Communicating with Diversity at Work

Abstract

Managers of all types, business executives, members of the professions and people at work generally need to be able to communicate with others successfully. Increasingly, they must communicate in a ‘new world’ of diverse colleagues, clients and customers and of international operations. Modern societies and organisations are composed of people who differ widely in terms of nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, education, social class or level of (dis)ability — in other words in terms of their demographic profile or social background. At work, therefore, individuals are now likely to interact with a highly diverse range of people as colleagues, subordinates, managers, clients, patients, customers, students, professional advisers and other service providers, sales representatives and other interface workers. Because societies such as Europe are becoming increasingly integrated, markets increasingly global and workforces increasingly diverse, more people than ever before now interact with ‘different others’ in these varying roles. (Different others are people whose demographic profile or social background is different from an individual’s own.) It is their face-to-face communication in such interactions which is the subject of this book.