3 May

This week we've gone through all of the final details including tasks which should be completed by the next week of implementation. Having as assistants Eugin, and me, Arina went through photos and filtered them leaving out bad ones. The final list of pictures was given to Kitty, who is now responsible for printing them out. We've decided upon the sizes of our photos and their frames, so the size of the frame is A4, and of photos - A5 so that there is enough space to play around with. Decoration tools will be brought by everyone, and the double side tape by Kitty as she knows Hungarian, and can easily find the tape in Budapest. The implementation of the project lies on the shoulders of every member of the team, so hopefully they will all show up for the meeting. I offered my flat as a meeting point for us; its because I prefer gathering at a more comfortable and cosy place than IBS. Everyone knows that we gather at 12:00 in the afternoon at my place. I made sure everyone gets an exact address, and phone number of me so that they could call me if there is any problem. It was quite easy to set a date and time; as from my own experience, this question might become a real disaster sometimes, when everybody tries to find some time in their "tough" schedules; sometimes it even feels like those "busy" people want to show condescension as if saying, "well, you know, I have so many important things to do, and have no time for that, but..I could try to make it..but I'm not sure.. ok, let's do it." But I was lucky with this team, we had no problem with such a tiny questions as date, time and place. Right now, we hope Kitty will complete her tasks of printing photos and getting blank A4 papers. The rest is done by Arina who buys additional accessories and tools for frame decoration. We agreed that she buys whatever she thinks is necessary, and then we will all share the costs. Apparently every member of the team trusts Arina's decisions. That's astonishing because I believe that no team can work efficiently without trust. This is really inspiring for me.

Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument

I've taken the test twice already: one during a class, and the second at home. The outcome shows different results for some reason. I might have been in a rush when completing the test in class, because after thinking over the answers I've got the desired result at home. The order of styles did not change fundamentally, but it turned out that my first conflict style is rather Compromising than Avoiding. These two exchanged their order: Avoiding got 10 for the first time, and then 7, whereas Compromising had 7, and then 10. It is quite surprising though that the gap between the two remained the same - 3. This means that the second preference falls on the Avoiding style, and that I can easily change for this style. Score 7 is not that high which means that I still believe that conflicts can be resolved and we shouldn't be scared of them. Although, I still feel that I'm not a disputatious person, and I try to avoid conflict situations if it is possible. But I agree with the second result of the test that avoidance is not of my first priority. I always prefer compromising: finding a compromise for an issue that might suit for everyone.

However, it seems to me that still this test cannot truly define our styles, or at least mine. It's because I feel that I can apply any style discussed by Thomas-Kilmann (Compromising, Avoiding, Accommodating, Competing, and Collaborating) depending on a situation. For example, if I have a perfect team, I'd do my best to collaborate and support creative and effective solutions to perform the best as a team. But according to the results, I've got only 4 for the Collaborating style when I could rather put it under 10 as well. Accommodating style represents me as well, I put people's feelings high enough to consider, and I'm able to sacrifice my own position for solving a conflict. I wouldn't put it too high though and I'm ok with getting 5 for this. Competing and Collaborating both got a score 4. As was noted before, I disagree with the score for the collaborating style that I've received (the first result showed even as low as 3). But it seems to me mark 4 suits my positioning of the Competing style. Of course, it is acceptable sometimes to persuade and force but it depends on a subject of discourse. If it is something very important for the final outcome, then I'd try to analyse the situation, examine all the possible solutions, and offer the best one. If someone disagrees or questions the idea (this, in fact, is not rare), I'd try to persuade him by giving effective reasons and arguments. If this doesn't help, then I'd choose compromising as a solution. So I think, there is no strong border among all these conflict styles for me. I can easily jump from one to another without even noticing. So I'd rather put each of them on comparatively same level of preference.