Role of Experience Into Future Goals
Defining the key lessons that I have learned in the course of the learning process, I must mention the skills in conflict management, which I have acquired after handling a project that I and my colleagues had to deliver in the Tanweer United to display the methods of reducing the costs for the company’s logistics strategy, particularly, the transportation issues.
In most cases, implementing a project requires working with at least one partner, and being in a team is never an impeccably smooth process – somewhere along the way, there will be conflicts and misunderstandings due to the differences in the temper, character traits, and mentalities of the project participants. As far as my experience is concerned, I had to deal with a problem of poor time management and the following conflict among the members of the team.
The experience that I have gained is truly priceless; it can be linked to the key postulates of the social conflict theory tenets, as well as the basics of psychology and sociology. Indeed, choosing between the methods of conflict solution, I had to wander into the great area of sociology by integrating the key principles of the theory of cooperation and competition (Deutsch, Coleman and Marcus 24) and incorporating the basic methods of conflict management.
Needless to say, I also had to utilize my knowledge of psychology to help the members of the project reconcile and work for the solution to the problem. First and most obvious, it was required to identify the source of the problem (as it turned out, poor time management and the lack of social responsibility have led to major disagreement among the members of the team). Next, the premises for developing open communication needed to be introduced; the environment for open communication was created with the help of recognition of the group members’ values and interests. Luckily, when I came to identifying the key interests of those involved in the project, each of us agreed to share a range of similarities in our goals (i.e., we wanted to finish the project as soon as possible and attain encouragement and recognition for our efforts). Besides, I learned that empathy was the key to solving practically any conflict; indeed, until I started analyzing the conflict and take actual measures to address it, all that I felt was frustration because of the lack of responsibility that my partners displayed. However, as soon as I realized what exactly made my partners slacken the process (i.e., the lack of confidence, the fear of failure, etc.), I started empathizing with them and, therefore, making a consistent effort to design the solution that would satisfy each of us.
Even though the aforementioned experience concerned the dimensions of sociology and psychology to a greater extent than those of philosophy, the elements of the latter were also to be incorporated into the location of the viable solution to the problem. To be more exact, I had to incorporate the key tenets of the Kantian ethics (the Categorical Imperative) to make sure that the interests of every single member were satisfied and that the project was going to be delivered on time. This experience has provided me with an excellent opportunity to train my skills as a negotiator and at the same time learn to compromise for the sake of a greater goal.
Being an accountant is not an easy task, and developing a project that was supposed to make the Tanweer Taxi Company increase its net income by cutting some of the logistics related losses made my experience even more complicated. However, the results were well worth the efforts that I had to make in the process. Apart from significant professional growth as an accountant, I have also improved my negotiation skills. As far as the career opportunities are concerned, the issues that I have faced and handled in the course of managing the project described above is going to further my career, since being an accountant requires working with a lot of people to collect information from different departments of a company and, therefore, may ensue a range of conflicts because of the number of elements that need to be incorporated into reports. Hence, from the sociological perspective, the experience that I have received when designing the project in Tanweer United is truly priceless.
The experience gained in the course of being employed at the Tanweer Taxi Company should not be limited to the improvement of my professional qualities, though. In addition to getting more opportunities to advance in my future career, I have also learned a range of essential skills that will help me in my social life, not to mention the tremendous impact that the conflict management process has had on my pattern of interaction with my family members. Indeed, the conflicts that used to lead me and my family nowhere, only alienating us from each other, are now perceived as crucial experiences, the solution of which brings us even closer and helps us understand each other even better. Rationalizing my emotions and understanding what makes me feel personal about certain things that my family members say, I cognize myself and work on improving my relationships with the family. With each conflict solved, we become closer to each other and have fewer obstacles on our way to understanding each other.
More to the point, the experience of conflict solving, which I have gained at the Tanweer Taxi Company, has also made my life in the community considerably easier. Before starting to work for this organization, I used to adopt the strategy of avoiding conflicts, therefore, refusing to handle disagreements and leaving the negotiation process to other people. Working at the Tanweer Taxi Company, however, has taught me that the avoidance strategy may be the easiest one, yet it does not necessarily presuppose that an appropriate solution will be located. On a much deeper personal level, training at the Tanweer Company has taught me the basics of personal and professional responsibility, as well as the ability to be flexible enough to satisfy the demands of every single stakeholder involved in the conflict without taking major losses. This is an important skill for a community member to have; seeing that my community has a lot of diversity, the people that it is represented by often have demands that may conflict with my interests and conviction. Therefore, I often have to work for a solution that could meet the requirements of every single member of the community, and working with the people at the Tanweer Taxi Company has taught me how to handle such situations efficiently.
Works Cited
Deutsch, Morton, Peter Coleman and Eric C. Marcus. The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. 2011. Print.