Dear Richard,
I wish you a very happy new year and a wonderful learning experience in 2003.
To begin a new year, I would like share with you on how to treat conflicts with others. Conflicts exist naturally. Since we all are individuals coming from different background and valuing things differently, it is OK and should be well recognized that people could have different ideas and opinions.
Conflicts are not necessarily bad. It could be very helpful too. If you listen to other people ideas, this could help you to look at things in various different perspectives. Remember the story about the five blind people visiting elephants. We can help each other to learn and develop solutions. That's why people believe that teamwork is much better than doing the work individually.
Once upon a time, there was a family with five brothers. They could not get along well. They fought with each other, not to mention that they could never co-operate to do something together. The father got very upset about this.
One day, the father got the boys together for a meeting. The father gave each of them a pair of chopsticks and asked them to break it. All of them broke the pair of chopsticks almost with no efforts. Then, the father gave each of them five pairs of chopsticks and asked them to break it. None of them can break the five pairs of chopsticks together by hand.
The father then said, 'See! This is exactly what I want to tell you. If each of you works alone, just like a pair of chopsticks, your business could easily be destroyed. But, if all of you work together and put together all your strength, your achievements could be better and your business could be much stronger.'
With love, Dad