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CROWN BUSINESS CONSULTING, Llc LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT | DIVERSITY INCLUSION

BLOGS ON LEADERSHIP AND DIVERSITY INCLUSION

LEADERSHIP BLOG

DIVERSITY INCLUSION BLOG

ASSUMPTIONS OF MY ESSENTIAL BEHAVIORAL LEADERSHIP QUALITIES [EBLQ] ASSESSMENT METHOD:

1. Leadership behaviors rather than natural traits determine leadership outcomes.

2. A good evaluation system should be effective in coaching. The system should be capable, in systematic ways, of indicating the areas of leadership in which a leader is doing well and those areas where the leader may need improvement.

3. Competency model: Relative to the job situation, a leader ought to be competent in certain skills and behaviors to be successful. Those skills and behaviors are termed essential behavioral leadership qualities (EBLQ), and the assessment of a leader’s effectiveness should be based solely on these qualities.

4. Decisions about EBLQ to assess are to be made by a select group (called judges) of the leader's followers and others with adequate knowledge of the leader's roles.

5. The best way to assess the effectiveness of a leader is through the perceptions of his/her followers. The most direct impact of leadership behaviors is upon followers, hence, the followers are best positioned to indicate leadership impact on themselves. The followers provide the most direct looking-glass for leadership feedback.

6. Effectiveness of a leader is best determined based on relative essentiality of the EBLQ items being measured. That is, the evaluation of a leader on EBLQ items must be compared to the extent to which the items are assessed to be essential for effective leadership.

SOURCE: Oyinlade, A. Olu. (2006). A Method of Assessing Leadership Effectiveness: Introducing the Essential Behavioral leadership Qualities Approach. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 19(1) 25-40.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/piq.2006.19.issue-1/issuetoc

DIVERSITY INCLUSION BLOG

MANAGING A CULTURALLY DIVERSE WORKFORCE

What are some tips for managing a culturally diverse workplace?

To successfully manage a culturally diverse workplace, the following are some tips that I highly recommend. They are the products of my many years of studying and analyzing how to make diversity work for an organization.

A grand strategic plan to institute a culture of diversity in an organization should be created. By making diversity management part of a strategic plan, diversity management becomes institutionalized in the organization. Diversity, then, becomes an integral part of doing everyday business in the organization, rather than episodic answers to organizational problems.

To institutionalize a culture of diversity in an organization, an Office of Diversity Management should be created and staffed for the sole purpose of overseeing diversity initiatives of the organization. The office should be responsible for assessing the effectiveness of all diversity efforts, and for making sure that potential diversity problems are resolved quickly. The head of the office should be a high-level executive, who reports directly, preferably, to the organization’s highest operations executive.

Top executive commitment -- Executives at the very top of an organization must be solidly in support of making diversity work. Top executives must believe in diversity and must be willing and ready to commit necessary resources to diversity efforts.

Top organizational managers and supervisors must buy into all areas of diversity efforts. They must, first, be educated in all important matters of diversity, especially those areas that may pose challenges to making diversity work well for the organization.

The ideology and philosophy that underlie all diversity initiatives must center on practical values (e.g., profits, market expansion, organizational survival, etc.). Diversity initiatives must not be based on diversity for the sake of diversity, or as charity to those included.

Diversity should emphasize hiring and promoting those who meet the skills competency requirements to contribute to organizational success. The way to get employees to respect diversity is to hire and promote based on competence rather than based on membership in categories. This requires an organization to hire without discrimination and nepotism. This will allow technically competent minorities to be hired and promoted. By hiring and promoting all workers based on technical competence alone, negative stereotypes and oppression are likely to be significantly reduced, as no category of employee population can be collectively labelled as less competent or as charity cases.

Inclusion should be integral. This means that inclusion of underrepresented categories of people should be at all levels of the organization. Since differences assume those we perceive to be different have experiences that have taught them different ways of perceiving, analyzing and solving problems, organizations can benefit from what diversity may offer at all levels of decision-making in its hierarchy.

The tapestry approach to solving organizational problems or conducting all organizational business is highly recommended for diverse teams. The tapestry approach requires active listening to every member of a team, soliciting knowledge from each member, and piecing together all useful ideas from every team member in conducting organizational business. The more every member is able to actively participate in solving organizational problems, the greater the likelihood of job satisfaction and organizational engagement by the workers. Job satisfaction and engagement are likely to enhance affective organizational commitment, low turnover, higher passion, and enthusiasm for work.

Every diverse organization must actively invest in eliminating all forms of oppression. The most common forms of oppression are discrimination, avoidance and voluntary segregation. Discrimination tends to be especially common in promotion, raise, and performance evaluation. Organizational oppression in any of its forms (there are many of them) usually result in alienating workers, killing passion for work, reducing productivity, incivility, and ultimately, turnover.

It is best for organizations to hire consultants, especially those educated in the structural analysis of human behaviors (e.g., business organizational sociologists), to guide them through their diversity efforts. While organizations may attempt to institute their diversity initiatives internally through their human resources offices, usually, they are too close to the problems they try to solve, or they may feel personally vested in the issues. Being too close or vested in issues often hinder objective solutions that an organization may critically need. The structurally analytical consultant can provide guidance in developing objectively derived structural solutions.

SOURCE: Oyinlade, A. Olu. (2018). Benefits and Challenges of Living in a Diverse City and Tips for Managing a Culturally Diverse Workplace. WALLETHUB: “2018’s Most and Least Ethnically Diverse Cities in the US-Ask the Experts Section. https://wallethub.com/edu/cities-with-the-most-and-least-ethno-racial-and-linguistic-diversity/10264/#a-olu-oyinlade