Diversity in Leadership

Diversity Leadership and Its Importance

Diversity is the inclusion of individuals from various socioeconomic backgrounds who have come together for a particular purpose. In essence, it encompasses a broad range of various concepts, objects, or people. Understanding how to guide a team of people or an organization is a key component of the study of leadership. I do think that through watching and trying, I have learned and developed excellent leadership skills. I think I can lead successfully using my knowledge of logic and communication. The ability to lead is a chance to create and maintain new concepts. Diversity leadership is a style of leadership in which a person sets an example while acknowledging and incorporating the various virtues of individuals from various cultures. In this course, I have gained profound knowledge about leadership and the ways of integrating the socio-cultural issues that I have seen and those that am yet to face in future. The idea of cultural diversity in leadership is important in creating a stand-up leader. Leadership is a valuable quality that each and every individual has within themselves and these qualities are only developed as the individuals experience everyday life and are weighed depending on either the success or failure. Regardless of different fields leadership is based on human spirit and endeavours determined by core values that define personality. I have learnt that leadership is comprises of three main features which include, process, interaction and situation. As a process, leadership reflects what an individual does rather than their position and therefore it entails influencing, motivating and inspiring people to achieve a mutual objective. Authority is also interactive since it involves the mutual relationship between the leader and those being led. Therefore, those with the authority should share peoples’ culture and values. Leadership cannot be analysed differently from the context in which it occurs whereby the culture, relationship amongst individuals and communities, time, various cultural differences and location define the scope of the context in which leadership occurs.

The Process of Diversity Leadership

Diversity leadership is the process by which a leader influences others by understanding, recognising and adapting to diversity in all its dimensions. While a leader has the burden of moving the masses or their firm towards progressive change they have to know that leadership is also a learning process. Competent leaders develop and learn from the experience of others by watching their mistakes while acknowledging and facing their own mistakes, rights and authority. Courage is a virtue that makes one a competent leader who is not afraid of trying and knows that making mistakes is part of learning and gaining experience. They understand that they have to make difficult decisions and consequently they might not be liked by everyone. Despite this, they stand firmly on their decision regardless of the attention it attracts from the entire public. Concerning the decision-making process, a diversified leader would rationally consider, examine and explore a situation from a different perspective and evaluate the impact of the verdict on people from different ethnic groups and therefore make a solid decision from the gathered information.

The Role of Communication in Diversity Leadership

A diversified culturally skilled leader has to have good and effective communication skills which involve frequent communication with the entire group that they are leading. They have to be transparent with open and straight communication channels which entail attending meetings, answering questions openly and informing others of the what, the why and the relation, mission and vision of the firm or nation. Therefore a good leader should incorporate other people in the decision-making procedure which is beneficial because of the different point of view which makes it easier to achieve the set goals and targets of the people they serve. A culturally cautious leader should not be influenced by their gender, race and cultural background in rationally thinking and decision making. Therefore their reaction to ethical, racial, linguistic, gender and religion diversity should not be biased. By self-monitoring, one is capable of using interpersonal cues and improving their behaviour and personality while considering the effect they have on others. Sustained monitoring helps us to determine the strength and weaknesses, create consciousness and understanding of interpersonal skills and improve the awareness of cultural diversity.

Creating a Stand-Up Leader

Furthermore, looking into the beliefs of a firm concerning racism and culture will help a leader recognise and adopt certain approaches to problems that cover previous identities of the company and therefore they know when it is appropriate to involve a technical approach. Those who are in authority should view themselves as employees of the society. Hence they should always be incorporated in the community working hand in hand with the people while considering the demands of the customers they attend to. This can also help avoid the feeling of isolation that arises from the challenges and the demands of work. In their position, leaders face the risk of getting exhausted by the different challenges encountered and therefore to avoid this from holding them they have to use the approach of working with rather than working for the community or the organisation. They also have to participate in community support activities. Consulting other leaders and obtaining mental, strategic and critical support. A perfect leader will put down non-existing ideas and organise the people depending on the idea to invent ways of achieving their targets. Working with a team to develop strategic plans prevents impulsive and quick response to new ideas or requests. For a leader before a deal is done, they have to ensure that the end results are in accordance with the mission and vision of the company. More so, they should review the policies and practices of a company or a firm in order to avail culturally significant expert improvement for staff as a form of support and encouragement and ensure they love their jobs. Consequently, they should think through the history of the organisation, the hierarchy and dynamics and consider these factors during the decision making process.

The Qualities of a Good Leader

The most important quality of a leader is being realistic such that, they should understand the process of change takes time and in addition set realistic goals which are achievable. However, this should not deter them from being excited about the change that is far away from happening. Maintaining course and staying focused on the long-term goals is important for it helps to avoid giving up and prevent doing everything at once. Although good leaders are supposed to lead by example, they should know it is better to teach someone how to fish than catching the fish for them. In addition being enthusiastic helps leaders to be able to create an environment which is energised and optimistic where the individuals want to make a difference. This is achieved by trusting that things constantly change for the better while inspiring others to be part of the effort by explaining how important it is to them both individually and professionally. Rather than embarrassing or blaming others, it is important to motivate them and celebrate their achievements even if it is small.

The Building Blocks of Diversity-Conscious Leadership

The main building blocks of diversity-conscious leadership involve awareness, understanding, commitment and skills. While leading on a vast scope, one has to have critical information about their strength or advantages, weakness or disadvantages and be cautious of the times when their character may or may not bring out the best character in people. It is of vital importance to know that, although might share same cultural or racial backgrounds, they might act in an, unlike ways. Sometimes there are those moments when one assumes that their ethical values are the same to everybody’s and thus their ethical values and beliefs influence their mode of thinking and decision making. The decision-making process should not be biased towards women and the minority since diversity covers a wide scope and not only these dimensions. Culturally competent leaders are supposed to be understanding in such a way that they are aware of the fact that different people think and react in different ways and therefore they plan and process information differently. Character and personality are unique to individuals and therefore people identify themselves differently depending on the cultural complexity of their environment. A good leader should understand this. Understanding enhances the relationship between leaders and their people which consequently helps when it comes to receiving honest feedbacks and open dialogues. When one appreciates diversity, it makes them gain the ability to adapt to a different cultural context and the complexity of the environment surrounding them and therefore they know properly how this affects their mode of thinking.

Adapting to Change and Overcoming Barriers

Having good interpersonal skills and communication skills enable one to be able to break through both communication and interpersonal barriers. Change is always inevitable, thus as a good leader while gauging and critically analysing inputs and feedbacks from others after listening to them regardless of who they are and their opinion should accept change while adapting different leadership styles in reacting to situations from the various point of view. Instead of prejudice and making assumptions about others the main objective is to empower others while steering them towards the main target. Despite the different cultural setting and the impact, it has on an individual one should adapt and deal effectively with the ambiguity and personal confusion that arise from facing different drastic beliefs and values.

The Four Dimensions of Diversity

In order to be a diversified leader, one has to understand the four dimensions of diversity. The first one is individualism versus collectivism. This entails the percentage to which the culture highlights the significance of individuals as compared to groups. Individualism supports people dependency on themselves and their own interests while collectiveness improves dependency on the group and the wellbeing of all involved. Secondly, large and small power distance, this dimension mostly refers to the unequal distribution of power. In large power distance culture, there are huge differences amongst people and they are anticipated and recognised. On the other hand, there is the minimum difference in power and wealth distribution. Moreover, in cases where there is tolerance of obscurity and uncertainty at the expense of utter truth. This is known as strong or weak uncertainty avoidance. For strong uncertainty avoidance, the risk and probability are avoided at all cost while the total truth is accepted while weak uncertainty avoidance entails cases, where individuals avoid the total truth, are not endangered by views dissimilar from their own. Strong uncertainty avoidance societies tend to believe and have trust in their leaders and therefore they have more power and withstand less defection from their rules. Lastly, the dimension of masculinity versus feminist elaborates the model to which gender roles are differentiated and treasured. Some communities are open and allow both male and females to do different chores while other communities have strong believe that distinguish on what the female and the male can or cannot do.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I do believe that what I have learnt from this course has empowered me with knowledge of being a good culturally diversified leader. If I work in accordance to the best qualities and follow the principle of a good leader. Although in future as a culturally cautious leader, it might be difficult to rule solely because of lack of diversity awareness hence making it hard to create chances in which reliable communication, teamwork and originality can flourish. Finally, by increasing awareness and understanding of the many ways in which individuals and culture describe and elaborate leadership, we are in a position to adapt and know the exact time to adjust. Therefore, this makes one a good leader who is able to create trust, develop a useful relationship, generate healthy challenges, empower others and amass individuals in order to achieve the set target.