Ale Enriquez

OGL 350

Module 6

“ Wherever different perspectives are found, tension will exist.” (Roosevelt, 1999). I

learned that the conflict of there being diversity will lead to workers who for some reason are

not capable or maybe not willing to work with someone who is different from them. Not only

does it mean this conflict occurs within the workers of an organization, but often happens with a

customer and a worker as well. There will be many times where a customer might be in a bad

mood or be mad because we might be out of something and there have been times where some

have been super rude in regards to me being different from them. I have also heard many stories

of how coworkers and partners from other locations have been treated because they are different.

An example of diversity conflict occurred to my sister’s best friend when she lost a

family member, who wasn’t immediate family, and in her culture you show respect by creating

an alter and doing prayers every night until they are put to rest, however, for some reason which

I do not remember, they would not allow her the time off even though she was close to this

individual. I understand every company has their own policy, but diversity conflict should not

occur when a family member passes away because not only do they have different traditions, but

they also have different beliefs. I know when my godmother passed away, my work allowed me

to take time off. I know that my work is always flexible with taking time off and all I need to

worry about is finding people to cover my shifts, but that is not the case for many companies.

When reading about the Giraffe and Elephant, it made me realize that in many

businesses, there is not as much diversity as you would think there would be. The giraffe wants

the elephant to change to be more like him and if you think about it, that is what a lot of bosses
want, however you are not going to change who you are just because they want you to be like

them. Yes, I understand that it might depend, but like in this example, the giraffe was out of line

when he basically told the elephant that he was big and needed to lose weight. No two people are

exactly the same and we need to be okay with that. Being different is totally normal. In the

reading it talks about how people can be different, but they also have things in common. Taking a

moment to think about my last sentence made me realize that there will be lots of times where

we do not think we are similar to someone because of appearance, but the outside does not

matter. I think it is what is inside that brings us together. What I mean by that is that we can have

similar thoughts, similar emotions in situations, the skills and knowledge we have, etc.

“Introduce diversity and inclusion early on in the employee life cycle.” (Nykvist, 2021).

Using this concept from the reading will allow you to learn more about diversity that is

occurring. It is very important to keep a diverse employee life. The concepts affect my approach

and strategies to leadership in my life because it teaches me to always keep an open mind. It is

important to keep an open mind and teach that it is important to feel like you belong in your

workplace. Feeling like you belong in a workplace allows you to feel confident in yourself.

Being accepting in the workplace allows you to open up to those who have different points of

views from you .

When conducting the Personal Diversity Maturity index, I scored a 71. There were a few

scenarios where I honestly thought it was the best answer,but it ended up not being. For example,

for question 2, I wouldn’t have thought that ignoring the problem would have been the best

option. In addition, I did not expect that to be the answer because why would you think

negatively of your younger employees like that, you never know , they might stick with the job.

One of the easier scenarios was question 1, because you cannot just go based off of the rumors, if
the older staff are doing their job and are causing the customer satisfaction to improve then they

are doing great. Taking a general look over the scenarios and my scores has made me realize that

there are only three times where I made the correct decision, but most of the time I choose the

option that was at the bottom of the list. After viewing my score, I landed in the Moderate

Diversity Maturity section. One of the statements under this section talked about yes I am for the

idea of diversity, but there are times where I am not aware of how to go about it. I can honestly

say that is so true about everything. I often find myself struggling with how to go about my ideas

just because I am scared of failing.

My cultural intelligence score did change from the beginning of this course to now. At

the beginning of this course I had a score of 63, but now I scored a 94. What I found most

interesting is that I honestly did not expect nonverbal behavior and facial expressions to be

important differently in each of the different cultures. I have learned with my friends who are

from different cultures that facial expressions can be interpreted differently depending on who

you are speaking with, which I did not think was a thing. Learning more about culture has

allowed me to learn the importance of caring about other cultures and not just your own in all

situations in regards to both personal and work life.