- In the first chapter of They Say/I Say, using the templates that are given, I would like to try this exercise: At the same time that I believe that people are more comfortable around their own peers, neighborhood, or ethnicity, I also believe that diversity is a truly healthy thing. Not just for the social aspect of expanding your horizons and ideas and sharing experiences with different people, but there is also evidence that it really does contribute to higher production in the workforce.
This template did help me to construct an argument sentence a lot easier than if I was just using stream of conscious writing, and it also made it easy for me to express that things can be nuanced. It’s not always all this way or all that way and if given the opportunity to argue that more than one thing can be true at the same time, I tend to take that challenge at every opportunity. - The two readings this week obviously have some differences since they are about two different kinds of diversity: The Gündemir study relying heavily on gender and ethnic diversity and the Austin&Pisano piece about neurodiversity. Both writings gave me much more information than I previously had about the subject- for instance, the studies done by Gündemir were very detailed and the correlation between more people of diverse backgrounds leading to diverse candidates being willing to take positions of leadership in a company was honestly a little bit higher than I would have assumed, which is a really good thing! The article about neurodiversity was really eye opening to me to see that some very reputable technology companies were doing quite a bit to implement employing people who were neurologically different, and seeing some complaints about concessions being made to these employees (such as having their own office while other employees had to share an office with multiple other employees). That sort of led me to remember some of my experiences when I worked at UPS (I worked inside their hub loading trucks for a large number of years). One peak season (holiday season), there was an influx of workers that were hired on a temporary basis- some were Sudanese refugees, some were Arabic refugees and some were from South and Central America. This naturally peaked my interest because I must be weird but I naturally enjoy being around other cultures, I find it interesting. Well, as soon as they were done being trained and left to load on their own, they had nobody to help them- nobody could speak their language, and (this really bothered me) nobody wanted to work with them, for some blatantly racist, nationalistic reasons. I requested my boss that I move from my area to work with them and help them out, and although I couldn’t speak in depth sentences with them, we got along fine when it came to work, and we even would chat about non work things like which soccer club we supported. Some of my other coworkers who I have known for many years sort of gave me condescending looks and that gave me a bad taste in my mouth, but it instantly made me think of these articles because if you treat someone unfairly and like they don’t matter, than of course the chances are high that you aren’t going to have a super excited employee who strives to go above and beyond for a company while the people there look down on them.
Writing and organizational cultures
You make an important point here, Aaron–when we don’t have to worry quite so much about phrasing (because we have the organizational support of a template), we can focus more on clarifying the nuance of our thinking.
Thanks for sharing your personal experience–it certainly seems to affirm the idea that an organization’s culture shapes the work lives of everybody within it, for better or for worse. That means we ALL have a vested interest in how well our organizations work (or don’t) for ALL of the people involved in them.