The Role of Leadership in Addressing Cultural Bias in the Workplace - Igor Poza
Leading an international team poses all kinds of challenges- cultural clashes often being one of the most prominent ones. Combining strong personal and interpersonal capabilities with cross cultural intelligence is one way to overcome such cultural differences. This might not always be enough to reach high competency in driving organizational effectiveness. Being consciously aware of how you perceive things makes one aware of themselves, which can be a hard task. Nobody is truly independent of cultural bias. Personally for me, it has been encouraging to learn and grow in this way.
I recently read an article The Role of Leadership in Addressing Bias in the Workplace by Jim Barnett, published in Forbes magazine. At a time when bias, prejudice, and discrimination are at the forefront of news and media, I found this topic to be extremely relevant from a business point of view as well.
There are a diversified set of biases that keep us from communicating with people and maintaining an open mind. In this article, Jim Barnett addresses how leaders can combat cultural bias in the workplace. Understanding and acknowledging bias, sensitizing employees to such bias, and measuring the sentiments and actions of your team are all key steps in postponing an employee’s prejudgment or bias towards another.
Acknowledging and combating cultural bias puts one in a position to make smarter decisions based on facts. Objectivity and being able to embrace differences in a cultural perspective with an open minded attitude is what being a good leader encompasses. Finally, overcoming differences allows leaders to bring together their team as a unit to work toward a common goal.
You can read the original article here.
Ignorance is a choice. Here is a list of popular international news websites:
Yahoo! News Google News HuffingtonPost CNN New York Times De Telegraaf NBC News Mail Online Washington Post The Guardian WSJ ABCNews BBC News USA Today LA Times De Volkskrant Le Monde Le Figaro
