Deep Level Diversity Promotes Team Performance

Cultural diversity continues to become more common in the workplace. Diversity refers to qualities and features that are different from our own. These differences include race, gender, age, personality, talents, and nationalities. Diversity includes how one identifies themselves as well as how others perceive one. The ability to appreciate the qualities that make us individuals and embrace those who are dissimilar can help increase performance within an organization and prevent conflict.

Organizational behavior is the study of human and group behavior in organizations using methods such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, and political science (Schermerhorn, Hunt & Osborn, 2005). This study also empowers leaders to understand, predict, and influence the behaviors of workers. Furthermore, good leaders must also possess other qualities such as good communication skills, an ability to understand the culture of an organization, and must be knowledgeable about diversity in the workplace. Ress Asst (2012) describes diversity as the understanding of values and characteristics of different people. In order to have a diverse working environment, managers must be respectful, appreciative, and acknowledge the characteristics and ideas of individuals. Proper management of diverse employees allows for companies to receive the benefits from different talents and skills that employees are able to bring to the table. With diversity management, employees of different backgrounds learn to understand that everyone is not the same. However, with their differences, they are able to work together to get a job completed. This concept can be easy for managers to implement and practice by educating employees, communicating effectively, and enforcing how employees should treat each other.

The marketplace is more global driven by advances in communication and technology. For many organizations, managing diversity at the work place is an integral part of their culture. Management of diversity makes every employee sensitive to the needs and differences of others.

Diversity in the organization can affect the employees and their behavior in many ways. The effect can be positive and negative in the same time. The positive effect is, it will wider employee knowledge, skills, and attitude which will allow the organization to become more competitive globally. Higher diversity of employees mean higher diversity of knowledge, skills and abilities. Sharing experience inspires innovative thinking (Claudia Quaiser-Pohls, 2013, p. 41). Today in the modern workplace, most organizations will have

This paper will discuss and focus on the four dimensions of diversity: ethnicity, gender, differences in skills, abilities and personality traits and how they have an impact in my workplace. To be able to go further in this paper one should understand the definition of diversity. Diversity is a variety between people associated to factors such as culture, employment status, education, family orientation, gender, origin, physical appearance, religion, sexual orientation and thinking style (Harvey, C. P., 2009). Although the differences themselves are unquestionable, organizations and society often reject them by acknowledging

By being familiar with the needs of the personnel in the work center, subordinates will learn to be accepting of each other’s unique backgrounds. This familiarity will increase productivity and development as subordinates seamlessly work and grow together. Subsequently, peers will benefit from diversity awareness because they may fall into a diverse group or have subordinates who are. As I implement diversity awareness my peers will be relieved to have issues they are sensitive to become understood, or the issues of their subordinates.

Diversity is a wonderful asset to an organization and brings with it many benefits. Employees bring in their own personal experiences and knowledge to the team (Burns & Kerby, 2012). Having diverse teams allows for the possibility to fix a problem or perfect a process by using different employee’s experiences and past knowledge to find solutions. A diverse workforce can drive economic growth and capture a greater share of the consumer market (Burns & Kerby, 2012). With diversity as a core value, the recruitment pool is widened to find the most qualified candidate and reduces employee turnover as a result. An organization can be highly competitive with a diversity initiative by adapting to a changing environment (Burns & Kerby, 2012).

Workforces’ shared views of diversity climate can influence their emotional and behavioral results (Chung, Liao, Jackson, Subramony, Colakoglu, & Jiang, 2015).

The positive impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can contribute creativity to a high-performance team. Membership diversity offers a rich pool of information, talent, and varied perspectives that can help improve team problem solving and increase creativity (Hunt, J., Osborn, R., Schermerhorn, J., 2005). Cultural diversity contributes various group input and group dynamics to the team. These two factors are essential in the high performance of a team. Cultural diversity can develop a high-performance team by allowing the diverse potentials of a team to operate. The negative impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can develop numerous of conflicts between team members. Conflicting interaction can limit or decrease the effectiveness and efficiency of productivity. There should be an awareness of the diverse culture values in order to prevent these conflicts.

Diversity is what makes people different, not just culturally but in human differences. Having a multitude of differences in the workforce gives an organization the ability to use many ideas to reach a common goal. A person could say that a diverse group of people together in one room can accomplish greater achievements than a room filled with the same types of individuals. Managers understand the concept of diversity, and how important diversity is to the success of a company’s ability to implement programs that continue to develop a harmonious and diverse workplace. The recognition that diversity is a reality in the workforce has generated an enormous amount of activity over the years among leaders in business, government, and civil

It is the differences we can easily observed that don’t reflect on the way people feel or think (Armstrong, Adam, Denize & Kotler 2015). Furthermore, demographics refers to surface level as this can leave employees to identify or recognise one another through stereotypes (Armstrong, Adam, Denize & Kotler 2015). The issue with surface level diversity is that people are being excluded from a group of people because they are judged based on their appearance. On the other hand, deep level diversity is described as “the differences in value, personalities and work preferences that become progressively more important for determining similarity as people get to know one another” (Armstrong, Adam, Denize & Kotler 2015). More importantly, the issue with deep level diversity is that most people have already judged based on surface level diversity and their

The ideal team should consist of a mixture of individuals who have different behavioral styles. In addition to the mixture, managers should also take the

Diversity in culture and demographic characteristics can be a negative impact or be one of the team's greatest strengths, depending on how the team as a whole functions and applies these different “routes to success”. A group can become a high performing team by understanding how cultural and demographic differences influence group behavior. The groups must realize that they can benefit from their diversity to their advantage and into a high performance team.

Diversity in the workplace means bringing together people of different ethnic backgrounds, religions and age groups into a cohesive and productive unit. Advances in communication technology, such as the Internet and cellular phones, have made the marketplace a more global concept. In order to survive, a company needs to be able to manage and utilize its diverse workplace effectively. Managing diversity in the workplace should be a part of the culture of the entire organization.

people are the same. Thus, diversity studies would then be reduced to the conclusion that ‘everyone is different’ and, if this conclusion is accepted, the concept of diversity may become “nothing more than a benign, meaningless concept” (Nkomo, 1995). The danger in narrowly defining diversity, however, is that only one dimension of cultural diversity (race, age, ethnicity, or gender) is by and large the subject of research at a time. Since a cultural diversity dimension interacts with other dimensions of diversity narrow concept of diversity would be deficient by failing to recognize these interactions. Scholars, who advocate a broad definition (e.g. Jackson, May & Whitney, 1995) argue that diversity encompasses all the possible ways people can differ. Individuals, according to this school of thought, do not only differ because of their race, gender, age and other demographic categories, but also because of their values, abilities, organizational function, tenure and personality. They contend that an individual has multiple identities and that the manifold dimensions cannot be isolated in an organizational setting. Apart from bringing their race, age, ethnicity, and gender, individuals also come with their particular knowledge, personality, and cognitive style to the work place. Therefore, in order to understand the dynamics of a heterogeneous workforce, the interactive effects of multi-dimensional diversity have to be addressed. In addition, it is argued that a broadening