Question

How can mangers actually use stereotype threat to create more diversity-friendly work environments? How would you do it in your organization?

Answer 1

Stereotype also known as a prejudiced thought for a perticular caste, creed, race or religion etc. It can be positive or negative.Now comes the question of stereotype threat.

Stereotype threat refers to a situation where a person, who belongs to a negative stereotype group, is under the threat of judging wrongly. For example, women are always stereotyped as having bad math skills. So while a woman will be performing any calculation that stereotype threat will always be in her mind and will adversly effect her performance.

Today this field of research has got so much attention and the studies done in this field has shown that stereotype threat has many negative impacts. Especially in the organization or workplace it affects the physical environment, performance of the employee under threat and interpersonal relations etc and much more.

Our society is filled with many negative stereotypes which adversly effect all the areas we belong. But at workplace it can be used to create diversity-friendly environment. Manager can get rid of the negative impact of stereotype threat which undermines the performance of the employee and also contaminates environment of the workplace.It can be done as follows:-

• If a succesfull task stratagy is provided to the effected person then the sterotype impact can be reduced.It has been seen that this threat only have great negative impact on very difficult tasks where pressure is too much.It has been seen that the person who belongs to negetive stereotype group works hard to prove that stereotype wrong.It can be seen in the example, as in our society women are seen as weak but to prove it wrong by hard work again and again in every field be it sports, rock clibing, wrestling etc.
• Effected employees can be taught behavioral tectics and given the knowledge of how to cope up with the situations.If they will have effected strategies they will effectively come over the threat and complete the task effectively
• Relevence of stereotype should be reduced while giving any assignment. eg. if in a task when their will not be any information abou gender difference then their will not be any threat.
• Task difficulty should not be shown on the basis of sterotypes. eg. If their is any calculative or any accounting task theri should not be the introduction of the task on the basis of man and woman but other examples should be given.
• Competition context should not be on the basis of stereotype. In many studies done when context are not on the basis of stereotype then performances of participants improve drastically.
• Stereotypes should be addresed explicitly. these should be addresed directly instead of indirect.Manager should talk about it openly.
• Employees should be given knowledge regarding this and workshops should be done on it.

In my organization I will try to follow all the above mentioned implications so that my organization can imply diversity friendly atmosphere.

Stereotypes are deeply embedded in ou culture. Until our society does not change the perception about it is not going to change. A good manager is who can use those threats to encourage the performance of the employee and reduce its negative impact on the workplace.