Donna Flagg

Managing Differences: Maximizing Opportunities
January 30, 2008

With all of the recent focus on race and gender as the debate between Hillary and Obama heats up the political stage, I’ve started thinking about how diverse we are, or are not, in the workplace.   Granted, it’s better than it used to be, but it still seems that like-groups remain clustered, a tendency that prevents true integration from being attained. Factions exist and competition continues to separate us. But yet, sometimes I think that so much time and effort is spent analyzing demographics and trying to understand “why” we reject differences that in some way it has retarded our ability to move forward in the first place.

Like anything warranting change, the first step toward heading in the right direction is awareness. So here is a fun thing you can do with your employees to start the conversation and begin to evaluate how well you incorporate differences into your business and practices.

1. Get a bunch of colored marbles and enough small boxes or bowls for each person to have two.
2. Assign each color a demographic, e.g. each gender, selected races, age groups, disabled, etc…
3. Select the marbles that best represent your personal demographics, e.g., color, gender, marital status, ethnicity, etc… and set them aside in one of the boxes or bowls.
4. Have each person make a list of people with whom they spend the most time and describe the demographic attributes of those individuals, e.g. male, female, color, sexual orientation, marital status, etc…
5. Go down the list one at a time and fill the box with the marbles whose colors represent the different qualities of the individuals written on the list.
6. Evaluate yourself on how well you incorporate people outside your “likeness” circle. 
7. Discuss your findings with the group and talk about any barriers or parameters that need to be moved or adjusted which may be holding your business back.

Posted by Donna Flagg on January 30, 2008 | Comments (0)