Our non-verbal communication or body language can be another obstacle to a diverse, high-performance work environment. Our actions do in fact speak louder than our words. When people know us as individuals, our gestures, eye contact, and odd movements are usually understood and, therefore, are not interpreted as threatening or negative. However, someone from another race, gender, culture, age, or economic background might easily misinterpret them. Although our world is becoming smaller, there isn’t a common language, culture, or set of mannerisms. No gestures are universal. Worse yet, sometimes our tongues say one thing, our gestures say another thing, and our symbols (clothing, jewelry, hairstyles, facial hair, body ...
Get The Manager's Pocket Guide to Diversity Management now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
