Reminiscing over my career journey, I first began as a retail cashier which several years later led to an assistant manager position within the retail field. Then I shifted gears to manufacturing where I started as a molding press operator, progressed to supervisor in the quality department, then the quality manager and eventually to a design drafter position within the engineering department. My present career field started as a part-time imaging assistant clerk, three months later I transferred to a full time position as a front office staff member in a family medicine practice, two years afterwards I accepted the front office supervisor position, three years following I was promoted to senior practice manager position which I currently hold four years succeeding my promotion. Through this self reflecting I have thought about this lesson and how each company or organization applied leadership and diversity. Acknowledging they are distinct fields, each having their own type of potential barriers preventing diversity in their leadership. Recognizing some of my career journey spans back many, many years, I wanted to focus on my term in manufacturing as there is great opportunity to apply lessons learned in this recent study.
Seventeen years in manufacturing lends great opportunity to apply the lessons in regards to leadership and diversity. The company I was employed started as a locally family run business in York, PA. The reason for noting the community is this area has struggled with cultural diversity, although it is located in a northern state and played a role in the civil war and underground slavery movement it still has learning opportunities when it comes to diversity. So the culture of the community itself places a cultural diversity barrier on employers in the region.
Manufacturing is known as a male dominant industry there are organizational barriers found placing women at a disadvantage in being advanced to high level leadership positions. (Note: during my term at this company we only had two females in leadership positions.) At this particular company it was very visible within the high technical labor level positions such as design engineers and tool and die makers were controlled by male employees. By placing the male in these positions it created the organizational barrier for “preference for gender similarity in promotion decisions” as it strategically placed the male employee in line for higher level promotions over females. (Pennsylvania State University, World Campus, 2012) Because of this organizational barrier the environment created the interpersonal barriers where women felt because they were not of the male gender they were not masculine enough to be good manager or leaders, as known as “gender prejudice.” (Pennsylvania State University, World Campus, 2012) Having obvious gender prejudice this produced personal barriers for women such as the inability to play the political game as her male counterpart which is significant in this field to be successful in being promoted to a leadership role, also known as, “lack of political savvy.” (Pennsylvania State University, World Campus, 2012)
The lesson has allowed me to reflect back on my career journey and observe the various applications of leadership and diversity with a company or organization. A key take away for me, is no matter how much we want to be believe as a society and country we have created an accepting culture of total equality for all no matter gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, we have not, there is still a lot to be done. Unfortunately, we continue to wear our rose colored glasses when it comes to true equality for all.
Reference
Pennsylvania State University, World Campus (2012). PSYCH 485 Lesson 13: Leadership and Diversity. Retrieved on November 30, 2012, from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa12/psych485/002/content/13_lesson.html.