Country of France or the French Delegate, Essay Example

Assimilation is a process in which formerly distinct and separate groups come to share a common culture and merge together socially.  This would be very similar to around one hundred of college football players coming together from all over the state or country to share one common culture as a team.  Pluralism exists when groups maintain their individual identities.  This concept is seen within the United Nations where countries have come together, but they maintain their individual identities.  For example, France is not called the United Nations; they are called the Country of France or the French Delegate to the U.N.

Diversity skills such as communication, teamwork and leadership are essential to ensuring that people interact with one another in ways that respect and value differences.  Communication is essential to provide each co-worker or team member with the necessary information as efficiently as possible.  Different types of communication exist, such as written, verbal, and behavioral, and each form sends a message to a person or group of people.  Teamwork is necessary to combine the efforts of multiple individuals to achieve a highly desirable goal.  Each individual performs a specific task that is combined in a total team effort so that the overall work is much easier on each person and nobody is overloaded or stretched too thin.  Leadership helps provide guidance and problem solving tactics to the individual or team.  Proper leadership can ensure that the group is efficient and works well together to achieve the goal.  Improper leadership can cause deficiencies and problems that may or not be able to be overcome.

Teamwork combines the efforts of many individuals, and utilizes each of their talents to work towards a common goal or set of goals that needs to be achieved.  This can be in any number of areas such as sports, business or education.  If each of the team members is not committed to the team and to the task at hand, the effectiveness of the entire group will be diminished and the team will not be successful.

Each situation that a leader may come across requires a different type of leadership style.  The situation for a leader of the local chess team would likely be much different than that of a leader during war times.  Therefore, each effective leaders need to use situational leadership to analyze the specific situation and apply to most appropriate leadership styles. Sometimes, this may mean that the leadership style that the person is most used to is not effective in the situation and a different leader should be found if that person cannot adapt.

Diversity consciousness is very important for expanding the opportunities for success that we have in the future.  Diversity consciousness helps to enhance the person’s diversity skills; it expands the person’s horizons and empowers them through knowledge; and it promotes personal growth and helps to strengthen the social networks that can be beneficial down the road in a career.  Without diversity consciousness, an individual is not knowledgeable of cultural, racial, and sexual differences and will have a very poor social network to build upon in the future.

The four building blocks for diversity conscious leadership are awareness, understanding, skills and commitment.  Awareness is the ability of the leader to accept that there are diverse populations within the working environment, and not all diversity problems are the same.  Likewise, not every situation can be handled with the same leadership style.  Understanding is the basic ability of a leader to appreciate the variables and complex emotional, psychological and organizational diversity problems, and knowledge for solving these problems.  Skills are the personal traits, characteristics and abilities of each leader to actively promote efficiency and cooperation within a group to achieve a specific goal.  Commitment is the person’s individual dedication, or lack thereof, to achieving a goal or following through with the proposed plan of action.