Graciela Kenig's Blog (14)

Get to Know the Team-One Member at a Time

Organizations wishing to attract Latinos and other diverse professionals for top-level management positions often find themselves competing for the same candidates — most of whom are already employed elsewhere.

While such candidates are always are worth pursuing, it is also important to identify the talent that already exists within your organization. After all, these diverse employees already have the institutional and cultural knowledge that newcomers lack. Developing their leadershi

Q: How does a multicultural workforce affect teamwork and communication in large companies?

A: Cross-cultural communication is such a broad area of study that entire books and courses have been devoted to understanding its many implications. When it comes to large companies, especially in Corporate America, I believe that most challenges and opportunities arise from three basic cultural pre

Increasing diversity in an organization is a multi-layered process. The word process implies that it takes time and usually requires many revisions along the way.

Too often, however, companies think of diversity as a training event or a recruiting directive. But unless both are an integral part of an overall strategy, those isolated efforts are not likely to succeed.

A single training session will do little to make diversity an ongoing endeavor. Likewise, charging recruiters wit

How do you decide if a job candidate would be a good fit in your department or company? Or if an employee should be promoted to a very different department?

Assuming the individual has been pre-qualified, that is, he or she has the key competencies needed to perform the job, fit is typically determined through in-depth interviews—preferably in person. You or a team of your colleagues prepare some questions, often behavioral in nature, so you can predict future success in your organiza

Managers and supervisors who work with multicultural employees often express frustration with the way some of these associates manage their time at work. Complaints often include an inability to meet deadlines (even when they said they could), being late for meetings, or a seeming lack of focus on a priority task.

No doubt, such behaviors can have serious consequences on productivity and team morale. But when they take place—not all multicultural employees engage in these practices—cul

With skilled labor shortages widely expected as a result of retiring baby boomers and an influx of young, less experienced workers, companies wishing to remain competitive will have to use creative approaches to talent sourcing and management.

To prepare for the anticipated skilled labor shortages, proactive companies should be asking themselves: “What are we doing to attract the rich resource of diverse employees?”

If your organization does not have an answer to that question,

In my work as a management consultant, I often hear managers complain about employees who get defensive the moment they are told that something was done incorrectly or that it could stand to be improved. The trouble with defensiveness is that it makes people stop listening; hence there can be no dialogue.

And we simply can’t solve problems without talking.

But starting a dialogue—or keeping it flowing—in the presence of defensiveness can turn it into a difficult conversation.

In corporate America, we often expect our new employees to hit the floor running. That somewhat overused phrase says a lot about the cultural values our organizations espouse—and why many newcomers fail to live up to our expectations.

While we must meet deadlines and productivity goals, we can’t do such things without human beings. And most human beings need a period of adjustment, a chance to familiarize themselves with the new surroundings before they’re able to become peak performer

With rising awareness of the size and staying power of the Latino population in the United States, organizations wishing to capture that segment have begun to move beyond marketing gimmicks that may bring Hispanic customers to their doors—but only once or twice at most.

Retailers and direct service providers, such as banks and insurance companies, are now seeing the wisdom of hiring Hispanics/Latinos to attract and retain this coveted customer base.

It is Beyond the Spanish L