Question: Managing Diversity

Objective: Your objective is to gain firsthand experience in some of the issues involved in managing diversity.

Procedure: The class divides into groups of three to five people, and each group appoints one member as spokesperson to present the group's recommendations to the whole class. Each group plays the role of a team of diversity consultants who have been called in by a high-tech company in the computer industry to help effectively manage diverse employees. Here is the scenario. Nick Hopkins is the team leader of a group of 10 programmers who are developing innovative software to be used in architectural design. The team is composed of seven men and three women. Hopkins thought everything was going pretty smoothly in his team until the following two recent events. First, one of the women, Cara Lipkin, informed him that she would be resigning to work for a competing organization. Hopkins asked Lipkin why she decided to make this change, and she answered at length. "I can't exactly explain it," she said, "but I never really felt that my contributions were valued by the team. I know you always appreciated the work I did and appraised my performance highly, but somehow I didn't really feel a part of things. In the long run, I was afraid that my prospects in the company might not be as good as other people's because I didn't seem to be included in certain activities and discussions.

To give you what will probably sound like a real silly example, last month I overheard several of my team members planning a deep-sea fishing trip; I kept waiting to be included but never was. As another example, I sometimes feel like the last person people will come to for help with a programming problem." The second event troubling Hopkins was as follows: Bob Risoto, another team member who at the time was unaware of Lipkin's resignation, complained that the women on the team always seemed to stick together. "It's like they've got their own little clique going," Risoto said. "They go to lunch together. They talk to each other but not really to the rest of the team. When I have a programming problem that I think one of the women on the team would be able to help me with, for some reason I often feel hesitant to seek out her advice. Maybe it's just my fault. I don't know." Hopkins has met with you (in your role as a team of diversity consultants) and asked you to help him effectively manage diversity as a team leader. He has indicated that he thought everything was going smoothly, but it evidently isn't and he wants to take some concrete steps to improve matters. Develop a plan of action to help Hopkins effectively manage diversity in his team. Once your group has developed a plan, the spokesperson for the group will present the group's recommendations and the rationale behind them to the rest of the class.