This week’s sheet asks a range of questions to help you begin to understand exactly how diverse you are and to show how much diversity impacts your daily life – at work, at home, and in the community.
Like snowflakes, there is probably no one that has the same combination of experiences that you have. That’s what makes you so unique and helps you bring a different perspective to your relationships with others.
Many people have a basic understanding of diversity but don’t realize that simply by knowing a different language, having travelled to different countries, or knowing people who follow religions different to their own helps to increase how diverse they are.
The aim of the quiz is to encourage you to think about these factors and understand more about your own diversity and possibly about the diversity of others. This 20 question list is not all inclusive – it is really only a start. At the end, think of other questions you could ask to explore your personal diversity.
"Did you Know?"
How Diverse Are You?
How Diverse Are You?
[my answers in these kinds of brackets]
1. What country do you live in? Have you ever lived in a different part of the country (more than 100 miles from where you live now) or another country? [7 different states]
2. Have you travelled to other counties? How many? [5 different countries]
3. Can you speak 2 or more languages? If so, how many?
4. Do you have friends or family from a different ethnic background? [y]
5. Do you have family or friends of different races? [y]
6. Do you have friends with a 15 or more year age difference? [y]
7. Do you have friends or family with a disability?
8. Do you have friends or family with religious beliefs that are different to your own? [y]
9. Do you have friends or family with a different sexual orientation than yourself? [y unfortunately]
10. What is your mix of male and female friends? Married and single friends?
11. Are you married or single? [y]
12. Do you have children? If so, how many and what ages. [2 that I remember]
13. Do you have friends or family with caring responsibilities (for children, elderly, or someone with a disability)?
14. Do you have siblings (brothers or sisters/older or younger) Where are you in the birth order? [eldest]
15. Are you left handed, right handed, or ambidextrous? [y]
16. What kind of schools did you attend – public, private, home school? [y]
17. How do you learn best – seeing, hearing, touching/doing? [I thought it was a felony to learn by touching -- all that is legal is looking -- and some spouses get upset at that]
18. Have you worked at a company for more than ten years? If so, for how many companies (and years). [9 companies, longest employer 9 yrs, longest palce of employment 12 yrs]
19. Have you worked in other departments or divisions at your current company? [does that count having your department going away?]
20. Do you work better/are you more productive in the morning, afternoon, or evening?
Note: Our definition of diversity at work (taken from the training class Valuing Differences) is far ranging and includes many elements in three broad categories. Many of the questions above reflect elements in these categories.
Human Diversity (Who or how we are): There are aspects of ourselves that, for the most part, we cannot change. And many (but not all) of these aspects are physically visible to people when they meet us.
Age
Differently-Abled
Ethnicity
Gender
Physical qualities
Race
Sexual Orientation
Cultural Diversity (How we think): This dimension contains aspects of ourselves that we have some power to change. We also have the choice of whether to disclose this information or not or whether to conceal it or not.
Education
Geographic location
Income
Language
Learning Style
Marital status
Parental status
Religious beliefs
Work Style
Systems Diversity (How we organize to do work): These aspects relate to the work environment. The organizational structure and its management systems characterize this dimension.
Business alliances
Corporate acquisitions
Innovation
Quality
Teamwork
Function
The human and cultural areas contain most elements we commonly associate with the word diversity. But, as you can see, the concept of diversity is more complex and more far-reaching.
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