Leading Culturally Diverse Teams

Diversity has a major impact on business and in the workplace and it cannot be ignored. A leader should make diversity a resource instead of viewing it as another type of liability. Diversity means differences and is a characteristic of everyone not just people of different races, nationalities, or genders. It also means the human differences that exist in a wide variety of categories such as race, gender, ethnicity, age, physical appearance, physical abilities, education, and religion. Although they are all equally important, more attention is placed on religion and race due to the laws that were enacted to give special protection to these. (DuBrin, 2010)

Why is diversity significant? There are changing demographics, changing workplace expectations, and changing structure. (Moore, 2005) With changing demographics, most companies would agree that changing demographics have motivated them to examine diversity issues not only with their employees in the workforce but with their customer base as well. Changing workplace expectations means that newer workers don’t always feel loyal to their employer and if their demands aren’t met they are willing to go elsewhere. In the future those that would have been hired for their brains will not be easily replaceable. Lastly, there is changing structure. This simply means that because companies are moving to flatter, leaner, and organizational structures there is a lot of teamwork taking place so diversity can be a large issue during this and avoiding any issues is imperative. (DuBrin, 2010)

Leaders have several different ways that they can choose to deal with diversity in the workplace and with their employees. There have been several methods that have been unsuccessful but companies still use them. The leader will need to consider what the impact of diversity is on your team