Essay On Diversity In The Workplace

Diversity can be defined as a point or respect in which things differ. It is an understanding that each individual is unique and recognizing our individual differences. The areas of diversity that we focused on are gender, cultural background and age. Diversity plays an important role in leadership and team roles. Rauch & Behling (1984), define leadership as “the process of influencing the activities of an organized group toward goal achievement.” Katzenbach & Smith (1993) defined a team as “a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they are mutually accountable”. We will examine how these areas of diversity affects leadership and team roles.

Gender differences can often be viewed as something that has a significant affect on an organization, its leadership style and team roles . It is a topic of great interest when looking at diversity in the workplace. In recent years the number of women in managerial roles has risen , not only in Ireland but globally. However, women tend to be in lower and middle managerial positions compared to men who hold more senior managerial positions.

The proportion of women to men in the workplace has changed hugely over the years. While companies around the world have made progress to eliminate gender inequality in the

Keith Merron is a senior associate from Barbara Annis & Associates, a firm which specializes in gender diversity says that when it comes to problem solving, women are ‘able to come up with an understanding of the situation without needing to know what all the parts are.’ Whilst men ‘are linear in thought process and more narrow in their focus, so they are able to break down problems into their component parts and solve it.’ No way is any better than the other but Merron claims that a balance is needed of both perspectives when it comes to problem