Communications climate and culture from a managerial perspective

Individual Communications:

People tend to assume that individuals from different color, age, religion, political views, gender, and race are difficult to communicate with. As a result of these assumptions, they start erecting barriers to effective communications as they experience difficulties in transmission of messages. For effective communications to occur there is need for tolerance that creates respect and acceptance of the diversity and act as the best solutions to most of the difficulties. Actually, some of the reasons associated with difficulties in communications are attributed to diversity in various aspects like race, color, religion, age, gender, and political views. Consequently, there is need for diversity awareness in order to enhance the occurrence of effective communication.

Diversity Awareness in Communications:

Diversity plays a critical role in an organization since it has a significant impact on the organization's ability to innovate and enhance its competitive advantage in the rapidly changing global marketplace. In addition to trust, support, and respect, effective communication is critical for innovation to thrive. Therefore, awareness of diversity in communications is significant to promote effective communication that contributes to innovation. Innovation and creativity thrives in an organization when employees from various races, cultures, and ages openly exchange information from their diverse perspectives. In cases where there is no understanding and appreciation for such diversity within an organization, the differences become the major sources of conflicts. When more efforts are taken to resolve these conflicts, there is greater hindrance to the organization's profitability and productivity.

It's important to note that an appreciation and understanding of diversity in an organization doesn't develop by merely placing different groups together. This is evident from the fact that some organizations tend to promote innovation by pressurizing workers to adopt an arbitrary organizational norm. Appreciating and understanding diversity in an organization requires workers to first recognize their assumptions and beliefs before accepting the changing negative resistance and attitudes into collaboration. The enhanced awareness of diversity encourages responsibility and initiative towards respectful and effective communications.

Demographic Makeup and Level of Diversity Awareness in the Organization:

The demographic makeup of the organization is made up of employees from different racial groups both the minorities and majorities. The organization also consists of men and women from different ethnic groups, age, religions, cultures and political views. The reason for the diversity of the organization's employees emanates from its mission to remain competitive in the community it operates in and to attain a huge market share through manufacturing products that are relevant to the community.

Based on the organization's climate, there is a high level of diversity awareness that is evident in the organization's workforce. First, the organization's management has ensured that minority groups feel part of and are incorporated in the decision-making processes by genuinely valuing their views and ideas (Warner, n.d.). Secondly, the divergent beliefs, actions, reactions, and stated views are totally understood and accepted and tolerated as part of the normal human behavior. Third, goodwill, sincerity, and warmth are extended to every individual in the workforce without the use of stereotypes to ensure that they feel high levels of mutual empathy. Finally, the entire organization and individuals persist in their efforts to acknowledge diversity and cultural awareness. Rather than insist on similarity, the organization is committed to enhancing overall knowledge and seek to benefit from the long-term people's differences.

Diversity in an organization basically refers to the various differences between people and involves how people perceive themselves and others. Diversity and lack of diversity within the organization influences the interactions and communication between workers because of the perceptions it creates. Diversity has a positive impact on organizational communication since it promotes effective transfer and understanding of information. On the other hand, lack of diversity usually contributes to language, perceptual, and cultural barriers since it leads to prejudgment and stereotyping. The prejudices emanate from disabilities and differences in age, sexual preference, ethnicity, gender, religion, and political views. The prejudices result in lack of teamwork, confusion, and low morale, which in turn leads to ineffective communication.

Climate of Ethical Communication:

Ethical climates of communication are best understood as part of the organization's culture since firms consist of people from diverse backgrounds. Every organization experiences a series of ethical challenges making ethical issues to be part of the organization's culture. An organization's manager plays a vital role in establishing a climate of ethical communication by creating organizational culture. Managers create such a climate by demonstrating and demanding highly ethical behavior within the workforce (Kokemuller, n.d.).