A team meeting about diversity

A team meeting about diversity

Listen to a team meeting about diversity to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

Nina: As you know, our team has grown a lot in the past year and we feel we need to address the diversity in the team.

Brenda: How do you mean, 'address the diversity'?

Nina: Well, we all know that diversity in teams is a good thing, but it can also be a challenge for some people to respect and value people's differences. We've got a really diverse team here – people of different nationalities, backgrounds, religions, ages … and sometimes I don't feel we make the most of this.

Stefano: Yes, and even if it isn't specifically challenging, many people are simply unaware of the isolation that some team members may feel because they are different.

Brenda: So, what does this mean? What are we going to do?

Nina: Well, we need to create a workplace charter. You know, one that promotes equality, diversity and inclusion.

Brenda: That sounds like a good idea. But will people just see it as something the management team has created? Maybe they won't even pay attention to it.

Nina: I know. That's why we're going to involve everyone in creating it.

Stefano: That's a good idea. We could run some workshops and get ideas from the employees about how we can create a more inclusive workplace.

Nina: Exactly. I was thinking that before that we could run some team-building sessions so they can experience the value of diversity for themselves.

Brenda: Yes, I like that. Many people see diversity as something negative, often because there are different opinions or ways of doing things.

Nina: Yes, I know, but if there's no diversity, then the risk is that we all work in the same way, think the same and see the world the same. This makes it hard to be creative and to innovate.

Stefano: I completely agree, Nina. OK. So, what do you want us to do?

Nina: Stefano, can you look for a successful trainer who specialises in running workshops and team-building sessions on diversity and inclusion?

Stefano: Sure. I'll be happy to.

Nina: And Brenda, can you find a fun venue? Somewhere that is quite diverse itself. Something that's not the usual seminar-style environment?

Brenda: Sure. That'll be fun.

Nina: And I'm going to do some further research into how other organisations are benefiting from their diversity. I can share this with the whole team.

Task 1

Task 2

Discussion

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Average: 4.1 (131 votes)

Submitted by zarathustradian on Mon, 27/05/2019 - 08:42

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Currently, in my office, there is not so much diversity except religion, because we had limited people who work in. But I believe that diversity can give us so many benefits, one of the benefits is learning about to care of each other and feel amazing how the people can be so colorful

Submitted by maria.khazaee on Sun, 26/05/2019 - 18:04

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in my opinion,diversity might be useful if and only if the team manager is professional in coaching the team mate.otherwise it causes challenge with enormous side effects. age,sex,religion,nation,culture even family background make people so different in believes and attitudes and it need a really experienced leader to struggle all and create equal workplace!

Submitted by smell08 on Wed, 22/05/2019 - 07:19

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In my work place, our team members including my team leader have different personality each other. For instance, when i work in my company, I always try to finish as soon as possible. Occasionally, It's fit to do my job. however, if my job is not needed to finish early, it turns out disadvantage as my meticuolous. by cooperating, I'm improving my work style. we can check on each point of view. Finaaly, It would contribute to develop team work efficiency.

Submitted by Thanh Thien on Thu, 16/05/2019 - 01:07

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Diversity is good, but we need to, like the above paragraph, learn to respect one another, and need to have one person know to balance the discussion, the end point of it and stop it timely. Diversity in age, gender, nationality, geography or something like this doesn't make sense without difference from opinions of the members. Because merely it affects directly to the work. (Do I have any mistake in this comment?? if you see them, please tell me, we try together to learn English, ok ^^! )

Submitted by Anderson de Azevedo on Mon, 06/05/2019 - 10:06

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I believe many people to understand that diversity is only choose of the sex gender, but diversity is more than that.

Submitted by sahar2550 on Tue, 30/04/2019 - 07:49

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There are many diversity in my workplace such as gender,ethnicity, age and different opinions. With this diversity we can getting to know different cultures.
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Submitted by akkg2000 on Fri, 26/04/2019 - 06:35

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In order to solve a problem there are so many different ways, But how can you catch them? I think we need different people with different attitudes and background who inform us. Nowdays, the most expensive good is information. You can find it by 2 ways: 1) studing book, 2) consultation with others, specifically others with different attitude.

Submitted by khineeiei.hein on Thu, 11/04/2019 - 09:25

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In my workplace, there are colleagues from different ethnic groups, religions and locations. As you know, there are more than three hundreds ethnic groups in Myanmar. We could learn to different traditional natures and cultures, beliefs, aspects, feelings and many many etc.

Submitted by ANAALVAREZ1624 on Wed, 10/04/2019 - 18:45

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In my work place there are not a lot of cases of physical diversity but there are a lot of cases of psycological diversity, we are totally different in ideas, beliefs, behaviours,etc. wich are more difficult to deal with.

Submitted by marcasti on Thu, 04/04/2019 - 19:29

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In my organization diversity and inclusion environment are welcome, but it is not enough. There is a set of differences that are not considered. The gender gap does not exist, we are the same number of male and female. But there are no disabled or elderly, for example.