About Me

A LITTLE SOMETHING ABOUT ME...

Hi everyone,
My name is Tiffany Schickling. I am currently a senior at MSU Mankato, graduating in May 2016 with a major in Communications and minors in Human Resources and History. I currently just accepted a job at CIOX Health affiliated with Allina Clinics and Abbott Northwestern in their release of information department. I also work at HyVee part time as a 2nd Assistant Manager, and have been with them for almost 3 years. I recently left my job at Kwik Trip as their bookkeeper to accept the job at Abbott. I recently got engaged  and am over the moon about marrying my best friend next year. When I am not working I love spending time being active, spending time with my two nephews, watching Chicago Med, Property Brothers, Grey's Anatomy, ER, The Voice, and many more. Hulu and Netflix are my best friend! I am looking into continuing my education and getting a Masters in Health Communication from the University of Illinois because the entire program is online and it would allow me to keep the job I just got and work full time.

I am creating this website as an assignment for Conflict Management, but also as a self interest project because no matter where one works there is always going to be Organizational Conflict in any line of work you are in. Knowing conflicts in the workplace and recognizing them can aid in better relationships among employees company wide.

Before taking Conflict Management I knew the basics about the subject, but now I have a more in depth understanding of theories and principals associated with the topic. Since I have worked in retail for the last 7 years I come into conflict between employees and customers on a daily basis. Whether it be the customer is unhappy with their level of customer service they received and wants to complain, or an employee is having an argument with another employee and needs a manager to step in and be a mediator. Throughout the class I have found the high and low context communication methods interesting, as well as the difference between collectivism and individualism. How we communicate in the United States (individualism) compared to people in China (collectivism) is not the same. In America we are concerned about ourselves and in China they are concerned about their families and people in their group. Thus, if you work with a diverse range of people, like I do on a daily basis, knowing how to communicate with other groups of people aids in misunderstandings not happening as often.

Another concept I found very valuable in the class was the ten questions people ask about difficult conversations found in one of our classroom books called Difficult Conversations. The three aspects I found especially interesting and also relate to organizational communication is how does this work with someone who has all the power like my boss, if I am the boss/parent why can I not just tell my subordinates/ children what to do, and what about conversations that are not face to face, what should I do differently if I am on the phone or email.