Page 169 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Unit 8: Role of Attitude and Persuasion

8.8 Consequences of Stress Notes

Stress to the average person is usually looked at in a negative light. However, all stress is not
bad stress. There are two very different forms of stress; distress and eustress. Some people thrive
under pressure. That’s because they have figured out how to condition themselves for “stressful”
situations. This conditioning requires recovering energy. When one practices what they know
frequently, they most often perform well on a “stress test”. Distress and eustress are the
consequences of how one responds to and uses the stress that is applied to them. There are
benefits to eustress and there are costs to distress. A healthy person would exude eustress. The
opposite would be true of an unhealthy person. (Loehr and T. Schwartz 2001)
Performance and Health Benefits

A person’s overall performance with a any given task will have an optimum. A point where the
individual is most productive while still performing at a comfortable level. In order to attain
this optimum performance a certain level of stress must be applied. Any amount of stress level
leading up to the optimum point would be eustress. Stress that would cause the person to
overload and their productivity to drop would be distress. If a person is training their body by
lifting weights, they can only grow their muscles so fast before they reach their growing limit.
Once past that limit, an injury is bound to take place.

Individual Distress

Individual distress manifests in three basic forms known as Psychological disorders, Medical
illnesses, and Behavioral problems. A person’s extreme involvement with their work could
reap an acute individual distress. Work-related psychological disorders can lead to depression,
burnout, and psychosomatic disorders. Psychosomatic disorders are physical problems that
stem from a psychological root. A person could have a problem with public speaking; that
problem would then be caused by so much stress that the persons brain would not allow the
person to even speak. An individual’s stress can manifest itself in other more physical manners.
Back aches, strokes, heart disease, and peptic ulcers are just a few ways that surface when too
much stress is applied. A person can also show behavioral problems as a sign of distress. Some
examples include aggression, substance abuse, and accidents. This behavior could be cause by
conflicts with others or with work. It could also be brought on by variables outside of the
workplace. Psychological disorders, medical illnesses, and behavioral problems are extremely
burdensome to the individual. And when not taken care of will result in organizational distress.

Notes There are three types of influence, upward referring to a boss, downward referring
to an employee and lateral influence which refers to a coworker. Also, there are eight
basic types of influence tactics. The four most frequently used are consultation, rational
persuasion, inspirational appeals, and ingratiation. Consultation, the person seeks your
participation in making a decision or planning how to implement a proposed policy,
strategy, or change. Rational persuasion, the person uses logical arguments and factual
evidence to persuade you that a proposal or requests is viable and likely to result in
attainment of task objectives. Inspirational appeals, the person makes an emotional request
for proposal that arouses enthusiasm by appealing to your values and ideas or by increasing
your confidence that you can do it. Ingratiation, the person seeks to eat you with a good
mood or to think favorably of him or her before asked you to do something.

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