At a period when Mike Pitcher first enrolled Lease plan USA as the head of sales and marketing department, he met company’s representative’s top customers to study about their needs. He was astonished to find out that almost all the representatives were women. He also noticed that the greater part of the vehicle-leasing company’s 450 workers were female. However, the company’s management structure was strongly rooted in the good-old-boy network of the traditionally male- dominated industry. These remarks and observations were part of what spurred Lease Plan’s leaders to go on board on an effort to diversify the company’s leadership and change its civilization. Pitcher is the CEO of Lease Plan today, among the top company’s executive six are women. Every year, 30 female workers are selected to take part in an event that includes the workers skills assessment, career training, and networking events. According to Sanon, Lease Plan also has events aimed at helping minority employees in moving into leadership positions. Pitcher sees the company’s diversity proposal as a planned investment. This paper explores the topic of diversity and multiculturalism.
First, we shall look at the problems that leaders face in leading people who are different from themselves. Then the definition diversity, look the value of diversity for companies and organizations, and look at the problems and challenges the minorities encounter in organizations. Next, we examine a style of management that can support a more inclusive job environment, closely look at worldwide diversity, and discover how leaders can boost their cultural intelligence. Finally, discuss the personal stages of leader diversity awareness and the personal qualities for leading diverse workplaces.
Being a leader to a group of people that are not like you
The job of running the Northern New England district office of Allyn & Freeson Investments required relocating you and your family, but your family enthusiastically made the move. Your family seems to be adjusting well day by day to their new, environment and school and your wife appreciates her work at the nearby bank. If things were just smooth at Allyn & Freeson, the white staff in the work place seems to be throwing up roadblocks in every direction. No one even seems to talk to you not unless they are asked a direct question or when they have to make a response to your morning greetings when you report to work. Traveling to the other branch offices is not much better, and even many of the local managers there have mysteriously stopped sending in their weekly reports. Being the first African-American district manager in that area will be a big a challenge, but the sense of segregation and isolation you feel is more powerful than you expected it to be. At the branch offices, you have met only two other African-Americans and they are in low levels such as clerical positions.
These problems now welcome you to the real world of diverse leadership. As more female workers and minorities move up the management ladder, they find it a lonely road to travel. Even for those who have experienced a degree of racism or sexism at lower managerial levels, stepping into a new position of higher authority can be a real eye-opener to them. According to Mullatti, racial discrimination and sexism in the place of work often come up in subtle ways, the ignorance by a subordinate for an assigned task, lack of effectiveness and urgency in finishing an important duty assigned, ignoring of observations or suggestions made during a team meeting. Many minority leaders struggle day in day out with the challenge of delegating authority and accountability to workers who demonstrate little respect to them.
Diversity in today’s world
The objective for leaders in the world today is to recognize that every person is worth value and strengths to the place of work based on his or her own mixture of diverse characteristics. Companies establish workforce diversity events to encourage the hiring, addition, and career advancement of diverse staff and to ensure that workers differences are acknowledged, and respected in the place of work. Workforce diversity is a workforce that consists of people with different human characteristics, or who belongs to a variety of cultural groups. According to Mullatti, the viewpoint of folks, diversity refers to the ways by which individuals differ, including magnitudes such as age, sex, race, marital status, physical ability, income level, and lifestyle. Decades ago, nearly all companies and organizations viewed diversity in terms of a very inadequate set of dimensions, but organizations today have embraced a much more inclusive meaning that recognizes a range of differences that determine or influence how individuals approach work, interrelate among themselves, get satisfaction from their jobs, and identify who they actually are as people in the workplace.
Changing individual’s attitudes towards diversity
Daft and Lane suggest that attitudes in the direction of diversity are shifting partially since leaders have to respond to major changes in our society, as well as demographic changes and globalization. In the US, the minority inhabitants are roughly 100.7 million, making about one in three U.S. people a minority. Approximately 32 million people speak Spanish at home, and almost half of these individuals do not speak English fluently. White Americans born males make up less than half the U.S. labor force, with more women, people of color, and immigrants looking for employment opportunities.
The other feature contributing to enlarged acceptance of diversity is globalization. Leaders are insisting on cross-cultural understanding so that individuals can work efficiently across borders. The swiftness of global business is also fastening diversity. An unparalleled number of foreign-born CEOs now manage major companies and organizations in the United States of America, Britain, and quite a few other countries. According to Daft and Lane, workers with global knowledge and cultural understanding are in highly needed since at least some characteristic of approximately every business today cuts across national boundaries. For instance, corporations are not the only organizations looking for a diverse workforce to deal with the challenges of globalization. Intelligence and security agencies identify the significance of having individuals who understand and can fit in with the varied and ever-changing global landscape.
Finally, diversity leads to greater organizational learning and flexibility and leads to stronger performance. Recruiting and valuing diverse people makes it possible for organizations to attract and keep the best human talent.
In conclusion, a diverse workforce consisting of men and women contributes to diversity of thought, of which is a critical element for high performance. Individuals who differ in a variety of ways, be it race, cultural setting, physical capability, enlightening level, way of life, age, marital status of individuals, or even other magnitudes, have proved to have more diverse opinions and perspectives. This diversity of thinking means there is a broader and deeper base of thoughts, opinions, and experiences for resolving problems, originality and improvement. If individuals think alike, the organization suffers.
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