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What Makes An Effective Leader, by Susan Klopfer
What Makes An Effective Leader, by Susan Klopfer
No matter how hard a person tries, we all have biases; we discriminate without
even recognizing what we are doing. William Sonnenschein, a noted diversity
expert and author, suggests overcoming this tendency by “waking up tomorrow
morning” and “try wondering what prejudice you will discover during the day,
what assumption you will make that will be proven wrong, and what bias will
affect your day.”
By finding a daily bias, Sonnenschein explains a person will know they are
continually working on self-awareness, show themselves they are self-aware
enough to know they have biases, and are working at eliminating as many as
possible.
This imaginary company leader might further recognize that change is needed at
every level of the organization. As an initial step, he might create a diverse group
to staff one of the company’s trouble areas – and if all goes well, the troubled
area could turn around, showing a profit.
Use the same scoring system for the next two questions:
Do you think about the impact of what you say or how you act before you
speak or act?
Do you do everything you can to prevent the reinforcement of prejudices,
including avoiding using negative stereotypes when you speak?
1. Know your cultural identity and understand what that identity brings to
your communication. This helps in communicating with others of differing
cultural identities.
2. Ask others about yourself and listen to their answers. This helps in
increasing self-awareness.
3. Examine your order or grading of values. This helps in understanding how
you behave and communicate.
Manager must be good leaders. They are responsible for creating a work
environment in which the contributions of all people are recognize. For this to
happen, managers must understand how to best use people’s differences so that
their special attributes can be used to achieve company goals and objectives.