Anthea Lim
By
Shipra Shukla
The Office of Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity and Diversity (AAEOD) invites the campus community to take part in a workshop on Effective Communication in a Diverse Work Culture.
The free workshop will take place from noon to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 27, in the UCSF School of Nursing, room 217. Participants will get practical tools on how to successfully communicate in diverse environments like UCSF.
The workshop is developed by Anthea Lim, PsyD, trainer and analyst in AAEOD and Mark Paschal, assistant director of AAEOD.
AAEOD is offering this workshop in response to their annual progress reports that pointed to the need and the fact that a lack of communication was referenced in many of the complaints the office receives.
"Effective communication in the workplace impacts each one of us," said Lim. "How you receive and process information in relation to those you interact with is an integral part of your daily work life."
The workshop will include an exercise that looks at rating an individual's communication style through a diversity lens. Building from the exercise, how people communicate around a conflict in comparison to relaying information will be analyzed. Verbal and non-verbal communication styles will be assessed.
Best practices will be highlighted through an interactive component, which will allow individuals to share what has worked for them. To better hone the discussion and to achieve maximum impact, Lim and Paschal created a Rate Your Communication Skills in a Diverse Environment structure.
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Mark Paschal |
Lim and Paschal based the workshop in part on the Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness (DiSC) system. The purpose of the DiSC system is to provide a framework for understanding human behavior while allowing people to increase their knowledge of their own behavior patterns.
Another reference for the workshop was the idea of high- and low-context communication. This is based on the idea of how different communication styles affect individuals in various cultures.
"There are cultures where work is conducted over a two- to three-hour meal, where you talk about family first and then work," said Lim."Then there are cultures where work is synonymous with graphs, charts and diagrams."
The workshop will offer guidance on how to function in all types of diverse work environments that include people from different cultures. In doing so, the workshop is creating awareness of how to relate to co-workers in both an individual and a cultural context.
"We try to help people develop the tools to gain sensitivity to both cultural and individual attributes," said Paschal. "Take conflict: If you swing too far in one direction - 'cultural,' it becomes a stereotype, if you swing too far in the other - 'individual,' the conflict becomes personal. Education about cultural norms comes through awareness which is built through exercises that allow you to acquire the tools to communicate more effectively."
Following Wednesday's workshop on Parnassus, others are being planned at the various campus locations. Dates and times are to be determined.
Lim photo by Susan Merrell
Related Link:
Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity & Diversity
