How to lead and manage a diverse workforce

Goals

To understand the stakes, to be able to lead a collective taking into account diversities, to make the most of pluralism by practicing diversified management.

Target audience

Managers in charge of employees of various profiles and sensibilities; HR managers wishing to meet the challenge of a diverse workforce; or anyone wishing to function better in a collective with a high diversity.

Prerequisite

None

Contents

Diversity: understanding what’s at stake

Forms of diversity

• Different profiles of personalities, different sensibilities and functioning
• Different influences: generations, genres, cultures, trades, experiences

The implications of pluralism

• Complexity of interactions: lack of understanding and misunderstandings, mechanisms of failure
• Risks of blockages, dysfunctions of the collective

Advantages of pluralism

• A diversified collective is richer: know how to make the most of / engage natural abilities, resources, strengths and talents of each, for the benefit of the collective
• A diversified collective is more agile: know how to adapt to its context, the requirements, the unforeseen
• A diversified collective is more successful in the long run: know how to overcome barriers and stereotypes, learn from others, develop together and engage on a long term basis

MANAGING DIVERSITY

Go beyond paradoxes and beliefs

• Diversified management (for efficiency) vs equal treatment (for ethics)
• Acknowledge differences vs. agreement
• Integrate vs standardize
• The individual vs. the collective
• Diversified management vs unique management

Apply efficient pluralism

• Multidimensional vision; acknowledging diverse approaches and modes of operation
• Better understand each other to succeed in collaboration
• Organize yourself to optimize the functioning of the collective

Practice a diversified management

• Integrate differences, identify strengths, complementarities and benefits of the team
• Interact and communicate by providing meaning
• Be agile by adjusting one’s style to the specificities of the team