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Managing a Diverse Workforce
by: Stewart Tubbs
One of the most striking characteristics of the modern workforce is its rich diversity. Often we think of gender or ethnic diversity, but this also includes age, learning styles, attitudes, educational level and physical challenges. Charles Krauthammer is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who writes a column in The Washington Post, and who often appears on the Sunday talk shows. He also happens to be in a wheelchair.
Dr. Stephen Hawking is one of the world's greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists and holds the Lucasian Chair in Mathematics at Cambridge University. This happens to be the same Distinguished Chair that was held in 1663 by Sir Isaac Newton. Hawking has Lou Gerhig's Disease and is also confined to a wheelchair. He speaks through a voice synthesizer. His best-selling books, A Brief History of Time and Black Holes and Baby Universes, have fascinated readers the world over.
FDR, was stricken with polio and spent most of his years as President of the United States in a wheelchair. He was the father of the New Deal and countless other social reforms that transformed our country. His wife,
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot."
Anna Dusbiber, 25 is a resident of Ann Arbor and is a student in my undergraduate leadership class at Eastern Michigan University. She too is in a wheelchair. Anna has had cerebral palsy since birth. She got her first wheelchair at age five. She was the first in Michigan to have this covered under insurance. She and her parents paved the way for other children to receive insurance coverage for wheelchairs to allow them to be more independent. Anna has served as a mentor for other physically challenged young people for the past eight years. She was also selected to be a member of the EMU "O Team" and works with incoming freshmen during their student orientation.
I recently interviewed her to help me learn more about how to more effectively lead and manage employees who have physical challenges.
She said that one of the difficulties is that people often underestimate her intelligence due to her physical condition. She said people will often talk to others in a group but not look at her, as if she wasn't even there.
When asked how much educated people were superior to those uneducated, Aristotle answered, "As much as the living are to the dead." So, with that in mind, I asked Anna what advice she would give to leaders who would like to be more effective working with today's more diverse workforce. So here are some tips in true David Letterman style, starting with number 10.
10. Don't assume that the person is less capable than they are. Give them tasks and then see what they can and can't do.
9. Increase your awareness. Be open to differences. Differences can be turned into sources of insight and strength.
8. Judge people by what they can control, such as good attendance and punctuality, not by things they can't control. Learn to know the difference.
7. Use appropriate language. Avoid using the term "crippled." Instead, think "physically challenged." She added that all of us have challenges, but most of them are harder to detect. We all have disabilities. Nobody is immune from these.
6. Treat all employees with the same level of respect. Don't talk down to those who are physically challenged.
5. Don't ignore people with physical challenges. She told a story of one college coed who always seemed to be stand-offish. When Anna took her aside and asked her why, she said, "I'm afraid of people with disabilities. I don't know how to act around them." People tend to discount those who are different for any reason. Differences can be threatening.
4. If you don't know how to act around a person with a physical challenge, talk to them privately and ask them how they would like to be treated. Don't just assume that you know.
3. Don't try too hard and smother the individual. That is almost as bad as ignoring them.
2. Give people a chance to prove what they can do. Use the Golden Rule.
1. Offer training. Having people spend even a few minutes trying to maneuver in a wheelchair is a great way to help offer insights that go a long way toward solving the problem.
Anna said that her dream is to have a family and a career that would allow her to make a meaningful difference. She would also like to go on a cruise someday, it doesn't matter where. Her inspiration is Christy Brown, who also had cerebral palsy from birth and spent his life in a wheelchair. He became a successful painter (using just the toes of his one foot), and the author of the famous book and movie, "My Left Foot." She said that, "in many ways, I'm very lucky."
Try using these ten tips in your workplace. Also, remember what Thomas Jefferson once said, "It behooves every man who values liberty for himself, to resist invasions of it in every case of others; or their case, by change of circumstances, may become his own."
Stewart L. Tubbs is the Darrell H. Cooper professor of leadership in the college of business at Eastern Michigan University. E-mail at stu.tubbs@emich.edu.