“Love your mother, but don't hate others' mothers. Love your religion, region, community, culture, and creed, but don't hate others' religion, region, community, culture, and creed." —Professor M.S. Rao, Ph.D.—21st-Century Philosopher & The Father of “Soft Leadership
The 21st century has thrown several challenges to humankind. One of them for corporate leaders is managing a diversified workforce. With changing times and technologies, and with the rising aspirations and expectations of the people, businesses find it tough to meet their demands. Innovation and creativity are some of the solutions to meet the growing expectations of customers, and to achieve the same, it is essential to have a diversified workforce that can add value to organizations by bringing their diverse ideas and insights across the table.
As people are different, they have different attitudes, behaviors, personalities, gifts, talents, abilities, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and appearances at the workplace. Diversity brings various individuals with diverse backgrounds such as culture, religion, region, ethnicity, and education working under one roof to achieve organizational goals and objectives. Diversity does not talk about the dilution of an individual's uniqueness, but it talks about recognizing and respecting others' uniqueness in terms of religions, regions, languages, creeds, caste, color, gender, cultures, and communities. Diversity clearly defines that individuals are not alike. It portrays knowing the differences among the employees and respecting them accordingly.
Diversity management is all about fostering a conducive workplace ambiance by recognizing and respecting the differences among the employees. It is aimed at looking at the similarities rather than differences among the employees to promote organizational fraternity and prosperity. It is about appreciating the differences in gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation of the employees working under the same roof.
It is essential to attract, retain, and train a diverse workforce as it enhances creativity and innovation. Although it has several challenges arising out of diversity, it has several strategic advantages as well for organizations. Here are some advantages.
It is a great asset where people across the globe bring in their diverse thoughts, ideas, insights, and cultures to the corporate world, leading to cultural assimilation and tolerance.
There is variety in diversity, where people have different and divergent characteristics.
Diversity helps in capitalizing on all the strengths of each employee.
It promotes innovation and competition.
It furthers flexibility and tolerance towards other communities and cultures.
The workforce realizes where they stand in their performance vis-à-vis others in the organization.
It enhances production, productivity, performance, innovation, creativity, and corporate democracy.
A diversified workforce brings in diversified talent across the table in the organization, resulting in the proliferation of ideas and innovation, resulting in new products and services as per the needs and requirements of customers. It promotes out-of-the-box thinking, thus adding value to the organization.
Here Are Some Disadvantages
Diversity has multiple challenges in the workplace, such as communication and cultural differences at the workplace.
Individuals may have less energy to contribute as they spend most of their energies in coping with an alien environment.
They may look at the differences but not the similarities.
Challenges For Diversified Leaders
Diversity is a gift from God without which our lives would be boring. God created people differently to add excitement and enthusiasm among the people.
We shall now look at a few of the challenges for diversified leaders.
It is very tough to please all, as people belong to diverse categories. Conflicts are bound to erupt due to differences, and it is a Herculean task for leaders. They need to reinvent themselves regularly in a dynamic global environment. They have to provide diversity training to the employees regularly. And to enable the same, the leaders must have rich experience in diversity to make the diversity process effective.
Diversity leaders must stay ahead of times and technologies. They must stay ahead of the game as well, which is possible through continuous learning and growth. They must
Never look at people with specific lenses. Sometimes they need to change their lenses. Therefore, flexibility in holding the lenses is essential.
Always look at the big picture.
Encourage second-rung leaders within the organization by bringing awareness about diversity.
Manage the anti-diversity employees constantly, continuously, and creatively because a bad apple can ruin the entire lot of good apples.
Praise the people who support diversity in public and correct them in private to ensure a successful diversity program.
Developing diversity is like developing soft skills among employees. It is easy to cultivate hard skills such as technical knowledge, domain knowledge, or core knowledge. However, it is highly challenging to develop soft skills as it totally depends on the personality, attitude, and behavior of the employees. It calls for the involvement of both formal and informal leadership as well.
One of the ways to develop diversity is to ask the employees to bring their own foods, like a potluck lunch, to share at the workplace, as it connects them emotionally as one family.
Educational institutions must foster diversity on the campus itself. For instance, business schools want to have the right mix of students globally in the classroom so that the students get to know one another and learn to appreciate the differences globally. They not only develop a global mindset but also develop tolerance and assimilation. People with different backgrounds think differently, resulting in many more ideas and insights into the issues, resulting in meaningful and realistic ideas.
The 21st Century Demands Diverse Leaders
The leaders who lead a diversified team successfully by recognizing, respecting, and appreciating the cultural, racial, ethnic, gender, and other backgrounds in the workplace and by connecting them with a common thread are known as diversity leaders. The 21st century demands diverse leaders who can lead from the front with openness, trust, confidence, and magnanimity.
To put it precisely, diversity leadership is the process of setting the vision, influencing the people, building teams with a diversified workforce, motivating them through trust and confidence with a global mindset, and aligning their energies and efforts towards organizational goals and objectives.
Dr. Martin Luther King demonstrated diversity leadership by championing for equality of blacks on par with whites, where people need to live together with diversity. It is diversity but with a limited perspective, i.e., from a color perspective.
If you want to become a diversity leader, you must be wedded truly to the principles and values of diversity. You must also check whether you have flair for it. You must be free and fair and should have respect towards others. You must demonstrate impeccable integrity and character.
Take initiative to grab opportunities to coach and mentor employees. You must know how to give sandwich feedback and must learn to accept criticism gracefully. You must be a visionary. You must build trust and confidence amongst your employees. Above all, you must be a good listener and problem solver.
Look For Similarities, Celebrate Differences
Technology and times have brought people together under one roof. Therefore, it is essential to gel well with others to ensure workplace survival and success. It is time to recognize, learn, understand, and appreciate others' cultures, languages, ethnicities, and races in the larger interests of individuals as well as institutions.
The days of looking through the lenses of cultural, racial, regional, or national background are over. Now these are the days of ‘perform or perish’. Businesses never look at your cultural, racial, linguistic, regional, or national background. They fundamentally look at your work and performance and the value you add to them.
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“Things You Don’t Know about Professor M. S. Rao” http://professormsraovision2030.blogspot.com/2015/10/things-you-dont-know-about-professor-m.html
Read my ‘Vision 2030 One Million Global Leaders’ URL: http://professormsraovision2030.blogspot.com/2014/12/professor-m-s-raos-vision-2030-one_31.html
Note: I had a brain hemorrhage. I was in bed for five months. My right hand has been numb and paralyzed. I am recovering. Thanks for empathizing with me. With gratitude. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFJrSRLHPUk&ab_channel=ProfessorM.S.Rao
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Professor M.S. Rao, Ph.D.
Founder of MSR Leadership Consultants, India
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