Managing Communication

Businesses need information control more than ever, whether it’s to run the hardware of the infrastructure or get facts and figures to the right people at the right time. With a wide range of tools, managers must direct information and messages in a number of different settings. When communication is handled well, employees can stay in touch, and the business can keep running smoothly in the market.

Our organisation has trouble communicating! From the very beginning to implementation and evaluation, we have to talk to a lot of different people, and each of them wants to be talked to in a different way. Depending on our role on the project, the stage of the project we are in, and the person we are talking to, our communications also change. To be successful on the project, you need to learn how to talk to people clearly, no matter what your job is.

There are a lot of different ways to talk about communications on projects, but this paper will focus on the best ways to involve stakeholders early on and keep communicating with them and other people throughout the project’s lifecycle. These days, a lot of our projects involve working online, and we probably work with people from all over the world. This makes communication even more difficult and complicated. It is easier to talk to people in these situations when you use technology and know about cultural differences and how they affect how we comprehend messages.

Systems for communication

Voice, text, and video can be sent and received anytime, anywhere, on laptops, netbooks, and smart phones. Communication executives need to keep up with new communications technology, not to buy the newest model, but to make sure that employees can focus on working together and talking to each other to get things done. Managers have to figure out what combination works best for the company and is easy for everyone to understand. It also has to be flexible enough to adapt to changes or growth in the business. Email, for instance, can quickly send bits of information and be used as an electronic paper trial, but it can’t handle messages that are too complicated or replace the quick exchange of meaning that can happen in person, such as through videoconferencing or even the phone.

One-on-One Talking

Whether it’s in a formal interview or a casual chat in the hallway, managers often share information with one person at a time. Managers need to be able to receive messages just as clearly as they send them in order to connect people. When managers share their ideas, they don’t just tell employees what they need to do; they also tell them what they can expect to happen as a result of doing the task. Managers need to pay close attention and note the tone of voice and body language to get the whole message. Managers can also get information from their employees by asking them “what makes you feel that way?” and other open-ended, neutral questions that make them think beyond yes or no without making them feel defensive. ” or “How did you come to that conclusion?” ”

Discussions in small groups

By getting things done in as little time as possible, managers can make meetings more productive. The manager who is moderating the meeting can get people ready by giving them an agenda that makes the goal clear. To make sure everyone contributes to the meeting, she can also give them tasks like coming up with possible solutions to problems or project progress reports. In the meeting, she can create a safe space by presenting ideas clearly, focusing on the goal instead of individuals, encouraging people to speak up and give their honest opinions, and making sure that everyone understands what was said.

Presentation

Whether they are training employees, making a sales pitch, or showing stakeholders results, managers carefully craft their addresses so that they control the message that is sent. As a reporter, he knows exactly who the audience is, what they want to hear, how to best deliver the address, when and where the address will take place, and why they need the information in the presentation. This helps him prepare his message. He then spends too much time getting ready, learning not only specific facts but also the bigger picture and how it affects the audience. This way, he doesn’t have to worry about forgetting lines and can instead focus on connecting with the audience. When he’s using visual aids like a PowerPoint presentation, he can make the notes or bullet points shorter by thinking about phrases or news headlines instead of full sentences. He can then speak to reinforce what’s on the screen.

Writing to each other#

If no one sees managers’ messages, they don’t work. This is true for everything from staff emails to big ad campaigns. People will weed out more information to focus on what they think is most important to them as they are flooded with it. People need to know what drives managers in order to get people to do what they want, whether that’s buying a new product or starting a new project. To write good messages, they should use the acronym AIDA: Get people’s attention by painting a picture with words; keep their interest by giving them relevant information; appeal to their desire by going beyond facts or attributes to the benefits that will meet their wants or needs; and make it clear what action they should take, including how, where, and when it should happen.

Dealing with conflicts

India News Online, 8 February 2020 0

Conflict management means being able to spot and solve disagreements in a fair and sensible way. Because disagreements happen all the time at work, it’s important to have people who understand them and know how to solve them. In this market, this is more important than ever. Everybody on the team wants to show how valuable they are to the company, which can sometimes cause problems with other team members.

“The idea behind conflict management is that not all disagreements can be solved, but learning how to handle them can make it less likely that they get worse in a way that doesn’t help anyone.” Training in conflict resolution, self-awareness about conflict modes, conflict communication skills, and setting up a structure for managing conflict in your environment are all parts of conflict management. Everyone in an organisation needs to know how to keep conflict to a minimum and solve problems caused by conflict before it gets in the way of their work.

What Makes Conflict Unique

Having conflict is a process

“Layers” of conflict happen. The first level is always confusion. There are also differences in values, points of view, interests, and how people interact with each other. The process starts with one party thinking the other is against them or hurting their interests and ends with them competing, working together, compromising, or avoiding.

Conflict is bound to happen.

Everywhere there is conflict. There are many kinds of people. So, they may be different from one another. And those differences, which could be about values or something else, cause fights. Conflict is unavoidable, but it can be avoided, redirected, or solved. When we deal with people’s lives, jobs, kids, pride, self-concept, ego, and sense of mission, conflict arises. Conflict is normal and often a good thing. For example, good teams always go through a period called “form, storm, norm, and perform.”

Life has a lot of conflict.

There are limited resources for people, groups, and organisations, but their needs and values are limitless. Therefore, this incompatibility will inevitably cause problems. There is no problem with the conflict itself, but it does become a problem if it is not handled well.

Perception

People involved in it must be able to see it for it to exist. Perception is more important than reality when talking to other people. How we act, think, and talk is affected by what we see and think.

Opposition

Someone must be seeing or doing something that the other person doesn’t want or like.

Interdependence and Getting Along

There has to be some kind of real or imagined connection between them. Interdependence is a must for interaction to happen. Conflict can only happen when two or more people interact.

Everybody has to deal with conflict.

Conflict can happen within a person, between two or more people, between groups, or between businesses.

Conflict has many sides.

Depending on how serious it is and how much you can handle, it comes in different forms. It can sometimes make even a bad situation better.

Different Ways to Handle Conflict

The goal of conflict management should be to reduce emotional conflicts at all levels, reach and keep a moderate level of substantive conflicts, and make sure that the two sides of a conflict are on the same page with their status and concerns.

In the last 100 years, a lot of research has been done on different ways to handle conflicts. They were called dominance, compromise, and integration by Mary Parker Follett (involves openness, exchanging information, looking for alternatives, and examining differences to solve the problem in a manner that is acceptable to both parties).

She also said that avoiding and stifling problems are other ways to deal with them. Then Robert R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton talked about five styles: pushing, pulling back, smoothing, compromising, and solving problems. Figure shows the five types of money used in the 21st century.

Trying to avoid (Leave-lose/win)

It’s not assertive and won’t work with you. The manager could think or act like there is no conflict, or they could just ignore it. This plan is used when trying to solve the problem is not worth the trouble. But this approach makes things worse over time.

Avoidance can look like politely avoiding the issue, putting off solving it until later, or just pulling away from a situation. To avoid everything, a turtle can pull its head and legs into its shell. This makes the turtle a symbol of avoidance.

Making room for (Yield-lose/win)

Being accommodating is the exact opposite of competing; it is non-aggressive and cooperative. Accommodation is when someone puts other people’s needs before their own in order to make others happy. This can be done by giving in, sacrificing, accepting, or yielding to the other person’s point of view.

Not being able to say no too often, though, can make your case so weak that no one ever hears you. There will be a lot of focus on relationships. When the new method is going to be used very soon, this style is also used. It might end the fight for the other person, but it will start a fight in the manager. This style doesn’t seem fair.

You can see the accommodating style in a chameleon, which changes colour to match its surroundings. The chameleon blends in very well with its surroundings because it changes colour to match.

Competing (Win or Lose)

The style is strong and doesn’t want to work with others. Something person puts their own needs ahead of everyone else’s. That word is also used for this style. One fights for his rights and does everything he can to get what he wants. There is not much focus on relationships. When managers use this style, they want others to do what they say or get their way.

You can only use this style once you have proven yourself to be a leader. It means that you don’t care much about relationships. A lion can also mean that you are competitive. The roar of the lion helps it get what it wants.

Giving in (mini-win/mini-lose)

Some of them are assertive, and some are helpful. The path to working together is through compromise, which is in the middle of competition and accommodation. The style means that both sides must give and take in order to be happy, or both sides can say, “Something is better than nothing.” It strikes a balance between competing and accommodating.

The direction of the relationship would be negotiated. The manager may find a middle ground when the goal is to keep going and not stop the journey. A zebra can stand for a style that is open to compromise. It looks like a zebra didn’t care whether it was a black or white horse, so it “split the difference” and picked one with black and white stripes.

Working together (Win-Win)

It is both assertive and helpful, which is the exact opposite of avoiding. It could also be called an integrative style. This style focuses on making everyone happy by addressing their deepest concerns and meeting many of their current needs through teamwork. This style helps employees feel like they own their work and are committed to it. This style can lead to new needs for both sides.

Different Kinds of War

Different kinds of conflicts can happen, as shown below:

Because they were involved

There are three types of conflicts: intrapersonal (with oneself), interpersonal (between two people), and organisational. Inter-organizational and intra-organizational conflict are the two types of organisational conflict, whether they are real or imagined. There is inter-organizational conflict when there are more than two groups.

Inter-organizational conflict can be seen when two or more businesses are in competition with each other. The conflict that happens inside an organisation is called intra-organizational conflict. It can be broken down by level (department, work team, individual), and it can be categorised as interpersonal, intragroup, or intergroup.

Again, interpersonal conflict, whether it’s about something real or something emotional, is disagreement between two or more people in the same or a different group, at the same or a different level, in an organisation. These people don’t have to be part of the same group.

Conflict between people can be broken down into two types: intergroup and intragroup. The first type, intragroup, is between people in the same group or between subgroups within the same group. The second type, intergroup, is between organisations or groups.

Based on the Scope

There can be both substantive and emotional conflicts. A substantive conflict is about the job itself, not about the people involved, while an affective conflict is about feelings. Important disagreements can be about the facts of a situation, the best way to solve a problem, ends or goals, or even values. In this way, it covers both task conflict and process conflict.

Procedure conflicts can happen when people don’t agree on things like meeting dates and times, giving people tasks, how to organise and lead a group, or how to settle disagreements. Unresolved disagreements about how to do things can stop people from working together on projects. Substantive conflict can help people work together to make decisions. You may also hear this term used to describe performance, task, issue, or active conflict.

A relational conflict, on the other hand, is the opposite of an agreeable conflict. It is about relationships or incompatibilities between people and is based on feelings and anger between them.

If emotional conflicts aren’t solved, they can be very bad for the organisation. There are different kinds of affective conflicts, such as relationship conflicts. A conflict of emotions almost always gets in the way of making decisions together. Members are negative, irritable, suspicious, and angry because of the conflict.

For instance, when people working together don’t agree on how to recognise and solve a problem because of strong personal prejudices, like prejudices based on strong social, political, economic, racial, religious, ethnic, philosophical, or interpersonal biases, they rarely be able to focus on the task at hand.

There is a link between the two ideas. It is possible to tell the difference between good and bad conflict. Substantive conflict is good, and affective conflict is bad. When people in a group disagree about the tasks being done or the performance itself, this is called substantive conflict.

Based on the Results

It’s possible for conflict to be constructive or destructive, helpful or harmful, and positive or negative. Groups can’t reach their goals when they have destructive conflicts, which are also called dysfunctional conflicts.

Conflict is bad when it takes people’s attention away from other important things, lowers morale or self-esteem, divides people and groups, makes it harder for them to work together, makes differences bigger or more obvious, and encourages harmful behaviour like fighting and calling people names.

Constructive conflicts, on the other hand, are also called functional conflicts because they help the group reach its goals and make things better. Conflict is constructive when it leads to a better understanding of important issues and problems, the finding of solutions to those problems, genuine communication, the release of emotions, anxiety, and stress, cooperation among people by learning more about each other and working together to solve the conflict, and personal growth through understanding and skill development.

In line with Sharing by Groups

Distributive and integrative conflicts are both possible. When you look at distributive conflict as a sharing of a set number of good outcomes or resources, you can see that one side will win and the other will lose, even if the other side gets some things they wanted.

Integrative: On the other hand, groups that use this model see conflict as a chance to bring together both groups’ needs and concerns in order to achieve the best result possible. When there is this kind of conflict, compromise is more important than when there is a distributive conflict. It has been shown that the distributive conflict never leads to better task-related results than the integrative conflict.

Based on the Strategy

There can be both competitive and cooperative conflicts. Competitive conflict builds on itself. The problem that started the fight is no longer important. The main issue isn’t really what’s causing the fight; it’s just a cover storey. People in competitive conflict want to win the argument or fight, even if it costs more and hurts more than not fighting at all.

In a competitive conflict, costs don’t matter, so irrationality is still what makes it stand out. When there is competitive conflict, there is a lot of fear, which is one of the main reasons why conflicts go crazy. Irrational conclusions can also be reached if someone has a personal or national stake in the outcome. This is especially true if self-esteem is at stake.

Ideological or moral disagreements can either lead to competitive conflict or make it more likely to happen. Even worse, irrationality sets in when the desire to win takes precedence over any specific reason for the conflict.

When powers are about equal, like they were in the alliances that started World War I, there is almost always conflict that turns competitive and irrational. The customers win in a competitive market, but the businesses may be at risk. But in sports, people are encouraged to compete.

People “sink or swim” together when they work together to reach a goal. But when people compete, if one person swims, the other person has to sink. Interest-based or integrative bargaining leads people to look for solutions where everyone wins. A cooperative approach fits in with these process. When people in a dispute work together to find a solution, they are more likely to build trust and find settlement options that are good for both sides.

Because of rights and interests

When people have different rights that are given to them by law, contract, agreement, or common practise, this is called a conflict of rights. It will cause trouble if this right is taken away. A court decision or arbitration, not negotiation, is the only way to settle this kind of disagreement.

On the other hand, there is a conflict of interests when someone or a group wants certain rights that are not protected by law or right. A disagreement like this can only be solved through talks or collective bargaining.

Stages of a fight

A manager needs to know how to deal with different stages of conflict. If a person knows what the real problem is and how the conflict started, it’s easy to solve the problem before it gets worse. In most cases, a conflict goes through these stages:

People are aware of not having enough resources or different languages or cultures. Sensitivity could lead to disagreements.

A hidden conflict in a competitive situation could become a real conflict if there are big differences between two or more groups.

An event could turn a conflict that wasn’t there before into an open conflict.

When a problem is solved, there is still a chance of conflict happening later on. In fact, the chance is higher than it was before if one side thinks that the resolution made everyone lose.

The reasons or sources of conflicts

One or more of the following things can lead to conflicts:

Dissonance in cognitive (knowledge and recognition) (Difference of opinion)

Convergent thinking (using logic and knowledge to narrow down the number of possible solutions to a problem) and divergent thinking are at odds with each other (thinking outwards instead of inward).

Status

Status means a state, condition, or event. When someone wants to be important and the “wrong” person gets the job.

Incongruence

Another person is forced to do something that goes against their wants or needs.

Incompatibility

Someone has behavioural preferences that can’t be met by someone else acting in a way that meets their own behavioural preferences. These preferences include attitudes, values, skills, goals, and perceptions. Economics: Not enough money is being paid to employees.

Stress

Stress from outside sources can cause conflicts, which can be functional or dysfunctional situations. Poor or inadequate organisational structure and not working together as a team.

Looking for Power

People often fight over who is in charge when everyone wants to be in charge and no one wants to follow.

Lack of Leadership

If a less experienced and qualified worker is led by someone less experienced and qualified, there will be conflict.

Randomly interpreting and applying rules and laws: People who are affected are unhappy when there isn’t enough openness and transparency.