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Conflicts in an RSO

In one of my previous posts I discussed my involvement in an RSO on campus. Our organization is structured with the executive board on top, general board members under the executive board, and then our general members. As many of the members of our board do not have too much “real- world” experience dealing with conflict in the work force, people don’t always know the best way to handle it.

The beginning of this conflict started when “S” joined our RSO. She joined my junior year and I had advocated for her to the rest of the executive board members because I knew she was bright, a hard worker, and full of new ideas. My enthusiasm paid off and she was selected to join the general board consisting of 20 members.

The year that S had joined was a very competitive year. We had only a few spots open for new board members and many qualified applicants. This made S even more enthusiastic when she joined and right off the bat she became one of our more vocal board members. All of the board members that had returned from previous years and our executive board were very impressed by her fresh perspective and enthusiasm for creating new events our RSO had not done before. S had lots of potential in our organization.

A few months into the school year at one of our weekly board meetings, something changed. One of the executive board members who was her oversight (each exec member has a team of 3-4 board members) was asking for ideas/input for an upcoming philanthropy event. The event was a sports tournament and was S’s idea that she had been working very hard on for months. Another board member, “M”, did not agree with the structure of the event and did not think it would be successful at all. S was enraged by this and began arguing with M. The oversight, “T”, also jumped into the argument. Finally, I had to step in to calm everyone down. I asked T to clearly state what his opinion was and he basically made a passive aggressive comment about S being a newbie while he was explaining his viewpoint.

With such a large organization of 5 executive board members and 20 general board members, there is bound to be conflict. On occasion things get heated at board meetings but by the next board meeting it is usually forgotten. Nothing gets taken too personally and everything is handled on a professional level. A few weeks passed since the argument and winter break began. Nobody had mentioned the little debate and everyone involved had seemed to move past it. We all came back from break and S seemed completely fine. The event that S had come up with was still happening with a few tweaks in the structure. Their event eventually happened in February and was pretty successful. The board meeting following the event, S was completely silent. Everyone thought that maybe she was stressed with school and gave her a break. But that week she was supposed to come to a mandatory event for all of board and didn’t show up. Usually she was very punctual and let us know if she wouldn’t be able to come way ahead of time, so we were all confused by this behavior. This behavior continued for several weeks. Some of the general board members came up to me to ask me if knew what had happened as S had become one of my close friends. I wasn’t sure and when I talked to her she blamed her behavior on problems with friends or stress from school. After I talked to S she started showing up again but was quiet and distant. Most board members noticed this behavior and tried their best to include her but to no avail. She continued to behave like this for the rest of the year and did not return the following year.


I believe that this was inevitable. Though we all did our best to make S feel welcome and important in our organization, her behavior would not change. In an RSO with this many people, nobody can always have their way. All of our executive members reached out to her at some point to see if there was something that was wrong or we could do something differently that would make things better for her but she never spoke up. It was sad because she had such potential and really could have taken our organization to the next level in terms of creating better events and recruiting new general members to our RSO. I believe she had taken things too personally and if she had communicated with us and been willing to change her behavior, this could have been avoided.

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanNovember 12, 2017 at 2:56 PM

    This story was odd to me, because it seemed unresolved. How is S doing now? Quite apart from the RSO, one should be concerned about a friend's well being. This one seemed to conclude with S down and out. That is not a happy ending.

    Also, in retrospect, it unclear whether you are still close to her or not. If you do have contact with her, have you since discussed the events of last year? If you are no longer in touch, what ended that? Was it this experience with the RSO, or something else?

    Finally, I do think that junior people need coaching from senior people, and now I'm not talking about students, I mean young professionals on the rise. They need a mentor who can give advice. If it was the case that S was overplaying her hand, somebody should have coached her to pull back some, before something bad happened. I'm not sure who that coach should have been , in how you told the story, but while we do learn from mistakes, sometimes making the mistakes is so painful that it is better to learn in a gentler way, from the experience of others.

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    Replies
    1. Robert Giffen Econ 490 fall 2017December 17, 2017 at 1:57 PM

      S is alright now and has moved onto other organizations! She had personal issues at the time of this situation but has been able to figure them out. We still maintain our friendship and there are no hard feelings between us. We typically avoid the topic if it comes up but we should probably let it out in the open. I agree with the last point you made as well. I have observed this whole situation and learned from her behavior and try to evaluate my own actions when similar situations arise again.

      Delete
  2. Dale MortensenNovember 13, 2017 at 6:26 PM

    One of the reasons that this argument seems to have gone unresolved is because there was not a post-argument conflict resolution. Did T ever apologize for his passive aggressive comment? And if he did, was it too late after the damage had been done?

    I believe the best way to resolve a conflict is for both sides to take a minute to think about the remarks and attitude they gave towards the other person and apologize if they believe they were in the wrong.

    Like the conflict that happened in my workplace, sometimes too much pride by someone is what leads to issues to go unresolved. Do you believe someone should have stepped up and acted as the mediator between the two? Meaning assisted in the conflict resolution and not just stopped it. Could this have caused S to stay in the RSO?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Joan RobinsonNovember 14, 2017 at 1:20 PM

    I agree with your claim that work experience can help identify different ways to solve or avoid conflict. I also agree that S's qualities of being bright, a hard worker,and having new ideas would lend itself to being a positive impact on the general board. It seems like S was well received by the RSO and has lots of potential. I would if people were intimidated by S and felt threatened by S's potential.

    In terms of the conflict, I seems odd that the conflict happened out of no where at the meeting. Was there any build up or signs that the conflict was going to happen down the line? As I said above, maybe a conflict between S and veteran members was inevitable because they were threatened by S. In addition, I think T as an overseer should have been more calm and objective in the situation.

    It is also odd that S took the conflict so personally and had not acted this way previously. I wonder if this was the first time she received push back or critics on her ideas and she was not about to take criticism. This would be a very undesirable trait of a general board member.

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