Leadership and Culture: Successful Change Management
The Benefits of Secondary Education to an Organization
Secondary education enables the employees to utilize the theoretical knowledge they gained in the work environment. In addition to expanding the knowledge base of the employees, it also enhances their communication, problem solving, and decision making skills. The dynamic nature of the current business environment continues to increase competition among organizations of all types and sizes. Consequently, the job market has also become competitive, necessitating majority employees to rely on their education to secure their jobs.
More than 70% of my fellow colleagues are willing to make use of their education to maintain their positions and become eligible for future promotions. It benefits both the individual employees and the organization as a whole by increasing knowledge, improving employee satisfaction, and improving performance. The small percentage of fellow workers who are unwilling to utilize their education for the benefit of the organization eventually become frustrated because higher positions and training and development opportunities are awarded to those who take advantage of secondary education benefits. Moreover, a good education increases the employees' confidence in their abilities and improves their commitment to the organization's mission and goals.
Part 2: Cultural Diversity
Culturally cohesive teams may work better than teams that do not have cultural underpinnings, but they will eventually lead to the failure of a particular institution or...
Given the dynamic nature of the business environment, and the integration of world economies brought about by globalization, cultural competence is arguably the most important skill for effective performance in the 21st century. By definition, cultural competence is the ability to interact and work culturally diverse individuals; and it depends entirely on cross-cultural skills, insight on other worldviews and cultures, awareness of an individual's cultural world view and a tolerant attitude towards cultural opinions and differences. The failure of the team, therefore, did not occur due to too much diversity on the team; rather, it can be attributed to poor diversity management, poor communication and ineffective team leadership.
Culturally diverse teams have many advantages over teams that are culturally cohesive. Among these advantages are: increased creativity due to a range of ideas, increased productivity, new attitudes, new language skills, and global understanding (Parvis, 2013). Moreover, when people from different backgrounds come together to address questions from their differing experiences and world views, new techniques and processes are derived for the same problems, which will eventually increase the competitive advantage. To avoid failures that may be related to cultural diversity, organizations and institutions should develop their teams' cultural competence, which can be accomplished by team building exercises and improving their communication skills. It is also imperative to establish effective ways of managing cultural diversity and they should include both the management…
