 Hi and welcome to the lecture for chapter five, diversity. Over the next several slides, we'll have a meaningful discussion about what diversity is and how it functions inside the small group. Let's get going. So first off, let's go ahead and start with the definition. When we talk about diversity, what we're talking about is differences among group members, and this can range from personality to learning style to cultural background to even differences of opinion. As we progress to the next slide, our next few slides, our goal is to going to be looking at the way that these things function inside the group and try to gain some insights and ideas at how these can actually be utilized and seen as a net benefit to group interaction. So first, a couple of definitionary things. Homogeneity versus heterogeneity. When we talk about homogeneity, what we're talking about is groups composed of members who share a wide variety of member characteristics, right? So these are the groups that are very similar to one another. This can be contrasted with heterogeneous groups, which are groups composed of members who are very different in a variety of different dimensions. In the next slides, we're gonna get an idea as to what those dimensions are, but keep in mind just here at the outset that most of the research that we talk about in this class and in our book shows that groups that are more heterogeneous that have differences between them tend to be more successful, while, albeit, there can be more of a struggle during the earlier phases of group development. In the long run, the differences that the group members bring with them can ultimately act as a benefit to the group members. So a couple of things to consider on site at that. First, as we already discussed, the heterogeneous groups can be more effective, there's a strong link here between increased skills and effectiveness. But the second thing here is as we discuss these concepts in the next few chapters, understand that any discussion of diversity requires a little bit of generalization to gain insights and ideas as into how different dimensions of diversity function inside of the group. Now, know that not all members in any group are ultimately going to fit that mold, while we might say that individuals that are more active learning styles tend to function in a given way. It isn't going to be true that everyone that might fit inside that category. And in fact, the reality is that there is no perfect peg for a perfect hole anywhere out there. And in fact, we're all different and unique. And it's the benefits of those differences that we're trying to focus on here. All right, so one of the key differences that we can talk about in diversity inside groups are some of the key reasons as to why people join groups. And in this course, what we tend to do is divide a line between task oriented individuals and relationally oriented individuals. Your task oriented individuals are individuals that focus on having control of the achievement goals and believe that in general, that the group's main focus is accomplishing those goals that they set out, right? This is the individual that's like we're here in a group and we're here to get work done. This is contrasted with relationally oriented individuals. These are individuals that why my tertiary really care about the task focus of the group are more interested in the relationships and the connections made with other people inside of the groups. For groups to be effective, it's good to have a wide variety of both task oriented and relationally oriented individuals inside the group. The reason for this is that if a group is too task oriented, ultimately that is going to lead to relational breakdown and when conflict comes around, it's going to be really, really bad. Whereas relationally oriented individuals tend to have more insight as to how to deal with those things. On the flip side, if you had all relationally oriented individuals, chances are you might spend a lot of time hanging out and enjoying company, not a whole lot of time actually getting the tasks that the group has before them done. So a mix tends to be better in these two individuals. So the next thing that we can talk about as a dimension of diversity is a diversity of learning styles. There's a lot of different learning styles out there, but some of the key ones that we can talk about this are as follows. If someone was to be categorized in the concrete experience learning style, this is an individual that learns best by actively participating and doing things, right? This is the hand-on experience, not just explaining things, but follow along with the explanation, right? You're explaining something, I'm doing it, okay, now it makes sense. This can be contrasted to the reflective observation style that is going to participate to a certain extent, but is more interested in kind of hanging back, listening, thinking about that, and reflecting on that. Now, a lot of people get these ones confused, but this is different from the abstract conceptualization. The abstract conceptualization learning style speaks to individuals that tend to learn better in solitude, not as participatory in the group or even observing in a group, but tend to like to withdraw, study, and gain understanding on their own. Again, a little bit different inside of this is the final learning style, which is active experimentation. This is the individual that doesn't want the lecture, doesn't want to read the instructions, wants to dive right in, figure out what works and what doesn't work. Now, why you might find yourself drifting towards one of these categories more so, don't be worried because people tend to kind of move in and out of these learning styles to a certain reflective amount as they engage in the process of exploring new information. All right, the next thing that we can talk about in terms of dimensions of diversity is diversity of culture. We talk about cultural diversity. What we're interested in is how individuals believe, morals, values, background, and shared identification to a group ultimately changes the individual's perspective. As we talked about way back in the first one in the first lecture, the importance of groups in our lives is the primary group, our first primary group, our family group has a large and fundamental impact on who and what we are. Even more than this is the growing up in a given culture allows people different ways of communicating, different ways of thinking and different values. Having these differences with each other ultimately can allow us to bring new ideas and new perspectives on seeing things differently which can in the long run definitely benefit the group. Diversity of sex and gender is our next dimension of diversity we're discussing. But before we dive too deep in this, I think it's important to separate the difference between gender and sex. Because one of these things we're interested in and one of these things we're less interested in in this chapter. So when we talk about gender or somebody's gender, what we're talking about here are the learned characteristics of masculinity and femininity. What this means is that the types of attitudes and interactions that we engage upon which are social constructs in our society. Basically these are things that are learned through norms inside culture and have no biological reason that they exist in the way that they are. This is contrasted to sex which is the inherent biological characteristics of maleness and femaleness which people are born. And so this is something that is determined by chromosomes though, even then it's not always simple as we start to look at the nuance of this of people that are born, intersex in different levels inside of here. So even this might not be as black and white as we try to pretend it to be. But the thing here is that sex is not linked to communication style. There is nothing in the massive body of research that says men communicate one way and females communicate another way based on their biology. It is all based on learn characteristics of what it means to be masculine or what it means to be feminine inside of that. And so as we experience this and we engage in diversity of sex and gender in a group this can ultimately lead to different approaches in terms of engaging with one another, different reflections on how we communicate and so forth. But again, keep in mind focused on gender here and not on biological sex. All right, the next definition of diversity that we're interested in is generational diversity. Specifically how individuals from different generations tend to communicate different based on their lived experience. And so for the most part what we look at here is sets of different time periods ranging from 1901 all the way up to the 1990s at this point and different characteristics that we tend to associate with these different generational differences. So briefly the group of individuals born between 1901 and 1945 are commonly referred to as the builders generation. And these are individuals that were heavily influenced by the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl in the United States as well as World War I and World War II. So we saw a lot of differences inside of that. Periods of scarcity, dealing with that scarcity ultimately impacted the lived experience. This generation gave way to the boomers generation which took place for individuals born between 1946 and 1964. These are individuals that were heavily influenced by the growth of media, television and more specifically the social upheaval and cultural revolution that took place in the 1960s. The boomers gave way to the generation exers which were born between 65 and 76. This was influenced by governmental failures and corruption and general mistrust of the man. Finally this led to the most commonly named, most currently named generation which is the net generation. These are individuals that were born between 1997 and 1997 which includes probably a lot of individuals that are currently enrolled in college at this point. And this is a group of individuals that were heavily influenced by computers and technology, the digital revolution and having access to information fairly easily inside of this. We're still kind of waiting to see what the next generation takes place inside of that and what ultimately is going to be by suspect it will be an evolution of the net generation into something even more technologically savvy and connected. So now that we have some ideas about the differences and dimensions of diversity, let's talk a little bit about working with diversity and bridging those differences. One of the most important concepts that we can talk about this is remaining mindful in our communication strategies. You ultimately cannot address diversity in a meaningful way unless you do this. So mindful communication is a type of communication approach which ultimately just involves being open to multiple perspectives, being willing to see people's, seeing the world from others viewpoint and shifting perspective as necessary to be able to gain insight and understanding into the lived experience of others. Ultimately as you get better at practicing mindful communication, it becomes easier to see diversity as a net benefit as opposed to something that has to be addressed and dealt with inside group functioning. So a couple of principles I wanna leave you with as we wrap up this chapter's discussion on diversity. The biggest and most obvious one perhaps is value diversity. There tends to be a lot of approaches to diversity that see that there is diversity problems and issues. And I think a lot of that can be bridged by saying that diversity is something that is useful to group, that'll allow groups to be more complete, more adaptive to changing situations and ultimately will present better perspectives forever. That being said, don't try to mask diversity and mask differences inside the group as something that just has to be socialized and assimilated out. Acknowledge differences, discuss these differences, discuss how it presents you challenges but also be willing to discuss the way that differences might be beneficial to the group. Talk about how you could use those differences to be effective, to be successful and to ultimately embrace them. Try to develop a group culture and identity that is based on highlighting those differences. And ultimately continue to work to become collectively competent in the communication that allows you to bridge those differences and understand the perspective of the other. All right, that wraps our discussion for this chapter. Once again, thank you for watching. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at one of the variety of methods that is made available to you.