I was once involved in a cross-organisation project, where my partner was a mid-aged researcher from Company A, while, I, at that time, was a year 3 undergraduate having an internship at Company B. Although we worked on the same product, we had totally different part of tasks, and yet, our parts were tightly dependent on each other.
One day, he presented his new idea of upgrading his part in a group meeting. I didn’t realise a serious problem until I went back and thought it over the night, and I then jumped up and wrote an email to him. After a long time of waiting, I got reply from him, saying he understood my concern, but, felt that it was not a big problem, and he suggested I should be able to fixed it on my side straightforward. However, I did try to work it out on my side already, unfortunately it was proven to be impossible, as his design got a serious bug that can cause an error stage, that I can do nothing to help with. I immediately told him the situation, but he then simply told me that his part was almost finished and it will be costly to change again. I tried to cc’ed my boss in the last email, but my boss was not so aware of what was difficulty, asking me to try again. I finally grew angry enough to gave up and kept silence without making any progress nor reply to their emails since then.
I was finally asked to directly explain of the problem to my boss in person, who eventually realised I was right and thus suggested my partner to make a slight change as I suggested before, but the project was therefore being delayed by 2 weeks.
Analysis:
My partner was obviously more experienced than me feeling hat he was absolutely right, not willing to listen, and he was only concerned about his part, missing the sprite of team working.
I grew frustrated until I finally broke down the communication process, I lose to control my emotion, and I didn’t maintain the motivation.
My boss didn't pay enough attention on my words at first, he was more concerned about solving the problem instead of solving the conflict between my partner and I, he was task-oriented instead of people-oriented.
Possible solution in view of myself:
I should calm down, control my emotion, be more self-awareness, bearing in mind that no matter how correct I was for that problem, I was just a young student in internship, I must be more patient, and explain to them more times patiently.
Question for you:
Is there any better solution if you are one of them?
