Cultural Competency and Diversity

Cross-cultural diversity is inevitable in the workplace that demands the need for cultural competency and diversity training. As such, observing your team members' interactions with each other is crucial in order to address potential issues within the group. The concept of microaggressions is especially relevant to this need as they have the potential to damage the wellbeing of minorities by making one feel isolated, underappreciated, targeted, and inferior. Being able to understand the differences in age, gender, and ethnicity will help tremendously with group cohesion, trust, and rapport. This helps to create a culturally equitable workplace, which is dependent on adopting policies and procedures to meet the needs of the diverse individuals in the workplace.

Research on fostering cultural competency suggests there are many challenges to establishing competency and understanding. They include, but are not limited to: language barriers, negative perceptions towards certain cultures, microaggressions, lack of mentoring, adverse climates, and tokenism. In order to avoid these, the organization (and system at-large) must ensure that the mission commits to cultural competency. Of equal importance is understanding the dimensions of the cultural diversity within the team and then seeking commitment from individuals to nurture such differences. Consultation should always be used to provide support to those group members who are lacking in this area. Baker also found that in doing so, the group will not only benefit from greater cohesion, but the individual member(s) will gain from added insight that will ideally also increase patient satisfaction and treatment.

Another example of possible barriers to group cohesion is age. Research suggests younger and older team members' health can be affected by age diversity. Liebermann found that younger team members' health is affected when working in age diverse teams, if they hold negative stereotypical views of their older colleagues. These negative stereotypes include associating these members with a lower level of ability, motivation, and productivity. Such members may also be associated with the inability to adapt to new situations and to have less potential for personal development. Addressing the negative age stereotypes is essential to foster mutual acceptance and trust. Lieberman argues that exposure to members that disconfirm the age stereotypes can reduce these categorizations. Moreover, having a large age discrepancy in the organization can negatively affect the health of employees if steps to reduce any existing age stereotypes are not met.

Research also suggests that developing culturally relevant curricula and training opportunities, providing positive mentoring opportunities and support to minorities, and creating a diversity-friendly environment are essential to managing diversity. Providing culturally relevant curricula includes emphasizing cultural sensitivity in order to allow members of the team to become more competent in communicating with individuals from different cultures. Increasing mentoring opportunities also provides members the chance to demonstrate personal satisfaction in helping others, increase enthusiasm about their work, and help minority members develop a sense of belongingness; increasing the presence of minorities promotes diversity and professional development. These initiatives involve educating individuals and managing diversity in pursuance of optimizing the performance of all individuals in the multidisciplinary team. (Take Away: Cultural competency is a must!)