CHAPTER 13: INTERPERSONAL, GROUP AND WORKPLACE CONFLICT

Today, well we continued to watch the video presentations of the remaining groups~ as we have nothing to say about today's class, we would include in this post some information on chapter 13.

Definition

Interpersonal Conflict refers to interpersonal, group and workplace conflict that occurs when people are interdependent and their goals are incompatible.

Online & Workplace Conflicts

Sending commercial messages to those who did not request them creates online conflicts. Spamming also one of the examples of conflicts. Sending messages that personally attack another user is called flaming and it will eventually leads to flame war. The example of workplace conflicts are procedural and people conflicts. Procedural conflicts involve disagreements over who is in charge while people conflicts occur when one member dominates the group. There are 4 principles which have special relevance to conflict in these groups : preserve the dignity and respect of all members, listen emphatically, seek out and emphasize common ground, then value diversity and differences.

Myths about Conflicts

People may be operating on the basis of false assumptions about what conflict is and it means. Not all conflicts are negative, some can resolve difficulties and actually improve the relationship. But others can hurt the relationship. Therefore, we need to learn how to manage conflicts in productive and appropriate ways.

                       Principles of Conflicts

1) Conflict Can Center on Content & Relationship Issues

Content conflicts center on objects,events and persons that are usually external to the parties involved in the conflict. It has something to do with millions of issues that people normally argue and fight about. Relationship conflicts are numerous. For instance, when a younger brother refuses to obey his elder brother.

2) Conflicts Can Be Negative or Positive

In negative aspect, conflicts often lead to increased negative regard for the opponent and focused largely hurting on the other person. Whereas in a positive aspect, it enables you to examine a problem and work towards a potential solution.

Conflict Takes Place in a Context

1) Physical context : either engage in conflict privately or publicly.

2) Sociopsychological context : a friendly or hostile context will give different impacts on the conflict.

3) Temporal context : a conflict immediately after a hard day of work will engender feelings different from a conflict after an enjoyable dinner.

4) Cultural context : types of conflicts arise depend on the cultural orientation of individuals involved. The cultural norms of organizations also affect the types of conflicts that evoke and the ways people may deal with them.

Conflict Styles have Consequences

1) Competing : I Win, You Lose This is the conflict style of a person who simply imposes his or her will on other. It leads to resentment on the part of the person who loses and cause even more conflicts to happen.

2) Avoiding : I Lose, You Lose Both parties are avoiding the conflicts and withdraw from it. The problem isn't go away and no one benefits.

3) Accommodating : I Lose, You Win One person sacrifices own needs for the needs of the other in order to maintain peace. Not a long-lasting resolution and you may come to resent the partner as well as the relationship.

4) Collaborating : I Win, You Win Focus on both sides' needs. Enable each person's needs to be met.

5) Compromising : I Win , You Lose, You Win, I Lose. Some concern for own needs and other's needs as well. May lead to dissatisfactions by both parties over the losses.

Preliminaries to Conflict Management

Before the conflict, try to fight in private, be sure that everyone is ready to fight, knowing what you're fighting about, fight about problems that can be solved and consider what beliefs you hold that may need to be reexamined. After the conflict, learn from the conflict and the process you went through in trying to resolve it. The factors that will affect the strategies you choose to manage interpersonal conflicts are goals, emotional state, cognitive assessment, family history and personality as well as communication competence. Besides, these are the steps that can be used during managing a conflict, define or analyze the problem, establish criteria for evaluating solutions, identify problem solutions, evaluate solution, select the best solution and lastly test the selected solution.

Conflict Management Strategies

1) Win-Lose & Win-Win Strategies

Win-Win solution is the most desirable. It leads to mutual satisfaction and prevent resentment that win-lose solution often engender.

2) Avoidance and Active Fighting

Avoidance strategy is nonproductive and might involve actual physical fight. Nonnegotiation is a special type of avoidance. It takes the form of hammering away at your point of view until the other person gives in, also known as steamrolling. Active fighting involves taking responsibility for your thoughts and feelings.

3) Force & Talk

Force may be emotional or physical, it is unproductive. The only alternative to force is talk.

4) Blame & Empathy

Blame is unproductive. While empathy is an excellent alternative to blame. Try to feel what the other person is feeling and think in other's perspective. Demonstrate empathic understanding.

5) Gunnysacking & Present Focus

Gunnysacking is an unproductive strategy , it is the practice of storing up grievances so as to unload them at another time. Present focus means focus in your current conflict.

6) Manipulation & Spontaneity

Manipulation involves an avoidance of open conflict. Try to express your feeling with spontaneity and honesty instead of manipulating.

7) Personal Rejection & Acceptance

Personal rejection is the practice that withhold approval and affection from his or her opponent in conflict, trying to win the argument by getting the other person to break down in the face of this withdrawal. Instead of rejection, express positive feelings for the other person and for the relationship or group.

8) Fighting Below & Above the Belt

When you hit someone below the emotional belt line, a tactic called beltlining. Bear in mind that the aim of interpersonal and small group conflict is not to win, but is to resolve a problem and strengthen the relationship or group.

9) Face-Detracting & Face-Enhancing Strategies

Facing-detracting or face-attacking strategies involve treating the other person as incompetent or untrustworthy,as unable or bad. Another type of face-detracting strategy is to demand someone to do something or force them to do it. Face-enhancing techniques, in contrast help the other person to maintain a positive image.

10) Aggressiveness & Argumentativeness

Verbal aggressiveness means one person tries to win an argument by attacking the other's person self-concept. While argumentativeness refers to your willingness to argue for a point of view, tendency to speak your mind on significant issues. Argumentativeness is constructive, leads to relationship satisfaction and prevent relationship violence. In contrast, verbal aggressiveness is destructive, causes relationship dissatisfaction and leads to relationship violence.

CHAPTER 12: HUMAN COMMUNICATION IN THE WORKPLACE (ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION)

1. Organizations

- Organization is an organized group of people who work together to achieve compatible goals.

- Importance of Organizational Communication

    Organizational communication helps to create:

          ü  Jobs/employment

          ü  Adapting to a converging world

          ü  Influence/power of majority.

 - Characteristics

         v  Rules and Regulations

         v  Division of Labor

         v  Systems of Rewards and Consequences

         v  Organizational Culture

2. Organizational Messages

Organizational messages are divided into 2 categories, which is formal communication and informal communication.

©      Formal Communication: Messages that are sanctioned by the organization itself and are organizationally focused.

- Upward Communication

·                       sent from lower level employees to higher level employees.

·                       (From workers to managers)

- Downward Communication

·                       sent from higher level employees to lower level employees.

·                      (From managers to workers)

- Lateral Communication: messages between equal level employees.

·                        (manager-to-manager, worker-to-worker)

©      Informal Communication

- Grapevine messages don’t follow any hierarchical lines of communication (gossips).

- Dealing with inevitable office grapevine

o   Understand grapevine purposes

o   Treat grapevine information as tentative

o   Repeat with discretion

o   Tap into the grapevine

o   Assume your messages will be repeated

Communication networks:

Information Overload: The excessive amount of information that workers have to deal with, the lack of clarity in many messages, and the increasing complexity of messages.

Information Isolation: The situation in which certain workers receive little or no information or when some people are excluded from the informal gossip and grapevine messages.

3. Organizational Relationships

- Sexual harassment refers to the sending of unwanted sexual messages.

   - Quid pro quo harassment

   - Hostile environment harassment

- Bullying: gossiping, verbal insults, excessive blaming

- Workplace romances

   - positive side: The work environment seems a perfect place to meet a potential partner

   - negative side: It may not necessarily be good for other workers or the organization as a

                             whole.

- Mentoring: An experienced employee helps to train a less-experiences person.

- Networking: Broad process of enlisting the aid of other people to help you solve a problem or offer                        insights that bear on your problem.

CONTINUE WITH VIDEO PRESENTATIONS

There is nothing much to say on today's activity. All we did was to watch the remaining groups to present their video. We did manage to learn some things from the video. Some of the video topics presented to day were public communication and interviewing. Ok, so we only wrote 3 sentences on today's activity.

Well, that should not be a problem tough as long as we include this activity in our post.

Haha..Till then, do catch up with us in the next post for more information on Human Communication.

CHAPTER 11: MEMBERS AND LEADERS

For today, we would talk on members and leaders in a small group communication.

            In a small group communication, there would be a leader and its members. Each of them, the leader and his or her members has their own roles.  There are certain roles that are frequently served by members and leaders serve those rules too. So, what are those roles? First, GROUP TASK ROLES are those who help the group to focus more specifically on achieving goals. Those who perform this role work together as a group rather than an individual. There are 12 types of group task roles.

Initiator-contributor Presents new ideas or perspectives.

Information seeker Seeks for clarification of a matter by asking for facts and opinions.

Opinion seeker Tries to discover the values that underlie their group tasks.

Information giver The one that gives facts and opinions.

Opinion giver Gives values and opinions.

Elaborator Build up on what others had clarified by giving examples and trying to work out possible solutions.

Coordinator Helps in coordinating the activities of different members.

Orienter Summarize the things said and addresses the direction the group is taking.

Evaluator-critic Evaluates the decisions made before providing the group with positive and negative feedback.

Energizer Stimulates the group to be more active.

Procedural technician They focus on mechanical duties such as distributing group materials.

Recorder The one who jots down the activities done by the group.

Relationships must be nourished for a group to function effectively, at the same time members would feel satisfied and are productive. But, what if the group needs are not met? Members of the group would frequently engage in conflict. Thus, they might find the group process unsatisfying. However, fear not as we could use the 7 specific roles of GROUP BUILDING AND MAINTENANCE ROLES.

First, we have the encourager who supplies members with positive reinforcement in the form of social approval or praise. For example, praising your member for a job well done or approve their proposed ideas. Secondly, there is the harmonizer who mediates the differences among group members. Some use compromise as a way to resolve conflict between group member ideas and these kind of people are known as compromiser. Besides that, some play the role of a gatekeeper-expenditure by reinforcing the efforts of others to keep the channel of communication open. A standard should be set for the functioning of the group as well as for its solutions so, someone should play the role of a standard setter. There is also a role of group observer and commentator whereby they would remember to keep a record of the group proceedings to be used in the group’s evaluation of itself. Lastly, a follower would get along with every group members and passively accepts the ideas of other group members. There are an audience rather than an active member.

            Apart from group task roles and group building and maintenance roles, INDIVIDUAL ROLES are present too. This is a counterproductive role as they would hinder their group’s productivity and members satisfaction. There are 8 type of individual roles.

1.      Aggressor

2.      Blocker

3.      Recognition seeker

4.      Self-confessor

5.      Playboy, playgirl

6.      Dominator

7.      Help seeker

8.      Special interest pleader

Now, how can we that ensure a group has a good or an effective interaction and contribute efficiently? We can perform this by using several ways. First, the interaction process analysis. This is an alternative way to look at the contributions of group members.

Next, member participation is vital. Always emphasize on teamwork. Furthermore, avoid attacking others personally, be open-minded to criticism and allow time for better understanding. Groupthink should be discouraged too which means to not fall into situations where things are agreed, done or disagreed for the sake of convenience.

As mentioned earlier, a group should consist of members and a leader. In most small groups, one person would serve as the leader but in certain groups, leadership would be shared among several people.  A person who is the leader of the group should possess leadership qualities. All of us have potential leadership in ourselves as “leaders are not born, they are made”.  

Source:http://www.exceld.com.au/home/

There are 4 approaches to leadership. First, traits approach to leadership states that a leader should possess certain qualities in order to perform their duties well. Next, functional approach to leadership tells us that a leader should know what action to take when facing with a given situation. Besides that, there is transformational approach to leadership whereby a leader would elevate the group members. Lastly, situational approach to leadership focuses on two main responsibilities of a leader that are accomplishing the task given and making sure that the members are satisfied.

The functions and skills of leadership are essentially significant in a small group. Hence, a leader should always be ready to play their role. It is also their job to activate the group agenda and as well as promote group interaction.  Leadership also helps to empower group members by raising their self-esteem, sharing leadership skills with the group members, being constructively critical and encourage growth and development. Apart from that, an individual with leadership abilities could help to keep member s on track of their work. This could be done by asking questions, summarizing the group’s accomplishment, setting an agenda and focus on current assignments. Next, member satisfaction could be ensured and ongoing evaluation could be encouraged too. Besides that, small group conflict could be managed more easily and lastly a leader with leadership qualities would follow up on their members working process.

However, culture would influence a group’s membership and leadership. First, individualism and collectivism has a great influence towards a membership and leadership. In both context,  a truly capable leader must be able to lead. What differs them is the importance of the members in the group. Individualist culture leaders care less about their members but collectivist cultures they think that a group is a significant entity. Cultural beliefs is also a part of this influence. In Asian cultures, the role of the leader is a very coveted and highly regarded position. Thus, a leader would be well respected. Despite of that, it is not easy to achieve the role of a leader in the Asian culture.

To wrap it all up, both the leader and the members of a small group is equally important in achieving success. Without teamwork, all would fall apart. Henry Ford once said:

“Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success”

VIDEO PRESENTATION DAY!

     Well, there is class today. It is not a big deal but it is on a SATURDAY! Do you GET ME!! So, it is a big deal after all! Never mind about that, the classroom had just a handful of students. And, yes it is our video presentation day. We were the second group to present our video. We had no experience in video-making before and this was our first..Hopefully this would be the last. It was a tedious process in completing our video. It was a good thing that the video played smoothly or else all our hard work would be *Poof* disappeared just like that.

     Before the video presentation, we continued with our mini presentation for chapter 11,12 & 13. We had done our part for this,so basically we just sat there and look at the remaining groups to present their part. 
     
     How glad we were when class ended. We headed home right away to continue our day off for the week.. So, that is all from us today! Check out the next post which would updated soon!

Source: http://www.teachforthebroadestreach.org/of-interest-to-parents.html

QUIZ DAY!!

Well, well, well....we had Quiz 2 today. (>.<)
Honestly, the questions were not that tough..

AND

that was the good part :)
maybe it is because we were only tested on 2 chapters- 8&9
Glad that it is over~Whee
Oh..we almost  almost forgotten
Presentation today!!
Being the second group was really nerve-racking..
*Giggle*
But, to say the truth, our presentation did went smoothly.
Woah!!Wait a second.
Did we just praised ourself?
Never mind, sometimes it is good to take good credit of a job well done.
Actually this activity is quite good .
It was a great experience for us as we learned how to put important points in our slide and give examples for our points that were not stated in the slide.
Besides that, through this activity we gain some skills on effective presentation.
So, that is all from us today..
Do stay tune for more updates!

PRESENTATION ANYONE?

     Well, for the following three chapters -11,12 &13 we were told by Mr. Anwari that each group would be given a subtopic from any of those main topics. We were asked to create a slideshow and present it during class hours on Thursday.      
     We also had to submit our slides by 5.00 PM the following day. Our group got the topic group building and maintenance roles from chapter 11. Our subtopic was considered short compared with other groups. THANK GOD and of course thank you sir! We are just so lucky. 
Apart from the presentations, the anxious moment was the announcement of our mid-term results. With heavy steps, each of us went out and took our exam paper, peek at the results and the outcome was...

"There were groans, frustrating faces and smiles."

     So,for those who did well, keep up with your good work! For others, just bear in mind that there is always room for improvement :D Once a failure is not always a failure.

CHAPTER 10: SMALL GROUP COMMUNICATION

Small Groups and Teams

A small group is a collection of individuals who are connected to one another by some common purpose, are interdependent, have degree of organizations among them and view themselves as a group. The members of a small group normally are 3-12 people. All the people in small group are as senders and receivers. All of the individuals in the group must have a same aim if not they would not be considered as a group. All the members in the group are interdependent, meaning to say the action of one member has impact for other members. Besides, the members of small group must be connected by some organizing rules which are rigid. The self-perception as a group is important among the members. They must view themselves as a part of the group to increase the productivity.

For your information, a team is a kind of small group too. The team is defined as a small group constructed for a specific purpose whose members have clearly defined roles, whose members are committed to pursue the same goal and that is content focused. A team is usually constructed for a particular task. After the task is completed, they might be assigned to other teams or go their separate ways. Each member's role is clearly defined in the team, each of them has an unique function and is an authority in a specific area. Furthermore, the members in a team know exactly what they goal is and they are committed to achieve the same target. Teams are also more content focused and their communication proceeds largely through exchange of content messages.

Small groups and teams use a variety of channels. Nowadays, small groups and teams interaction take place online besides face-to-face interaction. Virtual groups not only serving the relationship purpose but also serving business task purposes as well. Examples of virtual groups are Twitter and Facebook.

There are 5 small group stages. First is the opening stage. It is usually a getting acquainted time in which members introduce themselves. Next, we move on to the feedforward stages. The members attempt to identify what needs to be done, who will do it. Third is the business stage. This is the stage where the actual work begins. After that is the feedback stage. The group may reflect on what it has done and their performances will be evaluated as well. The last stage is closing. The group members may focus on individuality again.

Small groups serve their functions in a variety of formats like the round table, the panel, the symposium and the symposium-forum. In the round table format, group members are arranged in a circular or semicircular pattern. They share information or solve problem without any set of rules of who speaks when. The group interaction is informal. In the panel, group members are expert but participate informally and without any set pattern of who speaks when,as in a round table. The difference is that there is an audience whose members may inject comment or ask questions. A variation is two-panel format , with an expert panel and a lay panel. The lay panel discuss the topic and may turn to expert panel when in need of technical information. In symposium, each member delivers a prepared presentation. All speeches are addressed to different aspects of a single topic. While the symposium-forum consists of 2 parts, a symposium ( prepared speech ) and a forum, with questions from the audience and responses by speaker.

Small groups also develop their own culture. The cultural dimension of small group are small group norms and high or low context. Group norms are rules or standards of behavior identifying which behaviors are appropriate and which are inappropriate. Sometimes, the rules is explicit ; they are clearly stated in a company contract or policy. Some are implicit, which is common sense and understand by all the members. The small group norms are differ from one society to another. For example, in US, men and women are expected to interact together for making decision or socialization-purpose. Whereas in Muslim and Buddhist societies, religious restrictions prevent mixed-gender group.

Norms that regulate a particular group member's behavior, called role expectations, identify what each person in an organization is expected to do. You are more likely to accept the norms when your group is cohesive. Cohesiveness means you and other members are closely connected and depend on one other in order to meet your needs. A high-context culture is a culture in which much of the information in communication is in the context or in the person rather than explicitly coded in verbal messages. In high-context culture, people have lots of information in common, so it does not have to be made explicit. A low-context culture is a culture which most of the information in communication is explicitly stated in verbal messages. In low-context culture, people do not assume they share certain information so all the crucial details are made explicitly.

Power enables one person to control behaviors of others. There are six major types of power, legitimate, referent, reward, coercive, expert and information power. You have legitimate power when a person believes you have a right by virtue of your position. For example, parents have legitimate power to control their children. You have referent power when that person wishes to be like you or identified with you. Your referent power increases when you are well-respected. You have reward power if you are able to give the person rewards either in material or social form. Then, you have coercive power if you have the ability to remove rewards or administer punishments. You own expert power if group members regard you as having expertise or knowledge. Lastly, you have information power if you are seen as someone who can communicate logically and persuasively.

There are 4 types of group.

IDEA-GENERATION GROUPS

Idea-generation groups are small groups that exist solely to generate ideas and often follow a pattern called brainstorming. Brainstorming is a technique for bombarding a problem by generating as many ideas as possible. It involves two stages, brainstorming period proper and evaluation period. Each person has to contribute as many as ideas after the problem is stated. 4 general rules are followed during the idea-generating session. Firstly, don't criticize and all the evaluations should be suspended during brainstorming session. Second, strive for quantity. Come out as more ideas as you can. Third, combine and extend ideas. Lastly, develop the wildest idea. After this, all the ideas that are generated will be evaluated one by one.

 PERSONAL GROWTH GROUPS

Personal growth groups sometimes are referred as support groups, aim to help members handle their particular difficulties. There are 3 types of personal growth groups. Firstly, the encounter group. It is known as sensitivity groups or Training groups. These groups try to facilitate members' personal growth and foster their ability to deal effectively with other people. Second, the assertiveness training group. It aims to increase the willingness of members to stand up for their rights and act more assertively in various kind of situations. Distinctions between being assertive, non-assertive and aggressive are made too. Third, the consciousness-raising group. This group helps people cope with the problems society confronts them with. The members of this group all have something in common and this commonality leads the members join together to help one another.

INFORMATION SHARING GROUPS

The purpose of information sharing groups is to enable members acquire new information or skills through a sharing of knowledge. All members have something to learn and teach in this group. The example will be education or learning groups and focus group. In education or learning groups, the members pool their knowledge to the benefit of all, as in the popular law and medical student learning groups. Members may follow a variety of discussion pattern. In focus group, a small group assembled for a kind of in-depth interview. The aim is to discover what people think about an issue or product. A leader also tries to discover the beliefs, attitudes, thoughts and feelings that members have to help the organization make decision in the focus group.

PROBLEM-SOLVING GROUPS

A problem-solving group is a collection of individuals who meet to solve problem or to reach a decision. It requires not only knowledge of a small group communication techniques but also a thorough knowledge of the particular problem. It usually demands faithful adherence to a somewhat rigid set of rules. The problem-solving sequences is the technique that used most often. There are six steps of the sequence to ensure the problem solving more efficient and effective. Define and analyze the problem, establish criteria, identify possible solutions, evaluate solutions, select the best solutions and test the selected solutions.

There are 3 groups approaches which are largely rely on problem-solving techniques. Firstly, the nominal group technique. It is a method of problem solving which uses limited discussion and confidential voting to obtain a group decision. It's helpful for those members who are reluctant to voice their opinions. In the Delphi method, a group of experts is established but there is no interaction among them, they communicate by repeatedly responding to questionnaires instead. This method is useful when you want to involve people who are geographically distant from one another, when you need all members to become part of the solution and to uphold it or when you want to minimize the consequences of dominant members or even the peer pressure. A quality circle is a group of workers ( usually 6-12 ) whose task it is to investigate and make recommendations for improving the quality of some organizational function. The basic assumption is that people who work on similar tasks will be best able to improve their departments or jobs by pooling their insights and working through problems they share. Quality circle members use any methods that they think is helpful to investigate problems.

In problem-solving groups, there are six critical thinking hats.

Hat	Focus
The Fact Hat (White)	Focus on the data (facts and figures) that causes the problem.
The Feeling Hat (Red)	Mainly focuses on feelings, emotions and intuition regarding the problem.
The Negative Argument Hat (Black)	In proposed solution, the focus is on the possible negative aspects of the proposed solutions.
The Positive Argument Hat (Yellow)	In proposed solution, the focus is on the possible positive aspects of the solutions.
The Creative New Idea Hat (Green)	New ways to look at a problem and can be easily integrated with the techniques of brainstorming are the focus.
The Control of Thinking Hat (Blue)	Focuses mainly on the thinking processes that are going into finding a solution.

Source:http://www.storyboardthat.com/articles/business/brain-storming/six-thinking-hats