In Leading in a Diverse Environment, Teddie E. Malangwasira, PhD, discusses the steps leaders must take to create effective growth in an organization that also values diversity, makes everyone feel included, and seeks to develop the unique skills of employees. individuals. Dr. Malangwasira draws on her personal experiences as a leader and as someone who has worked in a variety of settings to make his points and provide examples of effective leadership. As an immigrant to the United States from Malawi, he has witnessed firsthand what happens when organizations don’t celebrate diversity, and has developed a belief that diversity is more than just hiring people from different racial or cultural backgrounds. No two people are the same, so even if you have an organization made up of people who appear to have the same cultural background, they will still have diverse skills and talents; therefore, he must find ways to use those skills to the benefit of the organization, rather than simply hiring people to do jobs that may not always match his skills. This broad view of diversity makes the book relevant to any organization no matter who your team members are.
Leading in a diverse environment begins with a foreword by Dr. Blanche Wallace, Director of Dynamic Strategic Leadership Coaching and author of The Competent Coaching Leader. Wallace highlights the many values of Dr. Malangwasira’s book, including that he advocates developing the skill of self-awareness. Dr. Wallace states, “A leader who is not self-aware is operating from an uninformed position. To connect effectively with one’s environment requires awareness, authenticity, and eagerness. These characteristics cannot be faked.”
Throughout the book, Dr. Malangwasira focuses not only on the skills leaders need, but also on his own blind spots or weaknesses. As he states in the preface, leaders must “explore the differences between what people think happens when they lead others and the reality of how people feel when they are being led. This paradigm shift will help us see diversity from a different perspective.” a different perspective and eliminate the pretense that everything is fine when reality proves otherwise. Dr. Malangwasira goes on to state, “We need to understand how we are different from other people. However, this understanding is not enough; we also need to understand how we can work with other people and use our differences to build a strong team.” I find these statements valuable as when I became a manager I was often surprised that other people did not see things the way I did or that they had different reasons for working. Leaders must embrace all of these diverse characteristics of their team members if they truly want to lead.
Beyond knowing themselves, leaders also need to be clear about their goals and align them with a strategy to achieve them; a big part of that strategy is motivating the various members of your team to adopt those goals as their own. As the tagline on the book cover says, this is “a journey of working together and independently.”
Dr. Malangwasira divides the book into ten chapters that help the reader work toward this goal of using diversity to achieve a shared goal rather than letting it get in the way of goal achievement. In Chapter 5: Inspiring Others, he outlines important steps leaders can take to inspire others. One of the most important, in my opinion, is being accessible. In Chapter 6: Attracting and Retaining Talent, he talks about how “when you have talented people, you need to make sure those people and their talents are recognized, developed, refined, and harnessed.” He also states that he must develop “an inclusive approach to the talent pool.” Give examples of a company you worked for where people were hired for specific positions, but then were expected to work wherever the company needed them at the time, leading to high turnover and a lack of continuity in their work and the overall company progress. Dr. Malangwasira concludes: “It sounds obvious, but through experience I’ve learned that I have to say it. People in leadership roles need to understand that human beings can’t just be placed anywhere the boss wants them to be. Employees talented people excel in their chosen fields. Let them do the jobs they interviewed for.”
To ensure diversity, Dr. Malangwasira also advocates creating an Individual Development Plan (IDP) for each of his followers. Drawing on the work of Peggy Simonsen in Promoting the Culture of Development in Your Organization, he argues that leadership cannot have secret plans to develop an organization’s culture, but rather “people must be active participants in its development, while leaders need to make sure they support agreed goals.” IDPs”. I think this IDP concept is brilliant because it allows employees to feel included in their own development and that of the organization.
I will conclude by saying that I appreciate how Dr. Malangwasira writes in easy to understand language, breaking concepts down to their simplest points. This book would be an excellent resource for college students taking business and leadership courses because it not only provides the basics of what it takes to be a leader, but it will also challenge them to think about what kind of leaders they will be when faced with the odds. diversity in the world. Workplace. Each chapter ends with a series of questions for the reader; this makes the book not just a reading experience, but a personal development experience; and that is what a book that seeks to educate its readers should always achieve. Once you read this book, I think your eyes will be opened to what a diverse environment really is and how you can use diversity effectively to achieve the greatest good for your organization and everyone involved.