Week 2 – Discussion Forum

Applying Knowledge to the Workplace [WLOs: 3, 4] [CLOs: 1, 2, 4]

To complete this discussion:

Complete the following reading and videos prior to participating in the forum:

• Self-Assessment and Dialogue as Tools for Appreciating Diversity (Links to an external site.)
• Performance Evaluations (Links to an external site.)
• Understanding Our Biases and Assumptions (Links to an external site.)
• Preparing for My Appraisal: Cutting Edge Communication Comedy Series (Links to an external site.)
• What Your Boss Wants: Business (Links to an external site.)

To complete this discussion, choose from one of the two options below and address the bulleted items:

Option # 1:

• Consider events, informational websites, media, or even family/friends that have helped you develop your beliefs.
• Based on a deep self-reflection, identify a self-belief that, you learned later, may have been accommodated/assimilated based on biased information.
• Analyze how your beliefs changed based on this information.
• Discern how you were able to identify the bias and adjust the developed knowledge.
• Identify whether the bias might fit into any of the following categories and explain how.

Self-serving bias: Seeing oneself as responsible for positive outcomes, as in putting a positive spin on one’s accomplishments or influencing positive events. “This happened because of me” This bias also hold the reluctance to accept responsibility for negative outcomes, and therefore commonly blames others for negative outcomes.

Similar-to-me-bias: Preferring individuals who are similar to themselves, by race, gender, age, career, religion, etc.

Conformation bias: Being willing to only focus on information that supports one’s own views and preconceptions.

Blindspot bias: When one believes they are less biased than others because they believe bias is something that others do and not them.

Stereotyping: Assuming people, events, and objects have more in common than is actually true. Such as, “All politicians are bad” or “All Asians are good at math”

Group think: When a group opinion is formed for the sake of conformity without allowing for dissent.

Gender bias: Implicit biases that support unfair treatment, both covert and overt, based on gender

Option # 2

• Explain cross-cultural training.
• Do you think cross-cultural trainings should be more commonplace? Why or why not?
• In multinational organizations, should the trainings be adapted to reflect the culture of the clients that they serve? For example, there are some differences in how different cultures approach customer service.
• Think of a company (or do an online search to identify one) that serves multinational populations. List two important aspects to training that should be considered that might differ from the company culture itself in training based on the population(s) they serve.