How to Build and Benefit from a Diverse Workforce - Essay Example

The unison of different humans under a single organization to reach a target is, and will always be a difficult proposition. William Sonnenschein also talks about this problem in his book, The Diversity Toolkit: How You Can Build and Benefit from a Diverse Workforce. “The demographics of the workplace are changing and will continue to change rapidly...Workforce diversity... presents one of the greatest challenges facing today's organization”.

As different humans could only create a different working culture, the success rate to form a single working culture will be minimal. But, if a common and winnable working culture is ‘operationalized’, throughout the organization, the organization will be a success story. And, the script for this success story can only be scripted, by an effective leader or manager. So, if I have been a manager, I would impose my assumptions as a form of single work culture and thereby will suppress the prevailing different cultures. One of the important first tasks of a leader in an organization is the creation of a common working culture. That is, the task of the leader is to create a working culture, embed the working culture in the working group and environment, sustain it and also rectify it, when faults occur.

As leaders are the man in the lead, they usually have a major impact on how the group initially defines and sets into an organization. Typically, the leaders or managers will have strong assumptions about the nature of the world, the role that organizations play in that world, the characteristics that make up human nature and relationships, how truth is arrived at, and how to manage time and space. They will, therefore, be quite comfortable in imposing those views and personal cultures, on their partners and employees as the organization copes with challenges and targets. This imposition of the founder’s assumptions, as a form of good culture, is one of the good leadership traits. The worker's mind will always be receptive to the leaders’ or managers’ views, orders, suggestions, etc because of the superiority and also because of the respect some managers will gain due to their past achievements or action. So, the manager can impose his/hers assumptions on his employees and form a single working culture. But, the challenge will come in the form of experienced workers who will be slugging out in the same job in the same environment, importantly in the same mindset for years, and changing them to accept the new effective assumptions and work culture will be difficult. But, the leader is only responsible for making them fall in line through influence or authority. Many leaders have successfully imposed their ideas, assumptions, and practices in their organizations. Each of these practices later became a set working culture for the whole organization like Japanese major Sony’s, “Sony’s Way”, created by Akiro Morita. So, this process of great working culture should always be ‘seeded’ by the leader or manager to unify all the workers and control the problems that will erupt due to diversity in an organization. “She unifies all people, and creates a shared vision.” (Sonnenschein)