Frances E. Andrews
Reprinted with permission.
Effective leadership for the world today
and for the world of tomorrow is characterized by people
who can relate to, understand, embrace, recognize, appreciate
and value differences as strengths. Trustworthiness,
trusting others, making an "all out" effort
to understand differences, searching for the common
human element, and building relationship are the characteristics
of effective leaders. Understanding and respecting the
diversity of people's gifts is the first crucial step
toward developing trust between each other and building
the kind of relationship critical to success in the
new century.
For those of us who aspire to effective
leadership, the first prerequisite to building this
kind of relationship is to know ourselves including
"the baggage we bring from the past! " Self
discovery evolves over time and requires effort on our
part. It is fluid, dynamic, and ever changing. For most
of us, this process continues throughout our lives and
is furthered by numerous interactions and relationship
with others. In Valuing Diversity (1995), Lewis Griggs
notes: "The degree to which we are able to form
relationship with others is a measure of our own personal
growth. We can become our fullest selves only through
relationship and through reflecting on our responses
to the relationships we form." (page 215)
Too, self-knowledge is the foundation
of any contribution we can hope to make to other people
and it is an essential component of our personal and
professional integrity. We must become conscious of
the energy patterns routed in our own history and in
our own culture. We must identify our own attitudes,
beliefs, values, motives, actions, shortcomings, skills,
talents, and abilities. Only then can we understand
how our own prejudices and past experiences (our "baggage
from the past") influence our perceptions of reality,
lead us into stereotypical thinking and behaviors, and
prevent us from learning about and forming relationship
with individuals who are different.
Culture is our way of knowing and doing.
Our culture of origin greatly impacts the lens through
which we see the world. Each of us grew up with a set
of cultural messages we acquired from our families,
our environments, our peers, and other sources. Throughout
this process, most of us did not consider questioning
the validity of the information we were absorbing and
making our own. In Diversity Issues in the Workplace
(1995), Frances Kendall states: "We simply took
on the attitudes, prejudices, and stereotypes about
men and women, about people who are culturally and racially
different from ourselves, about age, about work, and
about what is and what is not considered normal."
(page 83) Many of us do not recognize that our culturally
defined ways of doing things are so deeply embedded
that we cannot imagine anyone thinking about doing anything
any other way.
Myers and Spite, in Optimal Theory in
the Psychology of Human Diversity (1994), conclude that
"...exploring the roles of culture, identity, and
oppression in human diversity can help us grow toward
individual and collective wholeness. In this growth,
we will place less emphasis on the superficial diversity
markers and focus more on the substantive aspects of
humanity, having to do with who we are in terms of our
character, ethics, values, and morals rather than on
the way we appear superficially." (page 112)
In each of our cultures, beliefs are necessary
to make our lives understandable. It is through these
beliefs that we come to know the nature of our society
and the meaning of the things that occur within it.
Obviously, beliefs affect our relationships, fuel our
thinking and direct our behavior and our emotions. Often,
beliefs that we hold are the result of our own cultural
conditioning and determine whether we will seek rapport
with individuals who are different from ourselves. Whether
we wish to acknowledge it or not, most of us are trapped
by our own belief systems, our own unexamined values,
our past experiences, and the emotions of fear, anger
and mistrust that have been frozen over our lifetimes--"the
baggage we bring from the past."
Too, many of us fail to recognize that
we function on three levels of interaction at the same
time: the personal level, the interpersonal level, and
the organizational or systemic level. The personal level
is the level on which we hold all of our attitudes,
biases, and prejudices about everything--work, play,
school, race, gender, religion, etc. It is from this
level that those thoughts we have while in the shower
or while commuting to the office come. Erroneously,
we believe that these are private and when we walk into
our workplaces, we hang these in the closet!
Our second level of interaction is at
the interpersonal level--the level on which we interact
with each other. The personal and interpersonal levels
are so interconnected that there is no way to separate
them--each is reflected in the other even though we
would prefer that this did not happen.
The organizational or systemic level is
the third level of our interaction. This is the level
on which we function in an organization--at work, in
professional organizations, etc. It is in this environment
that most of us spend a large part of our lives! This
environment includes the people, the rules, the functions
of the people and the organization, the way decisions
are made, etc. Our actions at this level reflect the
other two levels--our verbal and nonverbal actions communicate
something to the people around us. Messages about our
values, attitudes, etc. at the personal and interpersonal
levels of interaction are reflected at the organizational
level whether or not we mean them to be.
In a discussion of the Ubuntu philosophy
in Applying African Philosophy to Diversity Training
(1995), Lente-Louise Louw indicated that "...the
baggage we bring from the past, combined with the unrealistic
expectations we have for the future, are very effective
in keeping us from being a fully participating member
of society and from forming the relationship with others
needed for effective leadership. We allow our preconceptions,
our past associations, and our judgments to distort
most of our present interactions." (page 166) The
sad thing about this is many of us do not even realize
what is occurring!
Knowing as much as we can about our own
ethnocentricism helps us recognize how our ignorance
of and discomfort with differences literally prevents
us from seeing others as "fully human." Intrapersonal
and interpersonal factors and sociocultural history
influence the development of personal prejudice and
discrimination. Our attitudes and behaviors toward people
are in part determined by the historical legacy of our
interactions with people who are different.
Unless we have a clear and accurate picture
of our style of interaction, our values about communicating,
our cultural biases about openness, honesty, conflict,
language, and about how our biases affect interactions,
we will not be able to forge a meaningful relationship
with others.
An effective relationship, regardless
of the culture of the relators, has several characteristics.
These were identified by Charles Truax and Robert Carkhuff
(page 172, Griggs and Louw). Effective relationship
is one in which the individuals involved:
1.
Are reasonably well integrated, non defensive, and authentic
in their relationship encounters;
2.
Provide a nonthreatening, safe, trusting, and secure
atmosphere by reason of their mutual and unconditional
regard for each other;
3.
Are able to understand each other and their relationship
on a moment-to-moment basis.
Different cultures build relationships
differently. Individuals who grow up in the same environment
more easily develop relationship than those who grow
up in different environments. In part, this is due to
the fact that those who share the same environment share
certain cues, customs, behaviors, communication styles,
and ways of understanding that environment. In other
words, they have something in common.
Our personal history, childhood experiences,
family and ethical backgrounds, and work experiences
are but a few of the issues that impact the type and
quality of relationship we build with other people.
Understanding and respecting the diversity of peoples'
personal gifts in finding areas where there is commonality
of perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, values, and expectations
are the first steps in forming relationships with people
who are different. The bases of enhancing relationship,
regardless of the culture from which we come or in which
we live, are trust, respect, and shared goals.
Learning to value diversity, to become
conscious of our ways of relating to each other and
their ways of relating to us, does not come easily to
most of us nor is it something that can be imposed from
the outside. In Valuing Relationship (1995), Lewis Brown
Griggs sums the interrelationship of knowing ourselves
and building relationship with others as follows: "Knowing
myself is what allows me to know, understand, and value
the diversity of others so that I can build trust with
them. With more trust comes the ability to communicate
more clearly, to problem solve and network more effectively,
and to realize the value of synergistic relationships
and productive interdependency. Together, investing
in my relationship with myself and enhancing my relationship
with others are important insurance policies against
lost opportunities." (page 210)
References Cited
Griggs, L. B. (1995). Valuing
Diversity: Where From...Where To? In L. B. Griggs &
L. L. Louw (Eds.), Valuing Diversity: New Tools for
a New Reality. McGraw Hill, Inc: New York.>
Kendall, F. E. (1995).
Diversity Issues in the Workplace. In L. B. Griggs &
L. L. Louw (Eds.), Valuing Diversity: New Tools for
a New Reality. McGraw Hill, Inc: New York. Myers, L.
J. & Spite, S. L. (1994).>
Optimal Theory in the Psychology
of Human Diversity. In E. J. Trickett, R. J. Watts,
& D. Birman (Eds.), Human Diversity: Perspectives
on People in Context. Jossey-Bass Publishers: San Francisco.>
Louw, L. L. (1995). Ubuntu:
Applying African Philosophy to Diversity Training. In
L. B. Griggs & L. L. Louw (Eds.), Valuing Diversity:
New Tools for a New Reality. McGraw Hill, Inc: New York.>
Griggs, L. B. (1995). Valuing
Relationship: The Heart of Valuing Diversity. In L.
B. Griggs & L. L. Louw (Eds.), Valuing Diversity:
New Tools for a New Reality. McGraw Hill, Inc: New York.
KAPPA OMICRON NU HONOR SOCIETY
