Todays workforce - Essay Example

Skills needed to motivate people in culturally diverse workplace When the workforce becomes culturally diverse, the skills needed for the leader andmanager to motivate the employees are emotional intelligence and social skills. These two kinds of skills deal primarily with how to manage self and other people and are indispensable skills in dealing and motivating people of varying cultural background and expectations. The first skill necessary for a manger to motivate employee is emotional intelligence.

According to Salovey and Mayer, emotional intelligence is“the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action” (Salovey and Mayer, 1990 qtd. In Lyusin, 2006: 55). It was interpreted as a complex construct consisting of three types of abilities; (1) the identification and expression of emotion as; (2) the regulation of emotions; and (3) the application of emotional information to thinking and action (Lyusin, 2006 pg. 55). Emotional intelligence is the skill of understanding the self and how he or she relates to people which is an important insight in motivating people.

The second skill required to motivate people is social skill. Social skill on the other hand is the competency to adapt with the changing situation and environment that makes one effective in dealing the contexts of people (Shanley, 1971). The ability to adjust to different kind of people is necessary to effectively motivate people because not all employees came from the same cultural mold. Understanding their cultural background and able to adjust accordingly would spell a difference between success and failure of an effective manager and leader in a culturally diverse background.

ReferencesLyusin, D. B. (2006). Emotional Intelligence as a Mixed Construct: Its Relation to Personality and Gender. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology. (44)6: 54-68 Shanley, L. A, Walker, R. E., & Foley, J. M. (1971). Social intelligence: A concept in search of data. Psychological Reports, 29, 1123-1132