Multicultueral issues - Essay Example

Multicultural Issues: Reflection Paper Diversity Goals In your own words, what does diversity mean to you? In what areas of your life do you find the most diversity? The least diversity?Diversity means differences in perspectives, points of views, orientations and preferences according to individual, group, community, or national classifications. Personally, meeting people in the academic or work setting provides the most diverse scenarios and situations one could possibly encounter. The least diverse scenario would be confining oneself to the nuclear family or one’s relatives.2. Reflect on what you learned from the Self-Assessment.

What does the CQ assessment reveal about your cultural intelligence strengths/weaknesses? Which of your competencies would you rank higher – your “technical” expertise in a specific area or your CQ? Why? What did you learn about yourself from the assessment on p. 228+ of the text – Four Building Blocks of Diversity-Conscious Leadership? The results of the self-assessment test revealed that I am culturally intelligent as most responses indicate one’s understanding of meeting people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

There is therefore strengths in the areas of understanding diversity in culture from the experiences in previous travels in different countries. I met many people while studying in the USA. Among my friends are people with Eastern Europe, Asian, Hispanic backgrounds. I understand that different cultures have different ways of doing things or saying something, and I respect this. I am therefore satisfied with generating a high ranking for my CQ since it is an indicator of greater understanding, awareness, and skills in communicating, both verbally and non-verbally, with people from various cultural backgrounds.

Finally, I learned that the four building blocks of diversity-consciousness leadership are understanding, awareness, skills, and commitment; where I have strengths in all three: understanding, awareness and skills and would need to develop the building block on commitment ensure being a more diversity-conscious leader.3. Reflect on what you learned from Chapter #1 in the text. In Chapter 1, my knowledge on the topic of diversity was significantly enhanced as it discussed topics that range from diversity, culture, diversity consciousness, and presented a number of different reactions to our changing cultural landscape.

As such, my appreciation for different perspectives, preferences, and points of views of people from diverse walks of life was strengthened. I learned to deepen my consciousness in terms of disputing identified myths in diversity and in ways to assimilate in a new culture to prevent conflicts and to enhance communication and interpersonal relationships.4. Based on what you learned about yourself from the Self-Assessments and Chapter #1, please list 3 goals that you would like to explore during this course.

The goals should be related to broadening your understanding of diversity, growing relationships with diverse populations and/or improving practices in the workplace relating to diversity. The three goals that I would like to explore during this course are: (1) to improve diversity consciousness to a more heightened level; (2) to improve my culture intelligence, particularly in the area of commitment; and (3) to learn how to participate in diversity education.5. As a leader, why do you think diversity is an important topic that needs to be an important part of today’s workplace?

What does Bucher (2010) have to say about that? As a leader, I think diversity is an important topic that needs to be a part of today’s workplace because, as emphasized by Bucher (2010), diversity refers to all of the ways in which people are different; and as a new phenomenon, a lot of areas still need to be learned by various business practitioners to enable the working population to understand the different elements that would enhance consciousness, communication, cultural competence in this area; and therefore enable the growth and development of smooth relationships that are instrumental for the achievement of organizational goals.

Work CitedBucher, Richard D.; Bucher, Patricia L. (2010). Diversity Consciousness Opening Our Minds toPeople, Cultures, and Opportunities. Pearson Education/Prentice Hall. Print.