Impact of Diversity in the Work Place

How does diversity affect a team? Since each class in the University of Phoenix (UOP) online format requires working within a learning team, team diversity is an issue student's deal with all the time. In this course, learning team C is made up of three members. We have each lived our lives in different ways, but have all reached a plateau in our careers that has lead us to UOP to obtain our bachelor's degrees in accounting. In what follows, we will discuss the impact of diversity as it relates to our team in the areas of geographic differences, personality traits, age, and occupation.

When people come together as a team to accomplish specific tasks communication can be very difficult, but it becomes especially difficult when everyone in that team is scattered across the country. For us, team C, communication has been difficult because we are all on different time zones. Trying to set up team meetings has not been a very successful task for us. After two unsuccessful attempts at setting up meetings to discuss how to tackle our first assignment, two of us just went ahead with planning it even though all were not all present to agree. Luckily when the ideas were presented to our other team member, there was no problem with the decisions that were made. Geographical differences started out being a problem for us until we just faced the situation as it was and made a plan for it to no longer be a problem. We chose to set a permanent, weekly meeting day and time that everyone agreed on to discuss our assignments and anything else that might come up.

Something that may come up as an issue in our meetings is personality trait differences. Members of a team should strive to understand the different team members' basic personality attributes. The ways in which those personality traits can affect other people's behavior in that team setting, not to mention their perceptions of and attitudes toward the team setting itself, can vary greatly. When considering desired personality traits for a team setting, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness are at the top of the list for team members to possess. We are fortunate to have a lot of agreeableness in team C as well as openness. We seem to be able to put subjects up for discussion and agree on them fairly quickly and easily. Conscientiousness and extroversion remain to be seen because we are just getting started as a team, but we do not anticipate a problem in those areas. Team C seems to be a very good group of women that are dedicated to accomplishing our team's tasks in a manner that is also consistent with each individual's educational goals.

Although we are each at the same point in our educational goals, our ages are a bit different. Having members of various ages gives some diversity to a team because they can give input based on their experiences. Each person has experienced their own unique events during different stages in their lives. Our team consists of three members ranging in the ages of 32 through 43. As people mature they are more responsible, and reliable, in most cases. The most experienced member can bring in suggestions from experiences at several organizations. The youngest can contribute the experience of being self-employed.