Background

Each business unit is a subsystem that works as a part of supra-system, which we call it as environment. The business environment is subject to constant change, because it is the interplay of variety of forces, namely economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological and legal and political. That is, the colour of environment changes constantly affecting each business unit by throwing open challenges along with opportunities. On the other hand, each business unit is to align its resources in terms of strengths and weaknesses to survive and succeed. With cropping up of the new issues and problems in case of each organization, there is need for continuous adjustment to the external forces These tasks call for not only traditional skills, but new skills as the course of business is fast undergoing change. In this troubled water, only those concerns will swim against the current who have developed new management skills. 

New Skills in Management

From the time immemorial certain managerial skills have been effectively used. However, in modern times, new skills are being developed and formed to change the behavior of each employee in whatever capacity he is working in an organization. These new skills are creative style, emotional intelligence, leadership skills, work style, sales competencies, sports mental skills, stress management, team role skills, critical thinking skills, computing skills among other things.

1. Creative Style

One of the endowments of human beings is the internal urge to change things for better. Creativity is the process of using intelligence, imagination and skill to develop a new product or a novel product, object, process of thought. In the light of today's need for fast phased decisions, an organization's ability to stimulate creativity and innovation of its employees is becoming increasingly important. In simple words, creativity is the process of developing something new or unique. It can be as simple as locating a new place to hang your car keys or as complex as developing a pocket size micro-computer. The concept of creativity highlights three broad types of creativity. One can create something new (creation), one can combine or synthesize things (synthesis) or one can improve or change things (modification). Though researchers are not absolutely certain as to how creativity takes place, we know that creativity involves "making remote associations" between unconnected events, ideas, information stored in memory or physical objects.

When we come to "creative style", style stands for "making" or doing a particular way of doing something, designing something or producing something, especially one that is typical of a particular period of time or of a particular group of people. Style is an attempt to use, say Japanese fashion of managing to Indian conditions or western countries. We have learnt much from Japanese management techniques or styles to succeed like total quality control, world class manufacturing, JIT, Kaizan and so on.

It is the creative urge, which has impelled and propelled mankind to alter the given conditions of life to create a civilized order of existence. So long it is active, the quality of life improves, and society grows to higher civilized levels. When it is inactive, there is stagnation and decay. That is, to be alive is to be creative.

The field of creativity is really very wide. It covers every aspect of life and its many fold activities. It is not merely the privilege of a few, especially gifted persons like artists, poets or scientists. Everyone has some creativity or creative capacity and the creative potential in some field. As great psychologist A. Maslow mentions, a measure of creativity is the universal heritage of every human being. A better and more beautiful world can certainly be created if only this vast reservoir of human creativity can be effectively tapped and the obstacles in its free-flow removed.

Creativity basically operates in three distinct fields, which are: (1) Intellectual creativity. (2) Artistic creativity and (3) Practical or useful creativity.

1. Intellectual Creativity

Man is a curious being. He wants to know about the mysteries of life, about nature and about all that is there in the universe. He systematizes his knowledge and builds theories about both the external world of nature and society, and the internal world of his feelings and emotions. He seeks explanations for natural and social phenomenon, as well as for various kinds of experiences. Formulations of hypothesis, theories, ideas and understandings, are continuously improving and refining them, as the essence of intellectual creativity. The rapidly increasing vast body of knowledge in good many varied fields is a tribute to the intellectual creativity of mankind.

Though it is an abstract entity and creation of ideas an abstract process the process becomes viable only through the use of concrete symbols. Language is the superb example of the process of giving phonetic and visible shape to abstract ideas and thoughts. It is though language that we think, express and communicate our ideas. Development of language is one of the biggest creative achievements of all time of mankind. Same is the case of symbols used in mathematics, in art, music and dance. All intellectual and artistic creativity is carried out by creative use of these symbols. Creation of ideals and values for personal and social life may be ranked as the highest creative attainment of mankind.

2. Artistic Creativity

Artistic creativity is more a matter of heart, just as intellectual creativity is more a matter of head. It is expressed through poetry, drama and other forms of literature, and in different art forms - painting, sculpture, music and varied types of decorative arts. All these are creative ways of expressing inner human emotions, feelings, perceptions and experiences. These reactions are generated in the human psyche through its interaction with external world. However, art is not merely descriptive statement of external reality, much less theorising about it. The impact of external objects, situations and interactions triggers a vision of larger, deeper and more universal truths and values in the heart of the artist. Though his or her aesthetic sensitivity and creative imagination, the artist transforms these expressions and emotions into objects of elegance and beauty. It is a process of idealisation.

The reader, listener or the viewer of artistic creation should also have creative imagination, along with aesthetic sensitivity. It is through this process that he or she enters into the heart of the artist to capture the imagination, the mood and aesthetic experience of the artist. Then only can he or she experience and enjoy the aesthetic and emotional exaltation, which any great work of art is capable of creativity.

3. Useful Creativity

The human species have been engaged in creating and improving upon various kinds of useful tools and artifacts. The material decencies of civilized life have been secured through this process of practical creativity. Human ingenuity has always found newer ways of using energy and natural resources to make useful things for making life convenient and comfortable Domestication of animals, farming, use of fire, invention of wheel are some of the instances of the inventive genius of the ancient times. Creative use of these inventions formed the basis for later civilisations. This tradition of useful creativity has now been passed on to the modern day engineers and technologists. The modern technological society is founded on their creative talents. Every engineering design is a creative synthesis of knowledge, tools and materials from diverse areas of science and technology. Innovations and creativity have become the key to the success in the modern competitive environment.

Creativity has become vital for industrial and business organizations. In the present age of rapid technological and social changes, and tough competition, only those organizations can survive and flourish, who can continually create newer and better goods and services. Creative organisations can find innovative ways of organising work and work-teams. They can anticipate change and be ready to meet its challenge in time. The creative way of solving, practical problems is equally valuable in all walks of life. Most of the successful and happy persons are creative. They are able to find innovative solutions to life's challenges and problems.

Creativity and creative styles stay and increase as business world changes. There are certain creativity killers, which are to be avoided at any rate. These are: 

• Lack of discretion and autonomy

• Fragmented work schedule in which people are frequently interrupted

• Insufficient resources to get the job done

• A focus on short-term goals

• Time pressures 

• A lack of collaboration and coordination among employees.

2. Emotional Intelligence

It is the emotions, which directly affect our day-to-day life. These emotions are happiness, fear, anger, affection, shame, disgust, surprise, lust, sadness, elation, love and the like. Psychologists have described and explained "emotion" differently, but all agree that it is a complex state of human mind involving bodily changes of wide-spread character, such as breathing, pounding heart, flushed face, sweaty palms, high pulse rate, and gland secretions on the physiological side- and on the mental side, a state of excitement or perturbation marked by strong feelings. Increasingly, we all intuitively understand what the word "emotion" means, but there is no generally accepted themes of emotions among psychologists though there are areas of agreement. Feelings are what one experiences as the result of having emotions. Emotions originate from exposure to specific situations. The nature and intensity of the émotion are usually related to cognitive activity in the form of the perception of the situation. Emotions are human beings' warning systems that alert them to what is really going on around them. Emotion is an "umbrella term", which includes the situation, the interpretation/perception of the situation and the response or feeling related to the perception of the situation.

Mr Salovey and Mr. Mayer coined the term "emotional intelligence" in 1990 and described it as "a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and others feelings and emotions to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one's thinking and question.

In 1997 redefined the concept 5of emotional intelligence as "the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional intellectual growth". According to them, emotional intelligence involves areas such as identifying emotions - the ability to recognize how you and those around you are feeling, using emotions - the ability to generate emotions and then reason with this emotion, understanding emotions -the ability to understand complex emotions and emotional 'chaos', how emotions transition from one stage to another, and managing emotions - the ability, which allows you to manage emotions in yourself and in others" 

Mr. Goleman defined emotional intelligence as the "Capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships". Emotional intelligence describes abilities distinct from, but complementary to academic intelligence or the purely cognitive capacities measured by IQ.

For long, it has been believed that success at the workplace depends on your level of intelligence or intelligence quotient (IQ) as reflected in your academic achievements, exams. passed, marks obtained and so on. In other words, your intellectual credentials: doing well in school, holding an engineering degree, or even an advanced computer degree, obtaining high scores in IQ test. All these are instances of intelligence of the academies. However, how bright you are outside the classroom, faced with life's difficult moments? Here you need a different kind of resourcefulness, termed as emotional intelligence (EQ), which is a different way of being smart.

Those individuals with lowest IQ but highest EQ have rose to the position of "Hero from Zero". A college dropout Mr. Bill Gates managed to build such a vast empire, for which he is envied by the entire world. Mother Teresa made herself real nun, who did not have resources, but high EQ. Mahatma Gandhi made himself as the "Father of the Nation" as he was having high IQ and EQ. The late M. S. Oberoi and Dhirubhai Ambani rose from rags to riches. Emotional intelligence is what gives a person competitive edge. Even in certain renowned business establishments, where everyone is trained to be smart, the most valued and productive managers are those who have strong traits of emotional intelligence and are not necessary those with highest IQ. Being endowed with great intellectual abilities, you may become a brilliant financial analyst or a legal scholar, but highly developed emotional intelligence is what will make you a candidate for CEO or a brilliant trial lawyer. Emotional traits are factors that are most likely to ensure success in your marriage or your love affair or ensure you attain dizzy heights in your business. Lack of emotional intelligence explains why people, who, despite having a high IQ, have been such utter failures and disastrous in their personal and professional lines. An analysis of the traits of persons high on IQ, but low on EQ, yields the stereotype of a person, who is critical condescending, inhibited and uncomfortable with others. In contrast, persons high on EQ are poised, outgoing, committed to other people and worthy causes, sympathetic and caring, with a rich fulfilling emotional life, who are comfortable with themselves, others and the social universe, they in habit.

The dimensions that constitute emotional intelligence are, emotional competency, emotional maturity and emotional sensitivity.

Emotional Competency constitutes the capacity to tactfully respond to emotional stimuli elicited by various situations, having high self-esteem and optimism communication tackling emotional upsets such as frustration, conflicts and inferiority complexes, enjoying emotions, doing what succeeds, ability to relate to others, emotional self-control, capacity to avoid emotional exhaustion such as stress, burn out, learning to avoid, negativity of emotions, handling egoism.

Emotional Maturity constitutes evaluating emotions of oneself and others, identifying and expressing feelings, balancing state of heart and mind, adaptability and flexibility, appreciating other's point of view, developing others, delaying gratification of immediate psychological satisfaction.

Emotional Sensitivity constitutes understanding threshold of emotional arousal, managing the immediate environment, maintaining rapport, harmony and comfort with others, letting others feel comfortable in your company. It also involves being honest in interpersonal dealings, interpreting emotional cues truthfully, realising communicability of emotions, moods and feelings, and having an insight into how others evaluate and relate to you.

Emotional intelligence is the ability of an individual to appropriately and successfully respond to a vast variety of emotional stimuli being elicited from the inner self and immediate environment. Emotional intelligence constitutes as told above three psychological dimensions- emotional competency, emotional maturity and emotional sensitivity - which motivate an individual to recognise truthfully, interpret honestly and handle tactfully the dynamics of human behaviour. 

3. Leadership Skills

Manager is a leader. However, every manager is not a leader. Leadership is fashionable, and good leaders are recognised as being those in management that really make things happen, rather than those who simply administer. It is clear that world witnessed the abilities of those have turned around giants like Microsoft, IBM, Reliance, Infosys, etc., whilst others have achieved much the same but on smaller scale. These are smaller business people, and also the leaders of management buyouts. They may not have the national profile of corporate leaders, but their leadership abilities are still vital to their organisation's success in today's international market place. 

Yet the efforts of all those top leaders would not yield desired outcome without the applied leadership abilities of all those in charge, at every level of their organisations) As a former Chairman of British Steel expressed it: However grand the driver's intentions, the only thing that matters is where "the rubber meets the road'. Hence, it is essential to understand leadership so that those in a position of authority - at any level - can be trained on how they achieve results with people.

How then we are to define "leadership" in order to develop the abilities of those in charge of others? This calls for understanding the bases of any manager's job. This can be described as being within three skill areas, namely technical, administration and achieving results through people.

To turn to "technical" or technicality, a manager must have sufficient technical competence to know what to expect from others and be able to recognize when the job is of the right quality and when it is below standard. It is seldom necessary to be technically excellent thereby having the ability to carry out the technical context of a job better than any individual team member. Coming to "administration", it is essential to understand the methods and procedures that are the administrative framework of organization. It is then possible to both maintain the standards of those procedures and be a champion for changing those that no longer suit the needs of the current operations. Again, it is not necessary to be the administrative expert. Turning to "Achieving results through others", it is the focus of leadership which begins to stand "leaders" apart from "managers". We do not administer the people, not do we get others to do only those jobs that we do not want to do. In fact, leadership is the art of getting more from people than they think they are capable of giving.

How to identify the ability

How then do we identify and develop our leadership abilities? There have traditionally been three different approaches, though there are many 'schools' than can be identified within each. The main divisions are: (1) Qualities or Traits, (2) Situational and (3) Functional. Let us touch up on these in brief. 

1. Qualities or Traits

Any team expects its leader to have certain qualities, which invariably will differ with individual perceptions. Good many lists have been carefully drawn up, particularly by those seeking to identify leadership potential for the armed forces. Field Marshall Lord Slim achieved the shortest list : courage, will-power, initiative, knowledge. Mr. Lord Harding added integrity, fitness, judgement and teamspirit. Some have longer list. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police seek 18 qualities including memory, honesty, good judgement and decisiveness.

Clearly, it is dangerous to select leaders solely by virtue of their qualities, because of the different appeals and interpretations, such as 'humour' or 'honesty'. It would be doubtful whether such approach would allow us to achieve agreement on the factors sought and the method of identifying them. Even then, it provides little scope for training and development.

The best we can do is to identify the individual strengths of people that have a common accord and seek to maximize these. For instance, the leader, who is seen to be fit and energetic, may well be more suited to a particular type of job or organization. In this way, we can at least acknowledge the strengths in each individual without assessing all the potential leaders under one set of quality criteria and thereby establishing a "have got" or "have not got" leadership ability.

2. Situational

Two schools emerge from this approach to leadership. First is based on having leader most suited to the immediate situation. This can happen through either the natural leader arising from the group according to the activity, or the group appointing that leader through consensus. In either event, we do not have a practical solution to managing at work, where the leader is appointed by those above. Yet many organisations unwitting tread this path by the way they promote the best secretary to be the office supervisor; the outstanding sales person to be the sales manager; or the reliable accountant to be the accounts manager. Little wonder that, without training leadership skills, the department flounders. Leaders must have the technical competence to recognise the standards and quality in their organisation necessary to meet customer requirements, but there is more to it. Leaders must have the necessary understanding and skill for their position of having to get work done through and with other people, at any rate.

The Second 'situational school is based on leaders adapting their style to meet the situation, in which they find themselves. This can apply to both the organisational activities such as fast-growth, retrenchment, start up, diversification and the individual's capabilities such as level of experience, fresh on jobs, fast-track. Its strength is the recognition that leaders should be aware of what is going on around them and take such observations into account. The weakness is that it can be difficult to identify sufficiently and accurately, the style necessary for any particular situation without resulting in a confused workforce.

3. Functional

This approach concentrates on the actions a leader must take to be successful. From this premise of concentrating on leadership functions of management, a number of different schools have arisen, each seeking to encapsulate a range of activities within a simple framework or model. One of the most practical and established is that describing the leader as existing to get a job done through the efforts of individual human beings

As a result, there appears the three interrelated areas in which to work: 

• ensuring that the required tasks are continually achieved 

• building and reinforcing the team and fostering teamwork and team spirit and 

• developing each individual member of the team.

Now it is the time to speak of leadership skills one by one-namely work style, sales competencies, sport mental skills, stress management, team role skills, critical thinking skills, computing skills among others.

A. Work Style

A work style is the way the work is done. The work styles of leaders depend on the leadership style they follow. Finally, leader has unique work style to get the work done through others. Work style refers to the performance of the task or getting the work done from others. The work is made up of good many tasks. There can be a vast list of work styles. These work styles are there with any leadership style, where it changes its line according to leadership style. Leader, as a manager, has to plan, organize, direct, coordinate, motivate, control, communicate his organization. Of course, all this is done through decisions.

The expression "leadership style" is vague. Yet it is widely used to describe leaders. Thus, we talk of authoritarian or participative leadership; so also task-oriented or employee-oriented. Leadership style" refers to the way a leader influences followers. It is the total pattern of leader's explicit and implicit actions as seen by his followers. Leadership style represents a fine combination of skills, traits and attitudes that are manifested in a leader's behaviour. 

The early investigations into leadership style concentrated on finding the one "best" leadership style. However, this objective can never be attained. First, each style is usually used in combination with others. Second, the same style may be applied differently to the different followers. Third, leaders often change their style of functioning to fit the situation. Just I prefer to mention, rather than going into the details, that there are four main behavioural approaches to leadership style. These are: (1) Positive and negative leadership style, (2) autocratic, participative and free reign leadership styles, (3) initiating structure versus consideration and (4) the managerial grid style.

Coming back to work style, these differ from leader to leader and from time to time depending on the style of leadership. Every manager or a leader has his own style of reading, writing, learning, speaking, listening, interviewing, holding a meeting, teaching and training, grievance handling, inferring, communicating, firing, consoling and so on.

B. Sales Competencies

Managing expectation in today's rapidly and radically changing business world is indeed a challenge. It is not to understand why expectations are influenced by many factors and vary from one person to another, one situation to another, and even one day to another. Although the varying nature of customer expectations may make it seem that satisfying customers is an impossible. The customer needs are - responsiveness, a caring attitude and skill.)

Finding people for front line positions that have the right mix of skills in one of the most difficult challenges facing help desk managers today. People, who have very strong interpersonal skills, that is soft and self-management skills, may lack the technical skills required to support today's increasingly complex technology. People with strong technical skills may lack the skills such as patience and empathy that are needed to support customers with varying skill levels. Some people prefer a move handson approach to technical support and may be more comfortable working in a field service role away from frontline. The employee and the company benefit when the right skills are matched with right position. Contrary to the popular belief, interpersonal skills can be developed. Only thing is one must be willing to work at them. Skills such as listening, communicating and stress management skills are excellent "life" skills that will serve you well regardless of your chosen profession.

C. Sports Mental Skills

We agree that life is a sport or game, which is to be won. A game is a physical activity, in which people compete against each other. Sport is any game witnessed by the largest people. Sports or games do not require only the physical faculties, because without application mental faculty, competitive spirit is absent. Generally, each game needs 70 per cent of physical skills and 30 per cent mental skills. It may be 70 per cent mental faculties and 10 per cent physical faculties as we find in case of chess.

Managers are players of sports or games in the field of business. In addition to intellectual power, Physical fitness is a must for competing complicated problem solving. Sport skills here mostly speak of hand and eye coordination, leg and eye coordination, eye and ear coordination in performing certain tasks. Again, sports mental skills are teaching us good and bad sportsmanship. Every organization and every individual must practice good sportsmanship. That is, winning over the right situation honestly and not by cheating or threatening. Sport mental skills also help us in thinking and acting positively for the good of all. It is important to note that each task is a game and needs combination of skills, Let us take an example of developing wrestler. His set of actions is altogether different, where his nerves and muscles are to be trained in particular way to have grip over the opponent. A good wrestler may not be a good sprint. Sprint is good at faster running, because his muscles and nerves are trained to run, but not to wrestle. That is why we find a person participating in variety of games. Only one or two, but not more. That is why we have golfers, cricketers, foot-ballers, badminton players, chess players and so on.

D. Stress Management - What It Means? 

Stress will probably affect all of us at some time in our lives. Reducing stress helps you to manage the stress in your life so that it continues to stretch you towards your personal goals without damaging your health. 

Stress in individuals is defined as any interference that disturbs a person's healthy mental and physical well-being. It occurs when the body is required to perform beyond its normal range of capabilities. Stress is a person's adaptive response to a stimulus that places excessive psychological or physical demands on that person.

Stress has been called "invisible disease". It is a disease that affects you, your organization, society in which you live, your body, physical health and well-being, emotions, decisions you make, family to which you belong.

Effects of Stress 

1. Its Effects on Society

The societal costs of stress are already high and are increasing steadily. Society bears the cost of public services such as healthcare for those made ill by stress, pensions for early retirement brought on by stress and disability benefits for accidents occurring because of stress. In addition to this, stress often makes people irritable, and this affects the overall quality of everyone's lives.

2. On the Human Body 

When human body is placed under physical or psychological stress, it increases the production of certain hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones produce marked changed in heart rate, blood pressure levels, metabolism and physical activity. Though this physical reaction will help one to function more effectively when one is under pressure for short period of time, it can be extremely dangerous to the body in the long term. 2.

3. Effect on Companies

Stress costs industry more than 150 US billion $ in America, and 75 US billion $ in India. This is through absenteeism and reduced levels of performance by those who are physically present at workplace, but mentally absent. In England, as much as 60 per cent of all absenteeism is trusted to be caused by stress related disorders and in India 30 per cent of workforce. Anything that can reduce the damaging effects of stress makes workers happier and companies richer.

4. On Physical Health and Well-being 

Long-term stress has been identified one of the most prevalent causes of numerous common conditions, including high blood pressure and heart disease. It is now commonly thought that prolonged stress can also increase the risk of psychological or psychiatric ailments. Behavioral changes caused by stress, such as the increased and excessive use of alcohol or drugs, are also linked to a marked decline in physical health.

5. On Emotions

Those, who suffer stress, are far more likely to indulge in destructive behavior, which can have a high cost to themselves, to employers, and to society. Typical symptoms, such as mood swings and erratic behavior may alienate colleagues as well as friends and family. In some cases, this can start a vicious circle of decreasing confidence, leading to more serious emotional problems such as depression.

6. On Decisions 

Suffering from any level of stress can rapidly cause individuals to lose their ability to make sound decisions, especially if their self-confidence fails. This affects health, family and career alike, since stress is one area of life inevitably affects others. Someone suffering from stress may not heed physical signs of illness attributing them to the side-effects of stress. Faulty decisions made in the workplace and at home lead to accidents or arguments, financial loss or even the loss of job.

7. On Families

Stress can break up homes and families. The high divorce rates in the West are due to partly the rapid increase in the stress in the workplace, especially where both partners are working full-time. It is difficult to be fine, the energy to be supportive to family and friends if work is very difficult or you are afraid that you may lose your job. When children are involved, stress can cause a conflict-relating to child-care and careers. Though we do not yet fully understand the long-term impact of separation or divorce on children, we know that it is not the best way to create a generation of stress free individuals. This requires a very careful balance on the demands of work and home.

Causes of Stress

Many things can cause stress. Experts have classified these into two stressors organisational and life. namely - Organizational and life

1. Organizational Stressors

Organization stressors are various factors in the workplace that can cause stress. These are task demands, physical demands, role demands, interpersonal demands.

a) Task Demands

Task demands are stressors associated with the specific job a person performs. Some occupations are by nature more stressful than others. The jobs of surgeons, air-traffic controllers, and professional football coaches are more stressful than those of general practitioners, airplane baggage loaders and football team equipment managers. Beyond specific task-related pressures, other aspects of a job may pose physical threats to a person's health. Unhealthy conditions exist in occupations such as coal mining and toxic waste handling. Security is another task demand that can cause stress. Someone in a relatively secure job is not likely to worry unduly about losing that position. Threats to jobs security can increase stress dramatically. For instance, (stress generally increases throughout an organisation during the period of layoffs or immediately after a merger with another business unit. A final task demand stressor is overload) Overload occurs when a person simply has more work than he or she can handle. The overload can be either quantitative or qualitative.

b) Physical Demands

The physical demands of a job are its physical requirements on the worker; these demands are a function of the physical characteristics of the setting and physical tasks of the job involves. One important element is temperature. Working outdoors in extreme temperatures can result in stress, as can working in an improperly heated or cooled office, Stress on laborer's, such as loading heavy cargo or lifting packages, can lead to similar results. Likewise poor lighting, inadequate work surfaces, and similar deficiencies can create stress.

c) Role Demands

Role demands can also be stressful to people in organizations. A role is a set of expected behavior associated with a particular position in a group of organization. As such, it has both formal - that is, job-related and explicit - and informal - that is, social and implicit requirements. People in an organization or workgroup expect a person in a particular role to act in certain ways. They transmit these expectations both formally and informally. Individuals perceive role expectations with varying degrees of accuracy and then attempt to enact that role. However, "errors" can creep into this process, resulting in stress-inducing problems called "role ambiguity", "role conflict" and "role overload". "Role ambiguity" arises when a role is unclear. "Role conflict" occurs when the messages and cues constituting a role are clear but contradictory or mutually exclusive. "Role overload" occurs when expectations for the role exceed the individual's capabilities.

d) Interpersonal Demands

A final set of organizational stressors consist of three interpersonal demands. These are group pressures, leadership and interpersonal conflict. "Group pressures" may include pressure to restrict output, pressure to conform to the group norms and so on so forth. An individual, who feels need to vary from a group's expectations will experience a great deal of stress, especially if acceptance by group is also important to him or her. "Leadership style" also causes stress. Suppose an employee needs a great deal of social support from his leader. The leader, however, is quite brusque and shows no concern or compassion for him. This employee will probably feel stressed. Similarly, assume an employee feels strong need to participate in decision-making and to be active in all aspects of management. Her boss is very autocratic and refuses to consult subordinates about anything. Once again, stress is likely to result. Coming to "conflicting personalities" or "interpersonal conflict" may cause stress. Conflict can occur when two or more people must work together even though their personalities, attitudes and behaviours differ. For instance, a person with an internal locus of control that is, who always wants to control how things turn out - might get frustrated working with an external person, who likes to wait and just let things happen. Likewise, a smoker and nonsmoker, who are assigned adjacent offices, obviously will experience stress. 1

2. Life Stressors

Stress in organizational settings also can be influenced by events that take place outside the organization. Life stressors generally are classified into - life change, life trauma.

a. Life Change

A life change is any meaningful change in a personal or work situation. Too many changes lead to health problems. According to experts, major changes in a person's life can lead to stress and eventually to disease. Each event's point value supposedly reflects the event's impact on the individual. At one extreme, a spouse's death, assumed to be the most traumatic event considered, as assigned a point value of 100. At other extreme, minor violations of the law rank, only 11 points. The points themselves represent life change units (LCU). Experts argue that a person can handle a certain threshold of LCU's, but beyond that level, problems can be caused. In particular, they suggest that people, who encounter more than 150 LCU's in a given year, will experience decline in their health the following year. A major illness may crop in if LCU's are more by 150.

b. Life Trauma

Life trauma is similar to life change, but it has a narrower, more direct and short-term focus. A life trauma is any upheaval in an individual's life that alters his or her attitudes, emotions or behaviors. For instance, a divorce adds to a person's potential for health problems in the following year. At the same time, the person will obviously also experience emotional turmoil during the actual divorce process. This turmoil is a form of life trauma and will clearly cause stress, much of which may spill over into the workplace. Major life traumas that may cause stress include - marital problems, family difficulties and health problems initially unaltered to stress.

Managing stress in the workplace

Given that stress will spread and so potentially disruptive in organizations, it follows that people and organizations should be concerned about how to manage it more effectively. Experts have given certain strategies, which are both individual and organizational. Only an outline is given of these strategies.

Individual Coping Strategies: These include Exercise, relaxation, time management, role management, support groups.

Organizational Coping Strategies: These comprise of institutional programs, collateral programs. 

E. Team Role Skills

Working with teams, whether as a leader of a single team or manager of several, is an essential part of a manager's role. Team working is rapidly becoming the preferred practice in many organizations as traditional. Corporate hierarchies give way to flat multi-skilled working methods. Managing teams is an indispensable and practical guide to leading teams with expertise, covering subjects such as defining the skills required to complete a project, establishing trust between individuals within a team, and maximizing the performance of that team.

What is a Team?

A team is not a group, but coming together of people, who make coming together a living constantly changing dynamic force, in which a number of people come together to work. Team members discuss their objectives, assess ideas, make decisions and work towards their targets together. A team is a small number of people with complementary skills, who are committed to a common purpose, common performance goals, and an approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. 

Why Teams?

There are certain definite benefits and cost of having teams in organisations. The reasons to create teams is because teams make sense for that organisation. The basic reasons are:

1. Enhanced Performance 

Enhanced performance can come in many forms, including improved productivity, quality and customer service. Working in teams enables workers to avoid wasted effort, reduce errors and react better to customers, resulting in more output for each unit of employee input. Such enhancements result from pooling of individual efforts in new ways and from striving to continuously improve for the benefit of team.

2. Employee Benefits 

Employees tend to benefit as much as organisations in a team environment. Much attention has focussed on the differences between baby-boom generation and the "post-bloomers" in attitudes toward work, its importance to their lives and what they want from it. In general, younger workers tend to be less satisfied with their work and the organisation to have lower respect for authority and supervisors and to want more than a paycheck every week. Teams can provide the sense of self control, human dignity, identification with the work and sense of self-worth and self-fulfillment that current and future workers seem to strive for. Rather than relying on the traditional, hierarchical, manager-based system, teams give employees freedom to grow and gain respect and dignity by managing themselves, making decisions about their work, and really making difference in the world around them. As a result, employees have a better work life, face less stress at work, and make less care of employee assistance programs.

3. Reduced Costs 

As empowered teams reduce scrap, make fewer errors, file fewer workers' compensation claims, and reduce absenteeism and turnover, organisations based on teams are showing significant cost reduction. Team members feel that they have a share in the outcomes, want to make contributions, because they are valued, and are committed to their team and do not want to let it down.

4. Organisational Enhancements 

Other improvements in organisations that result from moving from a hierarchically based directive culture to a team-based culture include increased innovation, creativity and flexibility. Use of teams can eliminate redundant layers of bureaucracy and flatten the hierarchy in large organisations. Employees feel closer and more in touch with top management. Employees, who feel their efforts are important, are more likely to make significant contributions. In addition, the team environment constantly challenges teams to innovate and solve problems creatively. Teams provide flexibility to react quickly.

5. Costs of Teams 

The costs of teams are usually expressed in terms of the difficulty of changing to a team-based organisation. Managers have expressed frustration and confusion about their new roles as coaches and facilitators, especially if they develop their managerial skills under the old traditional hierarchical management philosophy. Employees may also feel loosen during the change to a team culture. Some traditional staff groups, such as technical advisory staff, may feel that their jobs are in jeopardy as teams do more and more of the technical work formerly done by technicians.] It warrants new roles and paypackets. Another cost associated with teams is the slowness of the process of full team development. It takes longer time for teams to go through the full development cycle and become mature, efficient and effective.

Balancing skills within a team

Acquiring the right mix of experience in a team can be more difficult than finding the basic skills, but is vital if team is to be effective. Encourage each team member to make their own individual contribution, both on technical and personal level. There are two things do be done in this connection, namely, finding the right balance of skills and maintaining the right balance of skills. balance of skills:

a. Finding the right

Look for team members, who possess one of the three major types of skills, that are vital for the success of a team's task. These are: * Technical expertise in disciplines such as engineering and marketing * Problem-solving skills and the ability to make clear, informed decisions * Team working skills and an ability to cope well with interpersonal relationships.

b. Maintaining the right balance of skills 

As a project proceeds, the range of skills needed within the team can change. For instance, some specialist skills that were vital at the outset of a team's life may become superfluous as the project develops. To maintain right balance of complementary skills, a team leader must be able to recognise any change in project or team needs and act accordingly. This ability is as important in team leaders as their ability to evaluate technical and analytical skills of potential team members. Both individuals and team need the power to grow.

F. Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinking skills are also called as analytical or diagnostic skills. Analytical skill is one that involves use of scientific approaches or techniques to solve management problems. That is, analytical skill signifies manager's ability to investigate, analyse a problem logically and objectively. These skills or approaches are scientific to arrive at feasible and optimal solution. In essence, it is the ability of a person to identify key factors and understand as to how they interrelate the roles they plan in a given situation. Put in other words, analytical skills actually refer to an ability to diagnose and evaluate. Here. the manager goes to the very root of the problem to identify the cause or causes of the problem so that solution is real and permanent one than more cosmetic or short-run. n. Diagnostic skills help the manager to establish the cause and effect relationship scientifically.

These skills enable the manager to visualise the most appropriate response to a situation. Without analytical proficiency, there is hardly any hope for long-term success. In short, critical analytical skills are those abilities to proceed logically, cogently, step by step and systematic manner to scan the various factors or aspects of specific estimate involved and understand complex characteristics of phenomenon. It also signifies the ability to break down the problem into convenient components and critically examine its dimensions in the spotlight. Critical analytical skills are needed for problem identifying, solving and decision-making to evaluate performance and to manage complex situations Manager's position is that of a physician, who diagnoses the illness of his patient by critically examining the symptoms and determining the probable cause or causes and prescribe a standard doses of medicines to cure the illness.

G. Computing Skills

These are the days of computers so much so that "no computer no manager" is the order of the day. Computer abilities are quite significant, because using computers by the managers improves their productivity. Computers can preform minute tasks in financial analysis, human resource planning and other areas of marketing, production and other areas that otherwise take hours, even days to complete. Computer is an exceptionally helpful tool in sound and quick decision-making. Computer instantly places at manager's finger tips a vast array of information in a flexible and usable form. Software programs enable the managers to manipulate the data to perform well under changed scenario looking at project's input on different decision alternatives. Computer skills are essential to make full use of vast amount of merits that computers provide any management.

Managers, who have computer skills have conceptual understanding of computer and, in particular. know how to use the computer and software to perform many aspects of their jobs Computer ability is a valuable managerial skill. This is so now onwards as there has been information technology revolution] Leave aside managers, even school going children blame their parents who do not provide them personal computers. Having computers is like having a TV in a family, and calculator in a pocket.