Leading For Change: Cultural Diversity And Inclusive Leadership

The importance of cultural diversity in modern-day organisations

Discuss about the Leadership for Review of Public Personnel Administration.
 

This paper mainly focuses on the case study document named ‘leading for Change: A blueprint for cultural diversity and inclusive leadership’ and the speech by Dr Tim Soutphommasane on race, Discrimination and Commissioner. These two studies deal with the cultural diversity in the leadership and the racism as well as discrimination in the workplace. Australia celebrates cultural diversity as the country has various types of religions, beliefs, colours, caste and creeds. Improving the representation of various diversity leads to future prosperity in the society and the businesses. In Australian workplace, multi-culture aspects are always presented as many of the expats comes from Asian countries. The leaders try to bridge the gap of cultural diversity when they manage the workplace different cultures and their working styles. ‘Leading the change’ documents have three parts; first, it shows the current representation of the cultural diversity in the leadership; second, it states about changing the status quo and third; it looks into the matter of organisational performance regarding the cultural diversity and leadership.

Firstly, this paper will find out the importance of leaders understanding of the cultural diversity in modern day organisations. Secondly, this study will explore the leaders’ influence and support about cultural diversity in the workplace. Thirdly, recommendations will be given based on the improvement of the work culture issues regarding the racism and discriminations through leadership styles and cultures. 

This section will identify the reasons behind why the leaders put importance to understand cultural diversity in the modern day organisations.

‘Leading the change’ document identifies the cultural diversity issue as the Australian people commonly understand the cultural diversity and social changes and the reason behind this is the immigration. Immigration is the vital issue within the organisations as the staffs and labours are immigrant. Australians obviously do not like to communicate with immigrants in the workplace. In the workplace, the employees mix with ethnic and cultural backgrounds those results to the successive waves of immigration. In Australia, cultural diversity is short for the non-Anglo-Celtic and it can refer to the non-European. Therefore, the issue of cultural diversity in the workplace for the leaders is to manage various employees who belong from the diverse background, race, ethnicity and colours. Tim Soutphommasane discussed the immigrant problems when the immigrant people speak in different languages like Chinese, Vietnamese, Hindi and Lao and in English.

Leaders’ influence and support for cultural diversity in the workplace

As stated by Ashikali & Groeneveld (2015), the upper-class section does not like to communicate with backward classes as the physical expressions of the community of the upper classes get changed. People do not have high regard for the people from backward classes. The common people belong from diversity group do not provide respect to the people belong from backward classes. Here, the problem of cultural diversity occurs when people start discriminating others due to their colour, class and race. The lower classes can renovate the traditions of the society to receive the tradition as well. Diversity in the workplace is the lens to look at as it can develop, identify and advance the talent at the workplace (Forehand & Kotchick, 2016). Leaders in the workplace can build the accountability and the leaders can take the responsibility to create the inclusive and diverse working environment. Without diversity and inclusion; employees can fail to identify the relevant dimensions; therefore; the problem will occur. 

In the speech of Dr Soutphommasane, he stated that it is very crucial for the leaders within the organisations to start identifying the barriers from within and start to dismantle the barriers. It is further crucial to create the inclusive culture and make the leadership capability across all employee groups. ‘Leading the changes’ document identifies the multicultural workplace and incorporates sections of Australia; leaders dominate from Anglo-Celtic and European backgrounds. In ASX 200 companies; almost 77% of the leaders belong from the Anglo-Celtic background. In case of the federal ministry, 86% members are the Anglo-Celtic background and in the public service offices, 82% of the departmental heads are the Anglo-Celtic backgrounds. Therefore, in the leaders in Australia are prevalent with ‘White’ people and with Anglo Cultural styles.

As stated by Krapfl & Kruja (2015), racial discrimination and gender discrimination can be seen in the workplace where the different ways of understanding of the matter can be solved in term of the cost. The workplace is at top three where the discrimination occurs. Cultural diversity in leadership can be symptomatic of discrimination and bias. If the workplace has the poor ratio of the gender diversity and ethnic diversity; the nature of the cost can be varied in organisational level. The organisations spend money on the average cost of discrimination grievance and there is reputational damage associated with this.

In conclusion, at the ‘federal level’, the workplace mainly lacks the culture inclusion as white people are prevalent in the workplace and the white people can think the workplace as the sense of belongingness. White people think the workplace as ‘insiders’, culturally different people think the workplace as the outsider. 

Recommendations for improving work culture issues related to racism and discrimination

The following paragraphs will propose a cause of action that leaders can take to influence and support cultural diversity within the workplace.

Former CEO of Telstra once said that in an inclusive culture staffs know that irrespective of the gender, race, sexual orientation, creed and physical ability, the employees can fulfil the personal objectives. Australia is a place of ethnic diversity and 43% people in Australia have at least one-overseas born parents. Leaders in the workplace belong to the Anglo-Celtic origin. In order to manage the cultural diversity at the workplace, leaders need to take active care for the multi-ethnic people’s emotions. As stated by Hartnell et al., (2016), the leaders need to educate themselves on cultural diversity so that they should not be based on just one culture. The leaders in multi-culture organisations need to learn about the cultural traditions and work approaches. The leaders need to keep up the global events as well as international politics. The leaders should take care of the emotions of the aborigines’ people. The leaders need to take time to get to know about the team members and the culture. As opined by Brooks, Knaus & Chang (2015), the colours and the speaking languages should not be the benchmark of the employees’ qualities of the employees.

The leaders need to create a workplace where the employees’ different perspectives are valued and embraced. This working culture can the long way to foster the productive relationship of the employees. As stated by Kim (2014), the inclusive culture and improved communication among the inter-culture and inter-religion people will enhance the productivity; leaders can consider the sensitive boundaries of the expectations.

According to Quin et al., (2015), the best way to communicate and build workplace culture diversity is to embrace the different cultures and working to make an understanding with different employees. Leaders should be sympathetic towards all cultural groups and the leaders can provide advantages to all the employees to share their visions irrespective of their caste and religions. Most importantly, the leaders can foster and promote an inclusive as well as a welcome working environment for all culture to appreciate the differences to find the common ground. Leaders dedicate time to improve cultural diversity and some of the leaders organise diversity training for the employees to accommodate the employees about inclusion.

In the leadership of Australia, most of the leaders are white; obviously, in the workplace, ‘whiteness’ will be looking with privileged and it can bring the power inequalities. Laws exist in Australia regarding the discrimination in the workplace for the employees. The leaders can foster the change in cultural diversity through providing commitment from the senior employees. This will fall to the systems on data and accountability. This system will go to the culture of the organisations deal with bias and professional development of the people. As stated by Boehm & Dwertmann (2015), leaders in the workplace must communicate that the cultural diversity is not the matter of second order importance and this should ideally be understood by the leaders as a personal mission.

Identifying reasons for leaders’ focus on cultural diversity

In the conclusion, the leaders must have the diversity understanding in business imperative and moral process. The leaders can observe the diverse traditions, holidays; celebrate different festivals from other cultures.

Problem 1: Social changes and immigration in the workplace

It is recommended that leaders need to align the culture of the organisation with the model desired behaviours. The immigrant people have different behaviour within the organisation and the upper-class people ill-treat with the immigrant employees. The leaders will provide model desired behaviour to all employees and employees should follow the same. Within a team, this type of strict rule is needed as leaders’ values as well as actions will help to develop and reinforce the rules of the team.

It can be recommended that leaders should understand their fit within the organisational culture and they can use that awareness to drive the positive change in the workplace. The leaders can leverage the existing process and they want to use the traditional process of motivating the diverse employees. Effective leaders can use the self-awareness to inform the intentional approach for the decision-making.

It can be recommended that leaders should connect with the staffs’ heart as well minds; it will be helpful to align to the common purpose. Therefore, in order to shape the sustain organisational culture and diversity management; the leaders need to reach to the employees’ heart as it can create the sense of motivation and purpose.

It is recommended that leaders should collaborate all working process with the existing employees. Leadership is all about motivating the employees from the diverse background so that the employees can contribute together to drive better achievement.

Problem 2: Lack of respect for backward classes people and discrimination

It is recommended that leaders will take the diversity training with the organisation as part of the on-the-job training to reduce the incidents of the discrimination and racist comments.

It is recommended that leaders should take extra risks after understanding the risks can empower the organisation to challenge and experiment the status. If the leaders want to innovate; the risk talking capability should be needed to measure and analyse the possible risks of cultural diversity.

It is recommended that team leaders can foster the team working. Team working can be enhanced through proper engagement of the team. The team leaders can celebrate the success of the team together and team celebration and working will pull the diverse workforce together.

The issue of cultural diversity in the workplace and its management

The team leaders should start the compassionate communication to the people who belong to the aborigines and ethnic background. The communication process should be simple as well as clear that do not create any misinterpretation and confusion.

Problem 3: Crucial to creating the inclusive culture and leadership capability

It is recommended that diversity in workplace leaders can be developed by implementing recruiting, promoting opportunities that reflect the workplace ethics demographics on a yearly basis. Inclusive culture and leadership capability can be developed through the recruitment and development of the leaders within the workplace and multinational companies should not make only ‘white’ European or Anglo-Celtic leaders; the companies can think of making the leaders from aborigines and backward classes also. This recruitment and development of leaders will make the people confident.

It is recommended that diversity in workplace leaders can be developed by implementing a 12 months mentoring program for 10 leaders from different cultural background to enable them to develop their leadership, communication and networking skills.

It is recommended that leaders within the multi-ethnic organisations should start cross-cultural leadership rather than regular or traditional leadership. Cross-cultural leadership will facilitate the inter-culture relationship among the employees. It requires the leaders to assess the process that needs to be changed.

It is recommended that leaders in Australian companies can be given training from AHRC group where the leaders can get on-the-job training to be successful leaders on diversity and inclusion and not to hand off the responsibility on others. Leaders will find out another method of signalling their personal commitment.

Conclusion

It is difficult to make clear an under-representation of cultural diversity within the workplace as cultural diversity cannot be measured always. Organisations sometimes choose to gather some cultural diversity data for understanding the issues by the leaders. The leaders of today’s organisations try to make the workplace positive environment for all cultures where the employees can work together without any disputes. It is important to be clear about the data and background of the employees. The complexity of the cultural diversity can be avoided through the organisation and the leaders can take leadership strategies so that the employees can work comfortably.

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