Diversity in Leadership

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The committee will benefit from the multiple perspectives and world views of the individuals on the committee by sharing their different cultural backgrounds in order to understand each person’s cultural identity. This understanding will enable the committee members to work closely together in understanding and respecting each other’s point of view. The members will feel safe sharing their beliefs and ideas within this group.

An issue related to either culture or diversity that may lead to controversy within the committee could be English language skills. Whenever you are trying to treat everyone the same, and you have some members with limited English skills in reading, you cannot send out the same memo to everyone because they will not understand the information. Spending time printing out the memo in everyone’s language will prevent the controversy from ever happening and will help keep the communication open between committee members.

Whenever controversy or conflict arises among members of the committee, the members need to acknowledge the conflict. The team needs to discuss the impact that the conflict has on the team and try to resolve the conflict acknowledging cultural traditions. The most important thing is for everyone to keep the lines of communication open in both speaking and listening to each other.

The following is a list of five guidelines that the committee can use to determine whether an activity that the committee is considering sponsoring for the local community is free of cultural bias.

- Diversity in leadership and presenters is important when having someone demonstrate or communicate to a group.

- Every person should have the opportunity to participate in the committee.

- The meeting places should accommodate every person’s needs.

- Do not limit or imply limitations for anyone to participate in any activity.

- Assign task on the basis of ability rather than any stereotypical characteristics.

Now that you are familiar with cultural backgrounds making up our cultural identities, we can go forward and have a successful community relations team.