Kaiser Permanente puts a high priority on appreciating diversity and fostering a sense of inclusiveness among employees and patients. Imagine you're a department manager in a Kaiser medical center, where you're expected to support a climate of inclusion and support for employees of every cultural background. How would you address these challenges?

1. Joo Mi Kang, a recent immigrant from South Korea, is a gifted computer programmer who continues to impress with her technical skills. However, several other employees have mentioned to you in private that they are having trouble communicating with her. This surprises you, as you've never had any trouble communicating with her, and you know she is proficient at English. How should you respond?

a. Send her an email reminding her of the need to communicate with colleagues; attach a copy of her job description.

b. Give the situation time to resolve itself. Employees often need time to adjust when someone new joins the group.

c. Ask Kang to describe the difficulties she is having with other employees and ask her why she thinks she is having trouble communicating.

d. Ask the employees who have complained to describe the specific difficulties they are having. Evaluate their responses to see if there is something other than language getting in the way, such as an unwillingness among some employees to accept and accommodate a new team member.

2. Your employees are breaking into ethnically based cliques. Members of ethnic groups eat together, socialize together, and often chat in their native languages while they work. You appreciate how these groups give their members a sense of community, but you worry that these informal communication channels are alienating nonmembers and fragmenting the flow of information. How do you encourage a stronger sense of community and teamwork across your department?

a. Ban the use of languages other than English at work.

b. Do nothing. This is normal behavior, and any attempt to disrupt it will only generate resentment.

c. Structure work assignments and other activities (such as volunteer projects) in ways that bring people from the various cultural groups into regular contact with one another and make them more dependent on one another as well.

d. Send all your employees to diversity training classes.

3. Mihai Ciceu joined your department after relocating from Romania last year. He is a brilliant pricing and underwriting analyst, but he resists working with other employees, even in team settings where collaboration is expected. Given the importance that you place on teamwork, how should you handle the situation?

a. Stay out of the way and let the situation resolve itself. Ciceu has to learn how to get along with the other team members.

b. Tell the rest of the team to work harder at getting along with Ciceu.

c. Tell Ciceu he must work with others or he will not progress in the company.

d. Talk privately with Ciceu and help him understand the importance of working together as a team. During the conversation, try to uncover why he doesn't participate more in team efforts.

4. You've been surprised at the confusion that some of your memos and other written messages have generated lately. You suspect your casual and often humorous writing style might be the culprit and decide to "test drive" a different writing style. You've drafted four versions of a blog post that explains a new policy aimed at keeping projects on schedule as they near completion. Which of these do you choose and why?

a. "As each new project nears completion, I recognize how hard you all try to keep projects on schedule, even with the last-minute problems that are always part of complicated projects. To lighten your workload during the hectic final phase, you'll no longer be expected to attend routine department meetings or tend to other nonessential tasks during the final weeks of each project."

b. "As each new project races toward the finish line, I appreciate that all of you work like dogs to keep projects on schedule, even with the inevitable glitches and gremlins that always seem to attack projects at the last minute. Good news: During the last four weeks of every project, you'll be excused from nonessential tasks such as routine department meetings so that you can focus on your programming work (admit itI know you hate coming to these meetings anyway!)."

c. "As usual, the solution to all of life's problems can be found on television! While watching the Raiders-Chiefs game yesterday, I realized that we need to have our own version of the two-minute drill. To help avoid schedule slippage during the crazy final few weeks of each project, team members will be excused from routine meetings and other nonessential tasks not directly related to their project responsibilities."

d. "As you should all be aware, numerous entities both internal and external to the corporation rely on us for timely project completion. While the inherent nature of complex projects presents unexpected difficulties during the final stages of a project, it is incumbent upon us to employ every tactic possible to avoid significant completion delays. Henceforth, team members will be excused from nonessential tasks during the final four weeks of every development project."