RWD

Living in a city, I see diversity all around me every day. I strive to get to know people from varied cultural backgrounds and enjoy learning about their differences. At times this forces me into situations that are a bit outside of my comfort zone, but I realize that this is part of the learning process and is necessary to build better relationships. For example, I attended a celebration at an Indian house and noticed 50 pairs of shoes sitting outside in the garage, so I also removed my shoes and walked barefoot into the house, wondering if all the guests were also barefoot as I walked in. This is one very small cultural behavior that I learned. Now, think about how many other different behaviors there are between the American culture and the Indian culture. Multiply that by the different cultures of people around the globe. When it comes to business, how does one company learn about all the behaviors of different cultures in order to improve business relations?

One answer might be to hire people from these different cultures to help sell products in the regions in which they are from. In order to hire a diverse workforce, the company must promote diversity and attract a diverse talent pool. They may do this in a programmatic way by creating councils on diversity, celebrating heritage months for various cultures, and promoting diversity in recruitment efforts at job fairs. But then, what happens when people of different cultures join an organization? Some of the larger organizations, like IBM, have Chief Diversity Officers assigned to integrating diversity throughout their workforce. Former IBM Chief Diversity Officer Ted Childs is now a consultant on this topic and trademarked “Workforce Diversity: The bridge between the workplace and the marketplace.” When organizations have a less programmatic approach and a more sustainable approach to diversity, they can design, market, and sell more products globally. Diversity must be part of the organization’s mission and growth strategies, and then effectively communicated to all employees.

In doing consulting work for some larger organizations and talking with friends in the training industry, I am seeing a real growing trend in diversity training. Global companies are championing diversity and striving to incorporate it throughout their organization, starting with messages from the CEO to training first-level managers on how to deal with issues involving diversity. In order to effectively integrate diversity into any organization, the message has to be communicated not only to new hires, but also to every employee so that inclusion occurs. Then, someday maybe organizations will not need to spell out diversity in their communications; rather, it will be evident in their principles and mission statements.

And, the next time I step into an Indian house, the first thing I will do is remove my shoes without any hesitation, whether it’s a party of 50 people or 2 people coming over for dinner.