by Stress management is the need of the hour. There are very many proven methods of coping with stress. The most significant or sensible way out is a change in lifestyle. These help us to remain calm and effective in high pressure situations, and help us avoid the problems of long term stress The most sensible way out is a change in lifestyle.
Relaxation techniques such as meditation, physical exercises, listening to soothing music, deep breathing, various natural and alternative methods, personal growth techniques, visualization and massage are some of the most effective of the known non-invasive stress busters.
- Physical relaxation techniques are as effective as mental techniques in reducing stress. In fact, the best relaxation is achieved by using physical and mental techniques together. Physical relaxation techniques help to reduce muscle tension and manage the effects of the fight-or-flight response on the body. Participate in activities that you don’t find stressful, such as sports, social events or hobbies
- Exercise on a regular basis, eat well-balanced meals and get enough sleep.
- Don’t worry about things you can’t control, such as the weather, meditate and try to look at change as a positive challenge, not as a threat.
- Resolve conflicts with other people by talking with a trusted friend, family member or counselor and settle grievances through a mediator.
Most large companies in the United States provide some type of stress management training for their workforce. Some have employee assistance programs (EAPs) to provide individual counseling for employees with both work and personal problems
Stress management training is inexpensive, easy to implement, and may rapidly reduce stress symptoms such as anxiety and sleep disturbances. However, the beneficial effects on stress symptoms are often short lived. Such programs often ignore important root causes of stress because they focus on the worker and not the environment.
Organizations cutting across industries are gearing up to provide employees with a stress-free healthy environment. According to the Experts, though stress at the workplace is a global phenomenon, professionals in some industries are more susceptible to stress than others.
For instance, surveys conducted in 2006 and 2007 in the UK and the US respectively, found that employees in Information Technology (IT) industry (including the ITeS outsourcing industry) were the most stressed. Therefore, these organizations started implementing various unconventional methods to decrease stress at the workplace.
Even in India, organizations have woken up to this menace and are resorting to novel methods including teaching the employees dancing and music, trekking. etc, to reduce stress at the workplace. For instance, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. has started different clubs like Theatre Club, Bibliophile Club, Adventure & Trekking Club, Fitness Club, Sanctuary Club, Music Club and Community Services Club, etc.
Infosys Technologies Ltd. focuses on increasing self-awareness and provides the employees with guidance on how to cope with stress through a series of workshops by experts. In addition to conducting stress management workshops, organizations are also conducting off-site picnics, games, and inter-departmental competitions. Some companies promote open communication to improve interactions and camaraderie at the workplace.
Conflict Management
‘Conflict management is the principle that all conflicts cannot necessarily be resolved, but learning how to manage conflicts can decrease the odds of non-productive escalation. Conflict management involves acquiring skills related to conflict resolution, self-awareness about conflict modes, conflict communication skills, and establishing a structure for management of conflict in your environment.’ All members of every organization need to have ways of keeping conflict to a minimum – and of solving problems caused by conflict, before conflict becomes a major obstacle to your work.
Conflict
Conflicts are natural in all walks of daily life – both at workplace and home. Thus, conflict is ever present and both charming and maddening. But conflict is a complex and big subject. There are many sources of conflict. Conflict occurs when individuals or groups are not obtaining what they need or want and are seeking their own self-interest.
Sometimes the individual is not aware of the need and unconsciously starts to act out. Other times, the individual is very aware of what he or she wants and actively works at achieving the goal. It would be better to identify conflict at an early stage and come to an understanding.
The concept of conflict is controversial. Psychologists and sociologists have given different meanings. It is being defined as a process by few, an obstructive behavior, and goal incompatibility by others. Conflict can be expressed as:
Conflict is a process, where perception (real or otherwise) leads to disruption of desirable state of harmony and stability in an interdependent world.
Characteristics of Conflict
- Conflict is a Process
Conflict occurs in ‘layers’. First layer is always misunderstanding. The other layers are differences of values, differences of viewpoint, differences of interest, and interpersonal differences. It is also called a process because it begins with one party perceiving the other to oppose or negatively affect its interests and ends with competing, collaborating, compromising or avoiding.
- Conflict is Inevitable
Conflict exists everywhere. No two persons are the same. Hence they may have individual differences. And the differences may be because of values or otherwise, lead to conflict. Although inevitable, conflict can be minimized, diverted and/or resolved. Conflict develops because we are dealing with people’s lives, jobs, children, pride, self-concept, ego and sense of mission. Conflict is inevitable and often good, for example, good teams always go through a “form, storm, norm and perform” period.
- Conflict is a Normal Part of Life
Individuals, groups, and organizations have unlimited needs and different values but limited resources. Thus, this incompatibility is bound to lead to conflicts. The conflict is not a problem, but if it is poorly managed then it becomes a problem.
- Perception
It must be perceived by the parties to it, otherwise it does not exist. In interpersonal interaction, perception is more important than reality. What we perceive and think affects our behaviour, attitudes, and communication.
- Opposition
One party to the conflict must be perceiving or doing something the other party does not like or want.
- Interdependence and Interaction
There must be some kind of real or perceived interdependence. Without interdependence there can be no interaction. Conflict occurs only when some kind of interaction takes place.
- Everyone is inflicted with Conflict
Conflict may occur within an individual, between two or more individuals, groups or between organizations.
- Conflict is not Unidimensional
It comes into different ways in accordance with degree of seriousness and capacity. At times, it may improve even a difficult situation.
Stages of Conflict
A manager must know various stages of conflict to handle it. The solution to conflict becomes easy before it becomes serious, if he knows of the real issue behind the conflict and how the conflict developed. Normally a conflict passes through the following stages:
(a) People recognize lack of resources, diversity of language or culture. Sensitiveness may possibly result in conflict.
(b) If there are serious differences between two or among more than two groups, the latent conflict in a competitive situation may turn out into conflict.
(c) An incident may trigger a latent conflict into an open conflict
(d) Once a problem has been solved, the potential for conflict still remains in the aftermath. In fact the potential is bigger than before, if one party perceives that the resolution has resulted into win-lose situation.
Types of Conflict
Conflicts can be of different types as described below:
- On the basis of involvement
Conflicts may be intrapersonal (conflict with self), interpersonal (between two persons) and organizational. Organizational conflict, whether real or perceived, is of two types –intra-organizational and inter-organizational. Inter-organizational conflict occurs between two or more organizations.
Different businesses competing against each other are a good example of inter-organizational conflict. Intra-organizational conflict is the conflict within an organization, and can be examined based upon level (e.g. department, work team, individual), and can be classified as interpersonal, intragroup and intergroup.
Interpersonal conflict-once again-whether it is substantive or affective, refers to conflict between two or more individuals (not representing the group of which they are a part of) of the same or different group at the same or different level, in an organization.
Interpersonal conflict can be divided into intergroup and intergroup conflict. While the former— intragroup-occurs between members of a group (or between subgroups within a group), intergroup-occurs between groups or units in an organization.
- On the basis of Scope
Conflicts may be substantive and Affective. A substantive conflict is associated with the job, not individuals, while an affective conflict is drawn from emotions. Substantive conflicts may be over the facts of a situation, the method or means of achieving a solution to the problem, ends or goals, and values. Thus it includes task conflict and process conflict in its scope.
Procedural conflicts can include disagreements about factors such as meeting dates and times, individual task assignments, group organization and leadership, and methods of resolving disagreements. Unresolved procedural conflicts can prevent work on collaborative projects. Substantive conflict can enhance collaborative decision-making. Substantive conflict is also called performance, task, issue, or active conflict.
On the other hand, an affective conflict (also called as relationship or opposite of agreeable conflict) deals with interpersonal relationships or incompatibilities and centres on emotions and frustration between parties.
Affective conflicts can be very destructive to the organization, if remains unresolved. Relationship conflict comes under the scope of affective conflicts. An affective conflict is nearly always disruptive to collaborative decision-making. The conflict causes members to be negative, irritable, suspicious, and resentful.
For example, when collaborators disagree on the recognition and solution to a task problem because of personal prejudices (e.g. prejudices stemming from strong social, political, economic, racial, religious, ethnic, philosophical, or interpersonal biases) they are seldom able to focus on the task.
The two concepts are related to each other. If one could make a distinction between good and bad conflict, substantive would be good and affective conflict would be bad. Substantive conflict deals with disagreements among group members about the content of the tasks being performed or the performance itself.
- On the basis of Results
Conflict can be Constructive or Destructive, creative or restricting, and positive or negative. Destructive conflicts are also known as dysfunctional conflicts, because such conflicts prevent a group from attaining its goals.
Conflict is destructive when it takes attention away from other important activities, undermines morale or self-concept, polarises people and groups, reduces cooperation, increases or sharpens difference, and leads to irresponsible and harmful behaviour, such as fighting, name-calling.
On the other hand, constructive conflicts are also known as functional conflicts, because they support the group goals and help in improving performance. Conflict is constructive when it results in clarification of important problems and issues, results in solutions to problems, involves people in resolving issues important to them, causes authentic communication, helps release emotion, anxiety, and stress, builds cooperation among people through learning more about each other; joining in resolving the conflict, and helps individuals develop understanding and skills.
- On the basis of Sharing by Groups
Conflicts may be Distributive and Integrative. Distributive conflict is approached as a distribution of a fixed amount of positive outcomes or resources, where one side will end up winning and the other losing, even if they do win some concessions.
On the other hand, integrative – Groups utilizing the integrative model see conflict as a chance to integrate the needs and concerns of both groups and make the best outcome possible. This type of conflict has a greater emphasis on compromise than the distributive conflict. It has been found that the integrative conflict results in consistently better task related outcomes than the distributive conflict.
- On the basis of Strategy
Conflicts may be competitive and cooperative. Competitive conflict is accumulative. The original issue that began the conflict becomes irrelevant. The original issue is more of a pretext than a cause of the conflict. Competitive conflict is marked by the desire to win the fight or argument, even if winning costs more and causes more pain than not fighting at all.
Costs do not matter in competitive conflict, and therefore, irrationality remains its main mark. Competitive conflict is characterized by fear, which is one of the important ingredients in a conflict becoming irrational. If one is personally invested in the outcome, this too leads to irrational conclusions, especially if issues of self-esteem, whether personal or national, are involved.
Competitive conflict can either begin by, or be rationalized by, conflicts of ideology or principle. Even more, when the desire to win overtakes any specific reason for the conflict, irrationally develops.
Importantly in history, when powers are roughly equal, such as the World War I alliances were, conflict that becomes competitive and irrational nearly always develops. In economic competition customers are the winners and the firms may be at risk. But in sports competition is encouraged.
In a cooperative situation the goals are so linked that everybody ‘sinks or swims’ together, while in the competitive situation if one swims, the other must sink. A cooperative approach aligns with the process of interest-based or integrative bargaining, which leads parties to seek win-win solutions. Disputants that work cooperatively to negotiate a solution are more likely to develop a relationship of trust and come up with mutually beneficial options for settlement.
- On the basis of Rights and Interests
Conflict of rights means where people are granted certain rights by law or by contract or by previous agreement or by established practice. If such a right is denied, it will lead to conflict. Such a conflict is settled by legal decision or arbitration, not negotiation
On the other hand conflict of interests means where a person or group demands certain privileges, but there is no law or right in existence. Such a dispute can be settled only through negotiation or collective bargaining.
