Where do you stand?

Welcome back and good day,

This blog will be about inclusivity in the context of culture and how it relates to, of course, leadership. According to this weeks lecture “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations; the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group”. We generalized and compiled a list of what we thought culture was and included but it turned out most of what we had was something of common knowledge. What we failed to recognize somewhat was the underlying categories of culture including, but not limited to, conception of beauty, eye behavior, facial expressions, and social interaction rate. All of these which can play a huge role in ones culture and can take offense to it done otherwise.

This concept of culture relates to me as well as the United States as a whole because we live in a society filled with mixed cultures, races, religions, and more. What I have yet to understand is to acceptingly take in other cultures and value their ways of life. In doing so, I will be able to expand my knowledge which can better serve others especially in the health care field. A few other interesting concepts we viewed were individualism and collectivism. These two terms indeed weigh in on ‘opposite’ sides of the spectrum in which one is based on self per-se’ and the other is involved with others more socially. These two ways is how our western society is structured essentially. A few key points include:

Individualism

- Stand out from the rest
- Develop own skills and opportunities
- “What’s in it for me?” or “That’s not my job”
- Control
- In charge of own fate
- Competitive
- Strive to be the best

Collectivism

- Interdependent
- Development of group
- Trust
- Collaborative
- What’s best for group?
- Familial

When looking at these concepts I can relate more so to the individualism only because I fit into more of the categories than the other. This is what I have been told is that if you want to get far in life you have to want to, you have to make good choices, want to exceed others in the competition and so forth. Keep in mind though, not one way is better than the other indeed.

As the world continues to grow with people from all cultures and races I have seen more and more multicultural leadership people shape different peoples lives such as our president, again, who broke the racial boundary of having all predominantly Caucasian presidents in the past. There needs to be a well balance of both individualistic and collective ideologies (something I am working on) engrained in our minds because with this, and only this, will the U.S. turn the ways of being ‘self-centered’ and provoke a new way of reaching the common goal to better everyone in the long run. So the question is, where do you stand and what will you do to change your ways?