How to manage stress and conflict in the workplace

Every individual who holds a job, sooner or later, felt the pressure of work-related stress. Any work can have stressful components, regardless of whether you love what you do. For the time being, you may encounter the pressure to meet the deadlines or to fulfill a difficult commitment and, most commonly, stress and conflict in the workplace. In any case, when work-related problems get constant, it can be overwhelming and destructive to both physical and emotional health.

Unfortunately, such long-term pressure is all normal. But what I suggest that you might not be able to keep away from the pressures that happen at work generally. However, you can find a way to manage stress and conflict in the workplace.

What is Stress? 

Stress is your body’s natural defense against any threat. It makes the body flood with hormones that set up its system to evade or confront the risk.

At the point when people face any challenge or threat, they have a partly physical reaction. The body activates resources that assist people either to stay and confront the challenge or get to safety as quickly as possible.

What things can trigger stress?

There are common work-related events that trigger stress includes:

• Low salaries;
• Extreme workload;
• Fewer opportunities for growth;
• Work is not of your choice;
• Workplace bullying;
• Lack of social support;
• Not able to take a job-related decision;
• Conflicting demands.

How it affects your body?

Work-related pressure doesn’t simply vanish when you head home for the afternoon. At the point when stress continues, it can negatively affect your wellbeing and health.

A disturbing workplace can add to issues like migraine, stomachache, sleep disturbance, irritability, and trouble concentrating. Persistent pressure can bring about anxiety, sleep deprivation, hypertension, and a weakened immune system. It can likewise add to medical issues like depression, obesity, and heart disease.

Intensifying the issue, individuals who experience excessive pressure frequently manage it in an unhealthy way, like overeating, eating unhealthy foods, smoking cigarettes, or drugs and alcohol.

How it affects your relationship with your co-workers

Nobody wants to work in a toxic environment where stress is permitted to go crazy and eventually, it breakdowns our relationship with our colleagues. Some work environment stress can be something worth being thankful for in helping businesses with looking for better approaches to becoming forward-thinkers and innovative.

But what happens to team relationships when your work-stress becomes severe?

Communication breakdown

Regardless of whether stress starts at home or work, the fall is regularly seen at work, simply because that is where we spend almost the whole day. Some people intend to create issues over trivial things for their colleagues, It usually happens when people are overwhelmed.

Regardless of the explanation, stress makes communication barriers and breakdowns when workers are centered on their points of pain. This can rapidly prompt misunderstandings and conflicts.

• Resentment

When workers start to struggle with over-burden schedules and misunderstandings, they’re probably going to end up with feelings of hatred toward colleagues and the management. Regardless of whether the reason for the discontent, the colleague’s beliefs will show by the way he or she interacts with others.

Their negative interactions will prompt further resentment by other colleagues. This increased resentment will eventually affect the productivity and the support they provide to each other.

• Weaken team support

When colleagues quit supporting one another, it will eventually affect productivity. The flow of data will turn out to be less frequent and limited, leading to missed deadlines and low-quality expectations.

The persistent pressure and hatred can bring about an endless pattern of (intentional or unintentional) retaining support and help. In the long run, the absence of support will transform into severe damage.

With team-building games or activities, you can strengthen team support.

• Tasks sabotaging

Work environment stress, when left unchecked, will ultimately lead employees to the point of messing up a whole project when they feel disconnected. Numerous projects have fallen prey to sabotage as the fallout from stress. Workers don’t start deciding to mess up projects. It gradually shows that when the workplace is left unaddressed.

Here is how to start to manage stress and conflict at the workplace

Allow me to go a bit personal and share with you one of my stress and conflict management experiences:

I was the youngest full-time employee. The work environment was highly pressurized, and I lack significant support from the team that should have been training me in this apprenticeship. Just like the casual day, employees arrived in the workplace, getting their coffees ready. It was the same manager grumbling and shouting:

“You’re way too slow! How do I get to complete my work with you slowing me down every day?“

And the next day,

“That’s it, I’m done! You slow old crap! You made me lose four hours of my life, again. The world will be better without you and I will surely let the board know about that.“

I was devastated. Alone and tired.

I spent a more significant part of my day pleasing and satisfying other people’s needs but nothing seemed to please anyone. So my stress levels shot up and I was thinking that where I am going wrong.

Later on, I got fired. I got really stressed; my mental health went on a continuous downwards. I cut off myself with my friends, I stopped going out completely.

How I managed stress and conflict at the workplace?

One day, while scrolling YouTube, I came across an influential speaker talking about dealing with stress at work and how common it is. For the first time, I realized that I am not the only one there are so many like me who are suffering JUST LIKE ME.

And I continued watching the whole video. And I got to know that it is not the workplace, it is you who can manage your stress level and conflicts at the workplace, you should know how to manage your stress and how to tackle the conflicts among your colleagues.

This entire article is based on my research on managing stress and avoiding conflicts at the workplace. There are a few more things that I found very useful for how you can manage stress and conflict in the workplace, which helped me a lot and I hope it will be a great help for you as well.

• Manage your time right from the start of the day

If you want to reduce pressure from your workplace, you have to learn about time and priority management. Start your day by jotting down everyday tasks, calls to make, and e-mails to write.

Make your to-do list according to your priority, you should know what to do right now and what can you do later. Also, add some breaks as well so that you get some “me” time. In that way, you will not get frustrated and become more focused.

• Have clear Requirements

The cause which usually leads to work stress is unclear requirements. If you don’t know what exactly is expected from you, talk to your supervisor about what you can do and what they are expecting from you.

It is because people get stressed when they are asked to do tasks that they cannot do but unable to deny at that moment due to the fear of getting fired. So it is better to clear your requirements at first than to get stressed later.

• Take a break 

It would help if you managed time to take mini-breaks to stretch your shoulders, back, and neck. It will provide physical stress relief and also be effective in reducing mental stress.

• Be Comfortable 

Sometimes the things which are causing stress gets unnoticed. It can be anything like your chair, your work area. You might not notice that the chair where you sit for hours is uncomfortable and gives you stress.

Small things like office noise might be distracting and make you fed up with what you are doing. So take a look at that as well.

• Forget Multitasking

Multitasking was once taken as a fantastic way to maximize one’s time and get more work done in a day. Nowadays, people who multitask are often taken for granted, making you tired and stressed. So it is better to do what you are expected to do nothing less, nothing more.

Now it’s time to manage conflicts between your co-workers.

How to manage Conflicts

• Simply avoid conflicts: Conflicts at the workplace negatively affect your physical and emotional wellbeing. Struggling with the personality clash among co-workers can be hard to get away from, so it is good to avoid any conflict as much as you can.

• Try not to gossip: Try not to gossip, don’t share your personal opinions until or unless someone asks for it, keep your sincere beliefs about religion and governmental issues within you, and avoid “vivid” office humor.

• Freedom of speech: Let the individual express their feelings, whether it is a feeling of anger or hurt it usually causes conflict situations.

• Know underlying needs: the goal should not be deciding which person is right or wrong, the goal is to reach a solution that everyone agrees with.

In my thorough research, I got to know that stress and conflicts are inevitable at workplaces. So you should learn how to manage stress and conflict in the workplace properly as I did. And it is to remember that you deserve to be happy and live your life at your best. Take charge and do not bother over trivial matters. And you are good to go!

Do you have your own way to manage stress and conflict in the workplace? Go ahead and share with us in the comments.