2 Discussions and One Reflection Post

One must have a good sense of the importance of being multiculturally aware, knowledgeable, and skillful since demographic changes will continue at a rapid pace, making the need for these competencies more critical than ever. These are prerequisites for top-level CEOs, and for all employees who influence others in the workplace, whether this influence is based on formal authority or informal norms. Being multiculturally competent can help every employee to get more out of every relationship in the workplace. Understanding both diversity and multiculturalism must focus on the complexity of culture, which plays a large role in both diversity and multiculturalism efforts. The development of multicultural awareness begins with an awareness of culturally learned conditions. The conditions include the following:

· Multicultural perspectives emphasize each group’s similarities and differences at the same time.

· Multicultural perspectives are necessarily complex.

· Multicultural perspectives are dynamic for each person, place and time.

The inclusive multicultural perspective of emphasizing both similarities and differences has becoming the main focus on multicultural aspects of leading because of the inherent difficulties of measures of culture. It is easier to ignore culture or to limit the cultural perspective to either similarities or differences. Breaking this first rule of multiculturalism has resulted in false and inadequate/ incomplete choices. The controversy over "political correctness" reflects the inadequate of this false dichotomy where both sides of the argument are wrong. The argument supporting an objectively "correct" view of each culture rightly protects the unique and different perspectives of each cultural group against insult but wrongly presumes that culture is defined by these objective guidelines. The argument against political correctness rightly emphasizes the need to find common ground across cultures but wrongly presumes that cultural differences are unimportant. In order to escape from cultural encapsulation, leaders need to challenge the cultural bias of their own untested criteria. To leave our conditions untested or, worse yet, to be unaware of our culturally learned conditions, is not consistent with the standards of effective leadership.

The numbers of different country and cultural classifications available may create an overwhelming feeling of confusion about which one is "right". Instead of feeling overwhelmed, leaders who know that culture influences the conditions that individuals have as to what makes an effective leader should embrace the various aspects of culture as opportunities to educate themselves on the many dimensions of culture and what they mean for leaders in a multicultural environment. Multicultural development is a continuous learning process based on the following three stages of development:

1. The awareness includes conditions about cultural differences and similarities in behavior, attitude, and values. Increased awareness provides more freedom of choice to those who become more aware of their own multiculturalism.

2. The knowledge expands the amount of facts and information about culturally learned conditions.

3. The skills apply effective and efficient action with people of different cultures based on the participants’ clarified conditions and accurate knowledge.

Leaders need to be trained in awareness, knowledge, and skills to develop multicultural competency.

People differ in many ways. Ethnics and racial identity models provide a framework for understanding how people may differ in terms of their racial identity and the implications of those identifications. Leaders who are familiar with both their own identity and that of others will benefit in their interactions with others. Individuals also differ in terms of their intelligences and preferred learning style. Leaders who are more emotionally intelligent are more likely to find developing multicultural skills easier compared to leaders who score lower on emotional intelligence. Also, leaders who are more aware of their own learning style can better attend to the choices they make during the learning process. This information can also be used to help leaders step outside of the comfort zone of their learning style to help them see situations from other perspectives.

To help in exploring and understanding the formation of personal identity, one must consider the tripartite framework made up of three concentric circles representing universal, group, and individual levels of personal identity. Because we are all members of the human race, and belong to the species Homo sapiens, we share many similarities, and the universal level can be summed up with the statement, "All individuals are, in some respects, like all other individuals." Because all of us are born into a cultural matrix of beliefs, values, rules, and social practices, group-level factors influence us. The group level of identity could be summarized by the following statement: "All individuals are, in some respects, like some other individuals." Some of the group-level factors are fixed and unchanging, e.g., race, gender, ability, age, while others are relatively non-fixed, e.g., education, socioeconomic status, marital status, geographic location. Moreover, individuals can belong to more than one cultural group, i.e., race, gender, and disability, some group identity can shift from one to the other depending on the situation.

The individual level of identity can best be summed up with the following statement: "All individuals are, in some way, like no other individuals." A holistic approach to understanding personal identity requires that we recognize all three levels: individual, group, and universal. Although the concentric circles may suggest a clear boundary, each level of identity must be viewed as permeable and ever changing in salience. In addition, even within a level of identity, multiple forces may be at work.

Conditions of Practice: "Practice makes perfect" has long been an accepted universal principle of learning. However, all practice may not be considered equal. Many issues have been researched that relate to conditions of pre-practice, practice, and post-practice and how they all relate to learning. Pre-practice conditions include attention advice which is providing information, independent of performance content, about the process or strategy that can be used to achieve an optimal learning outcome during training. Providing intentional advice is like giving trainees a problem-solving, task-related strategy or schema to apply across similar task. It allows the trainees to know where to focus their attention during training. The intentional advice contributes to transfer of learning. This is likely because the type of learning encouraged by intentional advice leads to general strategies and rules that can be applied across a variety of job situations.

There is much preparatory work that must be done before training begins. The effectiveness of all training programs depends on a thorough needs assessment. All three levels: organizational, task, and individual are important either directly or indirectly to the development of leaders’ multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills. Training that does not transfer is wasted. Focusing on trainee characteristics, training design, and the work environment will not ensure the desired training results, but not considering these three factors will almost ensure that multicultural and diversity training fails.

Just as culture is complex but not chaotic, so should multicultural training be guided by a sequence of learning objectives that reflect the needs of both the leader and the multicultural context. Teaching multicultural leadership and communication should include any and all methods relevant to the multicultural context from the viewpoint of the culture that is being taught. Training designs needs to be comprehensive enough to include both culture-general and culture-specific perspectives. The developmental sequence from awareness to knowledge to skill provides an eclectic framework for organizing the content of multicultural training and a rationale for leader development in multicultural settings.

Regardless of whether conflict is the result of personal factors or organizational factors, and whether it results in positive or negative outcomes, it must be managed or it might likely lead to unintended consequences. The handling of conflict has been part of the management literature discussing five ways of dealing with conflict: domination, compromise, integration, avoidance, and suppression. A framework for classifying styles for handling interpersonal conflicts can be grouped into five types: forcing, withdrawing, smoothing, compromising, problem solving and the intentions and assertiveness.

Avoiding is a style low on both cooperativeness and assertiveness. It is a decision to take no action or to stay out of conflict. This style is often considered to be withdrawal or indifference.

The Accommodating style reflects concern for the other party in meeting its goals, but a relative lack of concern about your own goals. The result is a cooperative but unassertive style.

The Competing style is characterized by assertiveness and uncooperative behavior. Your own concerns take precedence over the other party’s concerns. Compromising is a style that is intermediate in both cooperativeness and assertiveness because each party must give something up to resolve the conflict. This is not seen as the optimal solution to conflict due to each party surrendering part of its position for the sake of agreement.

Collaborating is seen as a win-win situation that is high on both cooperativeness and assertiveness. This solution to conflict is satisfactory to both parties and is usually obtained after much discussion.

By reframing conflict between people into cultural categories, it becomes possible for two persons to disagree without either of them being wrong based on their different culturally learned conditions. One must describe the advantages of reframing conflict into cultural categories for constructive conflict management.

It is necessary for leaders to understand how conflict is understood and managed in non-Western cultures, not only because individuals from those countries are increasingly employed in organizations in the United States, but also because Western can learn a great deal from non-Western cultures about constructive conflict management. Conflict is managed quite differently in a high-context culture compared to a low-context culture, and each perspective has its advantages and disadvantages. The skilled conflict manager will need to understand both perspectives and know when either may be more appropriate.

Asian and Pacific cultures in particular offer a perspective for managing conflict in harmony, where conflict between people is often described in a cosmic context with spiritual implications. The goal in Asian and Pacific cultures is often to prevent overt conflict from occurring at all, which while the Western perspective is more often about resolving conflict once it has occurred.

Constructive conflict management may become the first priority of leaders, especially when conflict is between culturally different people. Leaders need to find common ground without losing their integrity. It will become important for leaders to understand interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict in the cultural context in which those behaviors are learned and displayed.

Further Readings: Christie D., D. Wagner, and D. Winter, Peace, Conflict and Violence: Peace Psychology for the 21st Century, Prentice Hall, 2001.