Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

I am working with a group of mentors in a mentorship program in school. One of them is a year 4 student whom I will refer to as boy A.

When I first met boy A, he seemed like a shy and reserved boy, thus out of all the 14 mentors, I did not really notice him. However, as we progressed from the planning to the executing stage, I started to know him better. He was a funny guy who said things that would make the whole table laugh. Due to his wide experience, he was very good at handling a lot of problems that cropped up along the way, and he was also very professional in his work. Not long after, he began handling a lot of the operations of the program, and I could see that he worked really hard and put in a lot of effort.

As the program got underway and we progressed from the orientation stage to the starting of school, operations started to become routine and more manageable. We mentors got closer to each other by seeing one another every day. However a truth is this: as we get closer, we are bound to see more of each other’s bad habits.

We soon started to notice that boy A had a lot of mood changes. He would be happy one moment and angry the next. When you raised your voice a little in exasperating moments, he would suddenly flare up. Sometimes when you said things to tease him, he would laugh, other times he would suddenly get very angry. And when we wrote emails to all the mentors about operations, he liked to mention names when telling all the mentors about a bad incident that happened, but when we mentioned his name he would get all defensive and start replying us long emails about his reasons.

The incident that happened was that one of the mentors posted a photo on facebook that showed a mentor group shot during orientation dry run. As we reminisced about the happy times we had, I commented teasingly that when I knew boy A then he was still innocent and nice. I actually said this sentence to his face before. His response then was one of laughter.

After which, another mentor followed up with a comment also agreeing teasingly. However, boy A’s reply was totally shocking. He was really angry and told us to please stop posting this kind of comments.

I guess I was in a flurry of emotions after that. I felt sorry towards him and concerned for our relationship in the future, thus I apologized to him through SMS to tell him that I was sorry for posting the comment and removed it. He told me not to worry about it but relayed to me that he was disappointed that I did such a thing. I was quite upset after that because I felt that he should have been able to take it better, after all, it was just a teasing remark that people usually take in their stride, laugh it off and makes everyone laugh about it too.

However, I think that I did not consider his feelings. Perhaps all those times we were teasing him, although he laughed, he did not really like it and was holding it inside till it burst out that day when he saw the comments. Also, perhaps he was stressed out as a year 4 student with all the deadlines in school to meet, as well as the huge responsibilities he was carrying in the mentorship program, and perhaps he felt that his contributions were not appreciated.

I thought to SMS him because I did not have the courage to meet him face to face. I even had thoughts of not talking to him from now on, but I know that will be silly. As a group of mentors working together, we will always need each other’s help, and I will need his help in the future. As for my part, I want to grow more in being sensitive to other’s feelings and be more mature so as to not spoil the good relationships I have with my friends.

Yet, I hope that he will change his attitude too, if not it would be a little hard to work with him. How would you approach this? Or do you think that I should not attempt to mention to him about his behavior?