This document discusses concepts related to managing conflicts and stress within groups. It defines conflict management as processes that teach individuals how to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts non-violently. It notes that conflict is natural and how it is handled determines if it is productive or destructive. It also discusses stress, defining it as any situation that places psychological or physical demands on a person. Occupational stress is defined as harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when a job's requirements do not match an employee's capabilities.

1. CONFLICTS, STRESS
AND COMMUNICATION
WITHIN GROUPS
Applying Different Concepts Related to
Managing Conflicts and Stress

2. Definition
 The term conflict management refers to
processes and programs that teach individuals
concepts and skills for preventing, managing,
and resolving conflicts non-violently. Conflict
management programs can teach life skills,
"win-win" negotiation strategies, mediation
skills, and violence prevention strategies.
They are implemented in elementary, middle
and high schools to help students, teachers,
administrators and parents resolve conflicts
effectively.

3. Basic Principles of Conflict Management
 Conflict is natural, necessary, and normal
 How we manage conflict determines
whether it is functional or dysfunctional –
productive or destructive
 There are a variety of conflict styles that
each have advantages in certain situations

4.  Conflict is natural. Conflict, to differing degrees,
occurs daily in everyone's life. Conflict in and of
itself is not necessarily good or bad.
 It's the way that conflict is handled that
makes the outcome positive or negative. If
handled effectively, conflict can create a good
learning experience. If handled ineffectively,
conflict can quickly escalate, even to physical and
emotional violence.
 Basic Principles of Conflict Management in Schools

5.  Individuals can learn new skills. Although conflict is a
natural part of human existence, many children and
adults lack the skills necessary to effectively resolve
conflicts. However, children and adults can learn new
conflict skills and can learn to rely upon them when in
conflict situations. Young people and adults can quickly
learn to use effective problem-solving concepts and skills,
if they are given an opportunity to practice the new skills
are encouraged to use their new skills in real life
situations and are able to observe peers and people in
authority modeling effective problem-solving skills

6.  Ideally, all students, school personnel, parents, and
community members who work with youth should
receive conflict management skills training. Although
this goal cannot be accomplished immediately, it should be a
long term goal of school and community leaders.
 Conflict Resolution education (CRE) should be
culturally sensitive. Some people assume that conflict
management can only work in certain cultures and certain
school populations. The research demonstrates that many
CRE programs are equally effective in a variety of cultural
contexts. However, programs may be more effective and
more readily adopted by students and staff if they are clearly
sensitive to the school culture and the student culture

7. What is Stress?
Stress is any action or situation
that places special physical or
psychological demands upon a
person, anything that can unbalance
his individual equilibrium. And while
the physiological response to such
demand is surprisingly uniform, the
forms of stress are innumerable.

8. 1.1 CONCEPT OF STRESS
 Stress is a complex phenomenon. It is very subjective
experience. What may be challenge for one will be a stressor
for another. It depends largely on background experiences,
temperament and environmental conditions. Stress is a part of
life and is generated by constantly changing situations that a
person must face. The term stress refers to an internal state,
which results from frustrating or unsatisfying conditions. A
certain level of stress is unavoidable. Because of its complex
nature stress has been studied for many years by researchers
in psychology, sociology and medicine
1.2 DEFINING STRESS
 Defining stress is a very complex matter, which is the subject
of different analyses and continuous debate among experts.
Beyond the details of this debate, a general consensus can be
reached about a definition of stress, which is centered around
the idea of a perceived imbalance in the interface between an
individual, the environment and other individuals

9. 1.3 OCCUPATIONAL STRESS
 Occupational stress can be defined as the harmful
physical and emotional responses that occur when the
requirements of the job do not match the capabilities,
resources, or needs of the worker. Job stress can lead
to poor health and even injury. The concept of
Occupational stress is often confused with challenge,
but these concepts are not the same.
1.4 DEFINITIONS OF OCCUPATIONAL STRESS
 According to Kyriacou (1987), defines “teacher stress
as the experience by a teacher of unpleasant
emotions such as tension, frustration, anger and
depression resulting from aspects of his work as a
teacher.”

10. 1.5 CAUSES OF OCCUPATIONAL STRESS
 Nearly everyone agrees that Occupational stress results from
the interaction of the worker and the conditions of work. Views
differ, however, on the importance of worker characteristics
versus working conditions as the primary cause of Occupational
stress. These differing viewpoints are important because they
suggest different ways to prevent stress at work.
1.6 SYMPTOMS OF WORK-RELATED STRESS
 Defining a clear link between occupational causes, and the
resulting symptoms is much harder for a condition such as
stress than is it for a disease such as mesothelioma (which is
only caused by exposure to asbestos). Because many of the
symptoms of stress are generalised - such as increased anxiety,
or irritability - it is easy for them to be ascribed to a
characteristic of the worker, rather than to a condition of the
work.

11. Differentiating among the various
stages of group formation
 Group development
The goal of most research on group development is to learn why and
how small groups change over time. To do this, researchers examine
patterns of change and continuity in groups over time. Aspects of a group
that might be studied include the quality of the output produced by a
group, the type and frequency of its activities, its cohesiveness, the
existence of group conflict.
A number of theoretical models have been developed to explain how
certain groups change over time. Listed below are some of the most
common models. In some cases, the type of group being considered
influenced the model of group development proposed as in the case of
therapy groups. In general, some of these models view group change as
regular movement through a series of "stages," while others view them as
"phases" that groups may or may not go through and which might occur
at different points of a group's history. Attention to group development
over time has been one of the differentiating factors between the study of
ad hoc groups and the study of teams such as those commonly used in
the workplace, the military, sports and many other contexts.

12. Ways a manager can
induce desirable
conflict

13. What is Conflict
 The potential for conflict exists whenever
and wherever people have contact. As
people are organized into groups to seek a
common goal, the probability of conflict
greatly increases. Since only the most
serious conflicts make headlines, conflict
has a negative connotation for many
people. All conflicts are not the same.

14. Conflict and Competition
 Although competition is often confused with conflict, there are important
differences between the two concepts. U.S. society is based on a
tradition of competition in jobs and leisure activities as well as in stress
competition. Most competition however, contains the seed for potential
conflict.
 Conflict and competition have a common root because in each case
individuals or groups are usually striving toward incompatible goals. The
major difference exists in the form of interference that blocks attainment
of the goal.
 In competition between groups working toward the same goal, the
competitors have "rules" (formal and informal guidelines) that limit what
they can do to each other in attempting to reach their goal. Athletic
events are examples of organized competition with extensive rules
setting forth boundaries of behavior.

15. The Dimensions of Conflict
 Robinson (1972) identifies the dimensions of
conflict as: ( I ) threats or disputes over territory,
whether the boundaries of the territory are
physical, social, or work boundaries; and (2)
threats to values, goals, and policies, as well as
threats to behavior.
 With regard to territory, threats to physical
boundaries often involve property disputes or
controversy over water resources usage by
different groups.

16. The Effects of Conflict -
Positive Aspects of Conflict
 "Not all conflict is bad and not all cooperation is good,"
according to Robinson (1972). People tend to view conflict as
a negative force operating against successful completion of
group or community goals. Conflict can be harmful to groups
but may also serve some potentially positive functions,
depending upon the types of groups within and among which
it occurs. Not every type of conflict may benefit groups, and
conflict may not serve such functions for all groups (Coser
and Rosenberg, 1964). Conflict could be productive and
could have positive effects on groups. Three of these
positive effects are: improving the quality of decisions,
stimulating involvement in the discussion, and building
group cohesion.

17. Identifying roles people fill in an
organizations communication network
 Organizational communication is a subfield
of the larger discipline of communication
studies. Organizational communication, as
a field, is the consideration, analysis, and
criticism of the role of communication in
organizational contexts.

18. History of Organizational Communication
 The field traces its lineage through business information, business
communication, and early mass communication studies published in the
1930s through the 1950s. Until then, organizational communication as a
discipline consisted of a few professors within speech departments who
had a particular interest in speaking and writing in business settings. The
current field is well established with its own theories and empirical
concerns distinct from other fields.
 Communication (from Latin "communis", meaning to share) is the activity
of conveying information through the exchange of thoughts, messages, or
information, as by speech, visuals, signals, writing, or behavior.
 Nonverbal communication describes the process of conveying meaning in
the form of non-word messages. Research shows that the majority of our
communication is non verbal, also known as body language. In fact, 63-
93% of communication is non-verbal
 Oral communication, while primarily referring to spoken verbal
communication, can also employ visual aids and non-verbal elements to
support the conveyance of meaning. Oral communication includes
speeches, presentations, discussions, and aspects of interpersonal
communication.