Developing the Diversity Conscious Leader

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Short Description

How do the topics of diversity and leadership intertwine and complement each other in undergraduate programs? This discussion will share examples of tried and proven learning activities for successfully teaching diversity concepts in the context of leadership.

Detailed Abstract

Problem/Need/Significance

Bucher (2015) defines diversity conscious leadership as the process by which people influence and empower others by recognizing, understanding and adjusting to diversity in all its forms. He argues that like emotional intelligence, diversity consciousness may be the difference between the average, good and great leader. Without this diversity consciousness, leaders lack the sensitivity to individual differences that imped their ability to lead others. In their study of the importance of diversity to upper management, Groysberg and Connolly (2013) interviewed 24 CEOs and found that advancing diversity was driven by a need to stay competitive and by the moral imperative of do what was right. The diversity effort starts and stays at the top, as a full one-quarter of the studied CEOs dedicated direct time in their work to diversity programs. While diversity is on every CEO’s mind, there is disagreement on how to define it. Burrell (2016) cites a Deloitte study on diversity that purports that while Millennials think of diversity in terms of valuing open employee participation with diverse perspectives and personalities, older workers think of diversity in terms of equitable representation and assimilation of people from different demographic groups. This discrepancy presents unique challenges to newly minted graduates who must maneuver themselves through this important aspect of corporate culture.

Framework

We plan to share our experiences in using a variety of learning activities and strategies we use to teach diversity concepts in the context of leadership through our program. We have extensive experience teaching leadership both in the traditional and online environment and we will share effective experiential learning activities for the leadership student. It is our goal to not only share our experiences, but to facilitate an interactive session that encourages colleagues to share their own experiences teaching diversity in the context of leadership.

Design

Diversity of one of five cores value of our undergraduate major/minor in leadership. Our approach to diversity in the undergraduate program begins in the introduction to the major course. Here students complete a “personal bias” inventory where they explore their own bias. Students also complete an industry shadowing experience with a program alum, examining diversity and the other four core values. In our personal leadership development class, students explore the issues of gender and generalization differences. Diversity is a thread that is woven in to all courses but gets special attention in a three-credit hour course focusing on multicultural leadership. Our focus in this course is simply to point out the myriad of ways that people are different. An important concept we push early on are the concepts of heterogeneity and homogeneity; that everyone including us as instructors are more comfortable interacting with people who are most like us. This comfort however comes at a price as it cuts us off from new ideas and new experiences. Some examples of supplemental resources we use include the selected leadership education articles from the New York Times in Leadership series (Kristof, 2016), sample discrimination legal cases against the USDA and an in depth interview with Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor (“Justice Sotomayor prefers,” 2013). Finally, students completing their senior internship experience prepare reflections on all on five core values, including diversity; citing application of these core values in their internship experience.

Results/findings/outcomes

The most tangible outcome from our diversity initiative is the growth in our Introduction to Multicultural Leadership course. This course is a sophomore level course required of our majors and minors but also reaching almost 300 students each academic year who select the course as an elective. When the course was initially offered, enrollment was dominated by students in the applied science majors, but has increasingly attracted students in a wide to a range of majors including the fine arts, engineering and student athletes. The course is one way students can satisfy the diversity requirement instituted at the university in 2006. The course has been offered face-to-face and more recently in the on-line environment.

Participants

• William Gerard Weeks, Oklahoma State University

• Penny Pennington Weeks, Oklahoma State University