Cultural and demographic diversity at the workplace is some of the significant challenges that organizational leaders encounter. This diversity increases the issues that complicate the teaching of nursing students, understanding their needs and formulating new approached for managing the diversity. In the contemporary nursing profession, traditional students are rapidly being replaced by non-traditional students. A non-traditional student is defined as a one whose first language is a language besides English, from a racial minority or ethnic group, at least 25 years of age, male, and is enrolled part-time. This diversity presents imminent challenges such as language barriers, allocation of roles, and conflict resolution. An understanding of the VUCA environment is imperative for effective leadership and teaching of nurses (Moore, 2018). This environment describes the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The interplay of these factors describes the organizational culture and dictates how leaders approach and manage different situations.
The attitude was one of the challenges that arose in my clinical setting as a result of cultural and demographic diversity. There were factions that emerged among the students due to the different ethnic and social groups, with some groups holding others in contempt because they believed that they are superior. Another attitude was that some students are disregarding my instructions because they perceived that I was younger than them in age and could not, therefore, dictate instructions to them. It was difficult to address some contentious topics such as gender roles and equality in nursing based on cultural beliefs. Some cultures prohibit publicly mentioning of women or granting them equal opportunities as men. The nursing profession, however, is female dominated. Cultural diversity is in itself complex interplay of customs, morals, knowledge, and beliefs. Harmonizing the different customs and beliefs of the students into one professional perspective is one of the greatest challenges of nursing leaders.
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Effective leadership in a multi-cultural environment involves the ability to develop strategies and approaches that will transcend the complexity and uncertainty of the cultural and demographic diversity (Velmurugan, 2017). Creativity is imperative in maneuvering the VUCA environment. The nurse leader is expected to watch out for and pre-empt situations, behaviors, and words that may cause cultural animosity among the students. I employed several strategies to handle diversity in my clinical setting. One approach was grouping the students into categories that comprised all or the majority of the cultures and demographics. A group, for example, consisted of students from two racial minority groups, conservatives, liberals, males, females, teenagers, and young adults. This way, it would be difficult for the student to form splinter groups and alienate others because they had only one common trait – they were all nursing professionals. As a result, professional engagement was inculcated into all the students (Clark, 2018). This strategy was on the premise of creating unity in diversity among nursing students and other nursing professionals.
My clinical nursing setting has set measures in place to curb the vices and challenges associated with cultural and demographic diversity. These measures include setting stringent regulations on the need to embrace and respect colleagues and patients without discrimination or service delivery based on age, race, cultural beliefs, or sex. The nurse leaders at the organization set an example to be emulated by their subordinates. The leadership consists of individuals of different cultural backgrounds selected based on merit and professionalism. They relate and work together as a team, making decisions that are in the best interest of the organization. Having leadership that is comprised of individuals of diverse cultural backgrounds makes it easy to handle the VUCA principle of uncertainty (Young and Guo, 2016). The leaders can always share ideas on what to anticipate from the students and nursing staff, thereby pre-empting uncertainties. However, volatility is the most difficult principle to handle is the most difficult element to handle both for the organization and me. This is because different individuals have different inherent characteristics. Some people are difficult to control and will always negatively react to cultural aspects that they perceive hostile to them. Nevertheless, nursing leadership is always improving and finding ways of adapting to change.
References
Clark, C. (2018). 10 Tips to Boost Employee Engagement. American Nurse Today.
Moore, E. (2018). Learning the Ropes: New Nurse Managers Step Up to the Leadership Challenge. American Nurse Today.
Velmurugan, R. (2017). Nursing Issues in Leading and Managing Change. International Journal of Nursing Education , 9 (4).
Young, S., & Guo, K. L. (2016). Cultural diversity training: the necessity of cultural competence for health care providers and in nursing practice. The health care manager , 35 (2), 94-102.
