decent lifestyle. The most crucial soft skills, communication skills, in some sense, are the means to the ultimate ends.


In family life, I wish to carry a listening ear, converse eloquently and send the right non-verbal clues to show that I care about my family members dearly. Due to generational gap, there are some inevitable frictions between my parents and me. If communicated badly, an insignificant issue could quickly explode into a huge fight. Most of these incidents can be avoided if we are all patient and active listeners.

In working life, excellent communication skills could not be more emphasized. No one carries any glamorous education certificates around to impress. What really impresses is the way they communicate. People who can speak and write well also tend to progress faster in their careers. In fact, in a networking session, if we observe carefully, we could more or less know who the higher ranking people are, simply by judging at their communication skills.

Here, I would like to share some of my past observations. As interns or fresh graduates, we often face difficulties adjusting to the corporate world. In offices, we, in our twenties, need to work with people of different age groups. Some of them are as senior as my father or even grandfather. The education in school does train us to work with classmates, but we seldom have the opportunity to work with senior people. Hence, when we communicate with them, it is better to show more respect for their seniority and rich experiences.

Life is not going to be a bed of roses when we just launch our careers in the future. It demands sheer hard work and a high EQ. It is indeed the time to start to improve my EQ now.