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Cultural Diversity, Cultural Humility and Inclusion in Project Management

According to Barak (2016), cultural diversity denotes the existence of varieties of ethnic and cultural groups within an organization, society, organization, program and project among others. The term could also imply the act of having different cultures show respect and appreciation for the differences inherent in the other. On the other hand, cultural humility refers to the ability of a person to maintain a favourable interpersonal stance that is oriented towards understanding the culture of others so as to appreciate their cultural identify. Inclusion means enhancing the cultural diversity of a project. This is achieved by ensuring that the project teams have an acceptable representation of diverse gender, age groups, skills set and other diverging cultural factors such as religious beliefs. It is upon this understanding that this post shares my thoughts on how the project am undertaking is sensitive to cultural diversity or humility.

Evidence-based best practices by Foronda et al. (2018) have justified the significance of cultural competence and cultural sensitivity in organizations. Its significance is fostered by the rise of global organizations which has made organizations multicultural. Additionally, these organizations have to deal with multicultural consumers in the global market. This creates a need for cultural diversity especially when selecting employees and project teams. Project managers should also ensure that they train the employees on cultural competence and humility so that they nurture tolerance towards customers and colleagues with different cultural beliefs. This argument justifies the necessity of cultural humility in the modern organizations. This is mostly the case in the nursing industry whose main focus is on delivering high quality medical services regardless of the cultural standing of the client.

The simulation by Foronda et al. (2018) endorses the need for cultural humility not only in the nursing sector, but also in policy, research and education. The journal adds that having a multicultural team of employees is one way of promoting confidence, trust and comfort which enables the employees and the project teams to register better performance. Additionally, as much communication between project teams and employees from different cultures could be problematic due to language barrier, once this barrier is broken, then all the stakeholders will benefit from the inclusivity of the organization. Basically, diverse workplaces have more talent and are more creative in handling problems. This, therefore, justifies why organizations with inclusive cultural policies perform better than those with discriminative policies and culture. These findings justify why cultural diversity and cultural humility have evolved to become a priority among accrediting bodies and professional organizations.

A reflection at my nursing project at hand shows that it is extremely sensitive to cultural humility and cultural diversity. First of all, the target population for the project is composed of people from diverse cultures. This makes it impossible for monocultured project teams to effectively serve these customers. This creates a need for cultural diversity and inclusion in the project teams. This will ease serving the target population since the team members can help each other translate the different languages used by the customers. Knowles (2018) asserts that such a strategy has been successful at Mayo Clinic which is one of the most culturally inclusive and diverse healthcare facilities in the USA.

In conclusion, the case of Mayo Clinic highlights the benefits of cultural diversity, cultural humility and inclusion in healthcare organizations. This statement is seconded by the evidence-based best practices which justifies that cultural diversity was essential in delivering quality services to customers in the healthcare industry. As a result, the project at hand has to foster diversity if it wants to consistently deliver high quality services to the target population.