Stereotype and Gender DifferencesSu

Stereotype and Gender Differences

Summary and Interpretation

Leadership Power and Influence

Stages of Personal Diversity Awareness

One main point of this chapter is that diversity is a fact of life in today’s world,
and leaders can create change in organizations to keep up. The U.S. population,
the workforce, and the customer base are changing. In addition, people of different
national origins, races, and religions are no longer willing to be assimilated
into the mainstream culture. Organizations are also operating in an increasingly
global world, which means dealing with diversity on a broader stage than ever
before.
Today’s leaders face significant challenges leading people who are different
from themselves. The first step for leading diverse people is understanding the
hardships that people who do not fit the mainstream white, U.S.-born, male culture
often endure. These include unequal expectations, the need to live biculturally,
the glass ceiling, and the opportunity gap. Another important issue is global
diversity. Leaders can be aware of the impact culture may have, understand social
and cultural value differences, and develop cultural intelligence.
Dimensions of diversity are both primary, such as age, gender, and race, and
secondary, such as education, marital status, and religion. There are several reasons
why organizations are recognizing the need to value and support diversity. Diversity
helps organizations build better relationships with diverse customers and helps
develop employee potential. Diversity provides a broader and deeper base of experience
for creativity and problem solving, which is essential to building learning organizations.

One aspect of diversity of particular interest is women’s style of
leadership, referred to as interactive leadership. The values associated with interactive
leadership, such as inclusion, relationship building, and caring, are emerging as
valuable qualities for both male and female leaders in the twenty-first century.
People differ in their level of diversity awareness and their sensitivity to other
cultures, values, and ways of doing things. Leaders evolve through stages of personal
diversity awareness and action, ranging from minimum efforts to meet affirmative
action guidelines to valuing diversity as an integral part of organizational
culture. Strong, culturally sensitive leadership is the only way organizations can
become inclusive. Leaders first change themselves by developing personal characteristics
that support diversity. They use these personal characteristics to change
the organization. The ultimate goal for leaders in the twenty-first century is to
build organizations as integrated communities in which all people feel encouraged,
respected, and committed to common purposes and goals.