Understanding Diversity Assignment
- Explain the difference between valuing and managing diversity and provide examples from professional experiences for each. Your examples should be novel (do not use what is written in the book). Show how communication affects this process.
It is indicated that managing diversity and valuing different occurrences. Valuing diversity is examined as passive, while managing diversity involves proactive supervising and active (De Janasz et al., 2018). Therefore, it is important to value diversity as it allows people to increase their workplace effectiveness. For example, valuing diversity enables one to create a conducive and innovative environment for equitable participation. With certainty, managing diversity involves bringing people together to allow them to achieve their goals and full potential. For example, managing diversity enables a person to learn how to execute various duties to attain the desired goals. The communication process is affected as one must understand behavior to relate with others in the workplace effectively.
- Using various concepts introduced in your chapter, identity, define and explain the one or two areas regarding understanding or managing diversity in which you are the strongest. Show how communication affects this process through specific examples.
The key concepts introduced in the chapter are surface-level diversity and deep-level diversity. Surface level attributes are easily identifiable, and they include gender, race, language, age, disability, and culture (De Janasz et al., 2018). Indeed, understanding diversity requires one to know specific attributes to a better relationship. For instance, knowing other employees’ culture allows one to effectively communicate with them by avoiding particular topics that might make them unhappy.
- Using various concepts introduced in your chapter, identity, define and explain the one or two areas of understanding or managing diversity in which you need more improvement. Examine specific communication opportunities that could help you improve your intercultural communication competence.
The key concepts introduced in the chapter are surface-level diversity and deep-level diversity. Deep-level diversity entails identified attributes through verbal and non-verbal channels (De Janasz et al., 2018). These attributes are essential in managing diversity, and they include sexual orientation, education, values, personality, and functional knowledge. I need to make adjustments on deep-level diversity to be able to relate with others make. For example, making assumptions about my colleagues’ functional knowledge and personality at work will most likely complicate things I might misjudge them.
- If you did not change or improve your intercultural communication competence, discuss how it would affect your personal and professional life. Use specific experiences/examples to show the implications.
If I do not change my intercultural communication competence, I am most likely to have attitudes that will hinder my openness to diversity. I might have a prejudice toward individual employees for belonging to an ethnic grouping. For example, one might consider blacks as irresponsible employees based on how the media displays them. Furthermore, people who lack intercultural communication can perpetuate discrimination, backlash, and harassment for belonging to a particular grouping (De Janasz et al., 2018).
- Identify, define, and explain one barrier to accepting diversity discussed in your textbook that you experienced/observed and discuss how you would address it.
Stereotypes are one of the barriers to accepting diversity addressed in the textbook. Stereotypes are a set of beliefs regarding a specific group applied worldwide to all the people in the group (De Janasz et al., 2018). Stereotyping can be harmful to diversity when people are categorized negatively. For example, saying the whites are lazy and obese is a negative stereotype. I will address the issue of stereotyping by avoiding making inaccurate statements about members of the white group.
- Select one of the five dimensions of cross-cultural differences discussed in your textbook. Explain the meaning and offer a specific example to show how it impacts cross-cultural communication (from your own experiences or what you learned through your research).
Masculinity versus femininity is one of the dimensions of cross-cultural differences that highlight the quality of life, assertiveness, and relationships. Masculinity advocates for heroism, material reward, and achievement, while femininity encourages modesty, quality of life, and cooperation (De Janasz et al., 2018). For example, women are pressured to be family-focused and nurturing. Indeed, masculinity versus femininity affects communication because the idea of nurturing is something that should be exercised by all people in society.
- Name individual diversity strategies discussed in your chapter. Select one and explain how you might apply it moving forward to help gain awareness and improve your ability to understand and relate to others.
I resonate well with the strategy of reducing prejudices and the use of stereotypes. I will focus on recognizing the diversity and value the fundamental differences of the people I relate with at the workplace. People need to admit their stereotypes and prejudices and focus on reducing those (De Janasz et al., 2018). I will avoid behaviors viewed as bullying and respect the diverse values and cultures of others.
- Think back on the questions and identify a few that were more difficult to complete than others. Explain why.
While handling the different questions for the assignment, I found questions 2 and 3 challenging to handle. I have realized that managing diversity is a difficult task that should not be underrated. Dealing with others’ values, knowledge and personality can allow us to make wrong assumptions about others.
- What did you learn about yourself in this exercise?
The chapter has allowed me to learn the different ways that I can use to improve my awareness and the importance of diversity while dealing with fellow employees. I have realized that we live in a diverse world, and thus, it is vital to treat people different from us with respect and dignity. Moreover, I have learned that how I interact with others plays a critical role in managing myself and helping those around me to attain their goals. I am now focused on building effective relationships and how I interact with those around me.
References
De Janasz, S. C., Dowd, K., & Schneider, B. (2018). Interpersonal skills in organizations (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.