Harnessing Cultural Diversity

Frequently asked questions and practical advice to help you harness cultural diversity in your workplace

At the beginning of your internship experience, you may take a survey that evaluates your world orientation, emotional resilience, and empathy towards people with differing opinions, perspectives, and values than you. The following questions have been asked by students and developing professionals just like you as they make sense of cultural diversity in their own professional contexts.

What does it mean to “harness cultural diversity”?

Harnessing cultural diversity is not “learning new things associated with people or cultures” only. In fact, it has little to do with what we usually associate with “culture”—things like country flags, clothing customs, and exotic food, or “diversity” in the forms of ethnically or gender-diverse groups of people.

Instead, harnessing cultural diversity means that you learn how to work with people who think differently than you do. We are all products of the cultures and contexts that we individually experience. You approach challenges differently than someone in California, or New York City, or Zimbabwe, and this is not because you dress or talk differently. This is because you are a product of your context and culture, just as they are of theirs.

When you come together in the workplace, far away from the festivals and bazaars that may indicate “culture” to a tourist, you will find that in order to work together, you need to be able to harness different perspectives and different ways to solve problems to solve your common, shared problem or task. And you will always have a need for that in the workplace, or in your personal life, or really anywhere.

Remember, you are always working with diversity of opinion, perspective, and approaches to challenges, and that is where harnessing cultural diversity becomes essential, and incredibly valuable, in the workplace.

What is the best way to improve my “world orientation,” with limited time?

This is a great question, but I would push back a little on your “limited time.” While I recognize that you have a limited term on your internship, it’s most productive if you frame your internship experience as just one step on your professional development journey that will continue past your internship end date. So, while the rest of my answer will directly answer the practical and real-world demands of your four months with on your internship, I hope that you see your internship as such, and that improving your world orientation then would become a more long-term goal, and something that would be worked on over a career or lifetime.

To improve “world orientation” in the term of your internship, you must first identify your “world.” As you are working at your internship ask yourself: what makes up my “world” at my internship? Who makes up my “world”? What cultural factors are at play within my work, and where are my gaps of understanding those cultural factors? Further, it is important to remember that harnessing cultural diversity is not just “learning new things associated with people or cultures” and improving world orientation is not learning to identify Senegal on a map. In fact, it has little to do with what we usually associate with “culture” and geography—things like country flags, clothing customs, and exotic food.

Instead, harnessing cultural diversity and improving world orientation means that you learn how to work with people who think differently than you do, and to learn more about the world as they see it.

So, consider: who do I work with, and what composes, or makes up, their world? What can I learn to better orient myself to their perspective, so that we can work together more effectively? Hopefully, answering these questions for yourself can provide a plan of action.

What are some specific ways that you were able to develop greater empathy for those with different values, perspectives, or cultural paradigms than my own? Do you have any advice on how to have better emotional resilience in general? 

A few specific ways I was able to develop greater empathy include the following: one, I stopped seeing myself as somehow different and therefore “better” than my coworkers and supervisors. This doesn’t mean that I thought I was a better team member than they were, or that I was somehow a better employee than they were a few weeks into my job. But it does mean that I had to let go of the idea that my way of doing things, of thinking of things, was inherently better than theirs because it was my way.

Two, I listened to understand rather than listened to do. When being giving tasks, I stopped listening only for the instructions and instead sought to listen to my supervisor as a person and as a personality. I got to know him for who he was, and as a result, I came to see how wonderful he was as a person. This in turn resulted in greater interpersonal warmth and interest on my part, and our relationship became less formal supervisor/intern and more like coworkers working towards a common goal.

And three (perhaps this speaks to your question about how to have better emotional resilience/hardiness in general), I had to come to learn, for myself, that advice given about my performance at work was not advice given against my spirit, soul, or personality. I learned to not take it personally, which is easier said than done. I sought an attitude of “I’m here to work on my professional Self, and these people want to help me become my best professional Self, too. But it depends on me to make this happen.”

I would recommend checking your attitude towards those around you, listening to understand rather than to respond/do, and remembering who you are and what you’re here to do. Consider the why of empathy. Why does it matter? What is the point of seeking to be empathetic in the workplace? As you look to answer these questions for yourself, you can develop greater empathy and emotional resilience, enabling you to harness cultural diversity.

Do you have any advice on overcoming cultural biases or stereotypes?

The first step to overcoming cultural biases or stereotypes is to be aware of them. Recognize and note when you find yourself thinking in biased or culturally stereotyped ways about coworkers. Make plans on how to rewrite these thoughts in the future. Instead of thinking about or noticing only their ethnicity, race, or gender, consider their personhood: what’s their name? Where are they from? What do they do in their free time? Why did they enter this profession?

As you get more personalized, human details about them, they cease to be only a cardboard cutout that we are quick to stereotype and instead become in our eyes what they always have been: a human being, just like you and me.