As the workforce grows more global, leaders must pay attention to how they lead and motivate their team. Team members come from different backgrounds and have different life experiences.

To build trust within a diverse team, education leaders should appreciate and consider the input from individuals with different perspectives.

Trust is earned through actions over time but can be broken in an instant with a poor decision or lack of action.

Since leaders are humans and naturally fallible, it is essential that leaders build a firm foundation of trust so that team members remain committed to the learning community when missteps occur.

Missteps are different from callous disregard for a person or group. When trust is broken by not showing value for a person, leadership recovery is unlikely.

Fostering an Inclusive and Diverse Work Environment

Leaders foster inclusive environments by showing value and empathy for all team members. Effective leaders gain input from people whose ideas and backgrounds differ from their own.

There is richness in gaining a well-rounded perspective by gathering feedback from a diverse group.  Diversity brings a wealth of ideas. Leading with empathy means that the leader must seek to understand team members.

Hiring a diverse team and appreciating their input creates a workplace focused on purpose and inclusivity. Further, by fostering this supportive culture, decisions, work, and policies are more likely to be sound and thoughtful.

Our nation was not built by one person, but rather it was built through the actions of many bringing diverse backgrounds. Leaders realize that there is far more to bring us together than the differences among us.  Leaders value their character and make conscious efforts to support all of their team members.

Effective Communication and Collaboration

Effective and timely communication is a cornerstone of productive learning communities. All communication needs to be clear, explicit, professional, and timely. Leaders need to maintain transparent and open communication channels with team members.

If leaders do not share their thoughts and story, others will create the narrative for them. Communication comes in many forms including, but not limited to, written, verbal, unspoken, body language, and listening capacity.

Regardless of the mode of communication, communication needs to be professional and mindful of all stakeholders and group members. Skilled leaders are both confident and clear in all communication.

Good communication and teamwork are important when leading a diverse team. These help build trust and keep the team focused on shared goals.

Communication and messages do not need to show preference and more consideration of one group over another. As such, it is imperative that leaders understand their team members and the background/unique life perspectives each one brings to the table.

Diversity comes in many forms. We all have unique life experiences. Understanding team members helps a leader build trust, and team member strengths can be leveraged to accelerate movement toward a common vision.

Educators make significantly less progress when they operate on islands of isolation. When all team members own the vision and its related goals, collaboration is more easily facilitated.

For learning communities to offer the best educational experiences to their diverse student groups, it’s important for all team members to collaborate effectively.

Collaboration simply means that team members work together toward common goals. For collaboration to be successful, it is essential that targets and group norms are clearly defined. Those norms must include parameters on how to show respect, engage with the group appropriately, and consider others’ viewpoints.

Good written and spoken communication is important for leading a team with different backgrounds. However, leaders should also pay attention to what is not said.

Our body language and tone often communicate more than our words. Leaders should show a “we” mindset. This means they focus on the group’s needs and the needs of students, not just their own. Trust is earned over a career but can be eternally broken in an instant.

Leaders must be mindful of how they communicate through unspoken means. Actions are probably the most essential element of unspoken communication. Our actions must align with our words, or our words are meaningless.

Collaboration and communication both take the form of listening. As leaders listen and model this skill for team members, they are communicating, accepting feedback, considering possible direction changes, and showing value for the perspective of others.

Listening is an active skill and not a passive one. We need to listen, absorb, and reflect. If we listen to respond instead of to understand, we damage the communication process.

It is critical to remember that listening to a team member does not mean that he or she will get his or her way. The feedback will be considered though.

While practicing active listening, leaders need to ask clarifying questions to let the team know that he or she is being heard.

A final consideration of communication and collaboration is that leaders must embrace feedback regarding their own leadership style. Leaders should rise to the occasion and earn their role through servant leadership.

Leaders cannot be narrowly focused on the impact on them and bruised feelings. Feedback can be considered and used to move the learning community toward its common goals.

Leaders should thank all team members for trusting them to lead and proceed accordingly.

Motivation and Engagement

Leaders of diverse teams need to build capacity in cultural competence. They need to understand and be mindful of what different team members value.

As team members begin to trust that the work environment is safe and conducive to innovative thought, they will become more engaged and motivated to contribute.

Innovative thought is often a byproduct of unique life experiences that lead to the best solutions to complex problems.

Team members need to know that their thoughts and ideas will be embraced as plausible solutions. It is important to create guidelines that ensure team feedback is respected and reviewed for potential implementation.

Recognition is one of the most valued motivators for the workforce. As such, leaders need to offer team members feedback and offer recognition for gains in performance and outcomes.

Skilled leaders value the unique contributions of members and celebrate milestones in the pursuit of strategic goals.

Leadership Development

Team leaders need to invest time in leadership development. Learning communities understand that leaders must model the way and train the next generation.

Furthermore, growing leadership capacity within the current team will help move the organization towards its strategic goals.

A graduate degree in administration prepares you to lead as a school administrator and help shape the future for generations of students. Check out our available leadership and administration graduate degrees and get started today!

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How Does Diversity Impact a University?

When people from a variety of places come together to study, discuss, and create in a graduate study setting the outcome is valuable and impactful for each of the students. Students’ ideas and beliefs are shaped based on where they came from, but that does not mean a student’s mind cannot be opened to a different way of thinking. The level of diversity on an institution’s campus will allow for thought provoking discussions among students from different places. This environment may also encourage some students with strong opinions to learn to persuade others by substantiating their ideas with facts that cannot be debated.

A graduate program that is arranged in student cohorts will encourage individuals to work in cooperative groups and invite conversation amongst students even if they have differing opinions. Cohorts can help to build a successful outcome when working on various projects. These projects will allow students to build a potential portfolio that can be used in a students’ professional endeavors after graduate school. The students gain value in hearing the diverse thoughts of each student and each student has the ability to learn from one another.

A strongly diverse institution creates a school community of inclusivity for the students. Students are exposed to people from all walks of life. The students may learn different cultural rituals, foods, languages, and other life experiences through the exposure of diversity. As important as the academic curriculum is, students will be able to gain knowledge through the variety of thought brought into the classroom by the students everywhere is a priceless experience. When students select to study in environments that are traditional homogenous, the students will not be given the opportunity to hear opinions and experiences different than their own, and this could be a limiting environment.

The diverse social or academic student life available on an institution’s campus will open the minds of students. When students participate in new activities that broaden their personal lives it gives the students exposure to new ideas and thoughts that will give them personal growth.

What Characteristics Should You Look For?

Students seeking higher education beyond an undergraduate degree are first loking for an institution that has the specific program to support the student’s career goals. For example, students desiring to achieve a master’s degree in education or business could also be looking for a specific niche within that area. For example, an education student could be looking for a graduate degree in areas such as educational leadership, curriculum, or reading instruction. A business student could be seeking a higher level of understanding in business administration or a more niche area such as finance. Students begin by selecting the school that offers the desired program, then research should begin on the individual institutions.

The make-up of the student population for academic institution is public knowledge and can be viewed on the institution’s website. Students should pay attention to the percentage of the chance two random students are of a different race, ethnicity, or citizenship. Another indicator of a college’s diversity is indicated by the school’s diversity index found in the school’s profile. The closer a school’s diversity index is to 1.00 the more diverse the school. A school’s profile will also identify the one most dense student population found on the individual campuses. This information is also valuable for a prospective student to determine the make-up of students they will be learning from in the classroom.

Another characteristic when looking for a diverse institution is the make-up of diversity among the college faculty. Where are the professors from originally and/or where have they gained teaching experiences. The diversity of the faculty can impact the lessons taught, and the perspectives that are used to lead discussions among the students.

Students may also research the university’s student life by locating the number of different organizations on campus, the origin of the organizations, and the make-up of the organizations’ leaders and members. The interactions diverse student organizations have on a campus are valuable to the student’s academic and social growth and can play a huge part in earning any type of college degree.

What Characteristics Should You Avoid?

Students seeking a well-rounded graduate program should stay away from academic institutions that have a large majority of students from one racial or gender group. These schools benefit some students, but when desiring to learn from not only the professors but from peers that have various opinions due to racial and cultural groups, schools with homogenous student populations will not be able to provide that type of experience.

Another characteristic to avoid is a limited educational profile among the faculty members on a university campus. Loyalty and tenure are important to the professors, however, when professors can bring diverse experiences from the many institutions where they studied before settling at one university is another form of diversity that is valuable to the students. When professors have limited experience outside of the university they teach, it can stifle the ideas and lessons being taught to students.

One last characteristic for a student to avoid is an institution with a limited or total lack of diverse student life. Campuses without organizations available for various groups of people could be an indicator of a single-minded thought process that can be harmful for a student’s academic and social growth.

Students seeking to further an education with a degree beyond a bachelor’s degree should prioritize the importance of vetting the various institutions that offer the program to aid with advancing a profession, but also provides opportunities to learn from people that can share different experiences possibly based on race, culture, religion, and gender that will give a student a broader mind. A student’s experiences in college shape the opinions that many impact decisions made in a student’s professional life.

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Because every classroom has a melting pot of learners, it is critical that teachers evaluate their teaching for diversity and inclusion. Below are some areas that teachers should continuously reflect on, build upon, and learn from in order to meet the needs of the unique group of students they are educating.

Curriculum

Curriculum is not always something teachers have input in. They likely walk into their classroom and find their set of instructional tools readily sitting on their desk. Sometimes there is little leniency or flexibility to stray from these materials. Yet many resources are outdated and the funding is not there to replace them in a timely manner.

It is important, necessary, and urgent that educators lesson plan with a lens of equality and with diversity at the forefront of their planning. Do the stories included in the reading passages have unique names? Are the children in the books participating in events that the students would be familiar with? Do the kids in the pictures come in all shapes and sizes and have skin tones that vary in all different shades? If the answer is ‘no’ to any of these questions, it is critical that teachers fill in the lacking areas and diversify their lessons to accurately portray their classroom.

Classroom Community

It may sound strange to those unfamiliar with the unraveling of a new school year that little curriculum is being taught in the first few weeks. However, that is because the building of a classroom community is equally, if not more, vital to a student’s education then teaching story elements or long division. For students to have trust in their teacher and feel comfortable amongst their classmates, the first part of the school year is focused on building relationships.

Teachers should acknowledge the differences in the students and find ways to connect their similarities. Using texts like Same, Same But Different by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw or The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi can help shed some light on diversity, recognize differences, and foster respect for the uniqueness of every individual in the class.

Social-Emotional Learning

An extensive body of research concluded that building a safe and caring school community and attending to social and emotional learning are essential to students’ overall academic success (Caring School Community Data). When students feel connected to their teacher, their classmates, and their school, they not only perform better academically, but also show other benefits such as a deeper emotional resilience and a stronger moral compass. Skills such as these will serve students their entire lives throughout their education and into their careers.

Educators should make time for direct teaching of social-emotional skills by using curriculums such as Collaborative Classroom or Move this World, through morning meeting conversations, and through teachable moments. Students can’t learn to their best ability without their social and emotional needs being met, so this is one subject area to be sure not to skip over.

Classroom Décor and Materials

Another way to show students they are welcomed, valued, and seen in a classroom is by making sure classroom decor and materials reflect people that look and live like them. Do the posters on the wall show students who are black, brown, and white? Do the books on the shelves show students from various cultures, participating in special holidays, and wearing traditional clothes? Do the families portrayed in these books and posters show big families, blended families, families with two moms or two dads? These are all simple things a teacher can change that can have a large impact on students’ acceptance and level of comfort in their classroom.

Classroom Activities and Games

Another simple change educators can make today that will help with inclusion is by making sure the activities and games in the classroom are diverse. Students should have choice in how they want to express themselves. This could mean that the teacher gives the students options in how they want to retell their text; act it out, draw a picture, sing a song, or write it down. This shows students that their preferences and talents are honored, while the teacher is still able to monitor for comprehension through the students’ choices.

Communication with Parents

Just as every student is unique, so is every parent. Getting to know the families of your students is equally as important as getting to know your class. Ask parents what their home language is, how they prefer to be communicated with, what kind of access to technology they have available, and how you can best support them in your parent/teacher relationship.

Building relationships with families will help open the lines of communication which will, in turn, give you a clearer picture into the education of the child. Knowing what students have going on outside the classroom walls can help answer many questions about behavior, grades, and emotions.

Conclusion

Looking around at a classroom of students, it may be obvious that the students don’t all look the same. As sure as that statement is, it is even clearer to students when they don’t see themselves represented in the classroom in posters, in curriculum, or in the way their uniqueness is valued. Students deserve to see themselves represented, to be given the opportunity to share their families cultures and traditions, and to have their families be communicated with in a way that lets them be heard. Take the time to evaluate your teaching for diversity and inclusion. It is necessary, urgent, and will impact the classroom environment in a very powerful way.

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