The Diversity Training Activity Book: 50 Activities for Promoting Communication and Understanding at Work - Softcover

Lambert, Jonamay; Myers, Selma

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0814415369 ISBN 13: 9780814415368

Publisher: AMACOM, 2009

Synopsis

With our workforce becoming increasingly diverse, encouraging cultural and gender sensitivity and understanding in the workplace is key for businesses and leaders’ success.

Tested with hundreds of participants to ensure the appropriateness and effectiveness for a variety of diversity training needs, the simple activities in this must-read guide show employees at all levels how to cope with differences and master new skills for communicating more effectively.

Filled with activities, role-playing exercises, sample icebreakers, and case studies, The Diversity Training Activity Book teaches you how to:

• address work-related frustrations with coworkers of different backgrounds;
• manage a culturally diverse team;
• deal with issues of gender in the workplace;
• understand differences in dress, appearance, and social customs--and how to be respectful of them,
• See how cultural barriers present new challenges to overcoming workplace disagreements.

Get started now with these simple and powerful actions that will help all employees build a more collaborative, harmonious, and open workplace culture.

About this title

About the Authors

Jonamay Lambert (Chicago, IL) is Founder and President of Lambert Associates, Inc., and has designed and implemented training programs in diversity, leadership, and change management for both Fortune 100 companies and smaller organizations alike.

Selma Myers (LaJolla, CA) is a trained mediator and co-author of Conflict Resolution Across Cultures. Together they have written 13 trainer's guides in the Diversity at Work training series.

From the Back Cover

As you know all too well, common differences among people—age, gender, race, ethnicity—can prevent even the most talented and dedicated employees from working together. Today, the success of nearly every business depends on overcoming generation gaps, gender biases, and multicultural misunderstandings. How can you effectively deal with these sensitive issues without reinforcing stereotypes and further alienating your diverse employees?

You’ll find the answer—in fact, an array of answers—in The Diversity Training Activity Book. This user-friendly guide presents a collection of 50 exercises, developed by two respected diversity trainers and tested on hundreds of workshop participants throughout the United States and Canada. From icebreakers, like “Name That Feeling,” to mini-case studies, role plays, and group games, these short and simple activities confront diversity challenges in a highly engaging, non-confrontational way. Participants will not only examine their assumptions and expectations about other cultures, but also become more aware of their own cultural values, beliefs, styles, habits, and attitudes. While learning with coworkers from wide-ranging backgrounds and perspectives, they’ll grow in empathy and master the critical skills to:

• Minimize miscommunication and misinterpretation.

• Understand differences in dress, demeanor, and social customs.

• Respect different senses of space and time-consciousness.

• Maximize the unique resources of female and older workers.

• Manage a culturally diverse and changing workforce.

• Identify intercultural incidents and resolve intercultural conflicts.

Every exercise comes with complete trainer instructions. You’ll also get materials you can easily modify for use as handouts or PowerPoint presentations. With The Diversity Training Activity Book, you can design a lunch-hour seminar or a weekend retreat that will make a positive difference in your diverse workplace. Before long, you’ll break down barriers and open minds to working together productively and harmoniously.

Jonamay Lambert is Founder and President of Lambert & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in diversity, leadership, and change management training. She has designed and implemented training programs for Fortune 100 companies and a wide variety of private and public organizations. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Selma Myers has brought intercultural training to universities, hospitals, government agencies, and the Olympics. A professional mediator, she is also the co-author of Conflict Resolution Across Cultures. She lives in LaJolla, California. Together, Ms. Lambert and Ms. Myers have written 13 trainer’s guides in the Diversity at Work series.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

By now, most organizations are aware that changes in the general population profoundly affect the makeup of their workforce in the twenty-first century. This book is therefore designed to meet the needs of professionals who are expected to address the implications of cultural diversity through training, facilitating and other developmental programs.

The underlying philosophy in The Diversity Training Activity Book is to train workshop participants to deal constructively with the changing workforce, and to do so in a nonthreatening environment. A new awareness, coupled with matching skills, can build bridges of understanding and cooperation which will influence daily performance.

Individuals participating in the activities offered in this guide will first examine their own cultural backgrounds. They will then recognize how cultural differences may impact behavior. They will also learn skills to help them work effectively in a multicultural environment. Ultimately, their organizations will benefit through improved communication, reduced conflict and more productive relationships.

The activities contained in this guide are equally useful in industrial, service, government and not-for-profit organizations, as well as health care, educational, financial and other institutions.

Certain assumptions form the basis for the activities in this book:

--Culture is not good or bad. It just “is.”

--Often what may be considered “just the way it is” is culturally influenced.

--One’s view of the world is shaped by values, perceptions, assumptions, and expectations.

--The more people know about their own culture, and the more they know about other cultures, the better the communication will be.

--The way one does or sees things, when coupled with the way others do and see things, can lead to new improved ways of doing and seeing things.

--Being different is “OK” and differences can be recognized, acknowledged and cherished.

--The responsibility for intellectual communication is not solely that of any one of the parties, but shared by all.

Furthermore, the authors assume that those who are conducting this training have conducted training before. Therefore, this book does not include basic information on how to design needs assessments, lesson plans or the steps necessary for handling logistics.

This book provides a series of activities which are carefully constructed to:

--Introduce the topic of diversity

--Increase awareness of the impact of culture in the workplace

--Demonstrate skills for managing a culturally diverse workplace

--Address the matter of gender in the workplace

Each activity is presented in the following format:

--NAME, to identify the exercise

--Brief description of the PURPOSE of the exercise

--Normal TIME allotment

--EQUIPMENT required

--Consumable MATERIALS needed

--PROCEDURES suggesting how the exercise should be conducted

--Short CONCLUSION section

--Helpful TRAINER’S NOTES

Our approach is to use participative exercises, lecturettes, mini–case studies and role-plays in which participants will become actively involved in situations that help them deal with diversity and gender-related issues in the workplace. Also included are many exercises in master form, available for use either as handouts or as material for transparencies.

Jonamay Lambert

Selma Myers

Excerpted from THE DIVERSITY TRAINING ACTIVITY BOOK by Jonamay Lambert and Selma Myers. Copyright © 2009. Published by AMACOM Books, a division of American Management Association, New York, NY. Used with permission.

All rights reserved. http://www.amacombooks.org.

Edition details

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814415369
• ISBN 13: 9780814415368
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336