Let’s make a Cultural “Sancocho”!

To understand diversity is important to understand first the behavior of groups, because those are the first instances in where diversity is seen. A group is two or more people with common interests, objectives, and continuing interaction; and its behavior is based on norms, cohesion, loss of individuality and social loafing. Thus, groups are developed by a 5 steps’ process that include: Forming (Guidance and direction), Storming (Power struggles), Norming (Agreement and consensus), Performing (Focus on goal achievement), and Adjourning (Task completion). At the same time, the groups are formed by persons that represent a specific role inside of it, which can be contributor, collaborator, communicator or challenger.

Taking this, diversity is the variation of social and cultural identities among people existing together in a defined employment or market setting. It means understanding that each individual is unique, and recognizing our individual differences. These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies. It is the exploration of these differences in a safe, positive, and nurturing environment. It is about understanding each other and moving beyond simple tolerance to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of diversity contained within each individual.

Diversity involves several issues as culture, language, ethics, age, gender, sexual orientation, race, ideologies, among others, which make the term complex and the cause of many problems that happen in the world and in the business’ field, because in this globalized world, the boundaries are disappearing and people from different backgrounds is getting more involved, for this, knowing how to manage the diversity in a group is important in order to avoid future and serious problems as less effective communication, conflict, lower level of social attraction and lower level of commitment to the group; and also, to take advantage from it, creating a competitive advantage, because it can bring new ways of problem solving, creativity and innovation, organizational flexibility, human talent and effective new marketing strategies.