Cassidy White

OGL 350
Module 7: Paper

One of the biggest professional leadership roles I had was in my early to mid-twenties. I was the

kitchen manager/ chef at a white tablecloth restaurant. I had an equal, the front-of-house

manager, and we both only answered to the owners. When I was hired there was an existing staff

already in place that had been there for several years. The midday kitchen staff was mostly black

and a mix of two females and one male, much older. They ranged from late thirties to mid-fifties.

The evening staff was much younger, earlier to mid-20s, all white males. The contrast between

the two could not have been bigger! Right away I noticed a tension between the two different

shifts when working both back-to-back several days in a row my first couple of weeks. I couldn’t

be sure what the issues were whether it was racial, age, or just not working together enough to

understand and respect each other’s work and what they did day to day. Laura Hamill writes

“Inclusion can be measured by a sense of belonging, connection, and community at work. It’s

really about how you feel connected to your workplace and the people around you” (Hamill, L.

2019, February 04). I got a sense that no one felt that they belonged, at least not completely.

Everyone seemed to only stay in their lane and do nothing besides what they were there to do

and at the time they were to do it. I immediately started changing up the schedules to get

everyone more involved in different shifts and in different positions. There was resistance at

first, but after about a week or two there started to be a lot more understanding and respect

amongst the entire kitchen staff and we started to see a big change in working together to

make it run much smoother! This is something mentioned by Hamill as well “It's true that the

higher the level of inclusion, the higher the level of well-being and engagement in your
employees, which can lead to better business results (Hamill, 2019) and we did! Things were

much more team-oriented and running smother than ever before!

Personally, for me having a diverse organization is all about having different

perspectives, ideas, and backgrounds. I firmly believe in hiring the right person for the position

that can provide something unique to the group. In my experience typically a person who

doesn’t fit into a mold, someone that is diverse and unlike the others in the workplace, but also

not so much that they wouldn’t be accepted and become part of the organization. Jennifer Kim

in her article “50+ Ideas for Cultivating Diversity and Inclusion at Your Company”, speaks to not

only making big creative “initiatives” (Kim. p.1) but also the smaller and often missed details to

making diversity and inclusion work best in a particular workplace environment. Kim’s 50 ideas

really seem to add some unique perspectives to this can be helpful in taking bigger steps

toward diversity.

The CQ Cultural Intelligence quiz was again interesting. My score was a bit higher as to

be expected at 111. A few of the higher scores came from being involved or around different

cultures and having a better appreciation and understanding of how-to best approach and

accommodate the differences in many cultures. The lower scores still seem to come from just

simple ignorance of not knowing or having the ability to know and understand the cultures of

others. It’s simply something that’s difficult to achieve unless one is willing to immerse oneself

in another culture either by moving within that culture or finding some way to really be

involved with different cultures.

 References:

Hamill, L. (2019, February 04). Council post: What an inclusive workplace actually looks like, and
seven ways to achieve it. Retrieved February 27, 2021

Kim, J. (2020, September 15). 50+ Ideas for Cultivating Diversity and Inclusion at Your Company
[Web log post]. Retrieved February 26, 2021