Let’s be Lefties for a Day Essay

During the â€Å"Let’s be lefties† experiment, I found it very difficult to complete my everyday morning tasks without using my right hand. Some of the things I did that day were laundry, dishes, (which took double the time) and writing with my left hand as well. According to the Huffington post, left handed people make up about only ten percent of the population, but researchers have found that in populations with certain mental disorders, rates increases. According to a recent study published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, lefties make about 10 to 12 percent less annually than righties. The paper, written by Joshua Goodman, an economist at Harvard’s Kennedy School, is the first study to document the income gap between right-handed and left-handed people. It may have something to do with how left-handedness correlates with other attributes. Goodman found that left-handed people have more emotional and behavioral problems, have more learning disabilitie s such as dyslexia, complete less schooling, and work in occupations requiring less cognitive skill. In his research, Goodman analyzed five data sets from the U.S. and the U.K. that all look at how being left handed affects cognitive skill and income over a set amount of time. Goodman found that about 11 to 13 percent of the population is left-handed, a finding that prior research supports. Now that we’ve discussed the experiment along with some theories and facts about being left handed, we will now look at the importance of understanding cultural, ethnic, and gender differences by managers and professionals in a business setting. Diversity basically refers to the ways people differ from one another. People differ from each other in many ways such as culturally, ethnically and by gender. It can be difficult at times working as a team  with individuals from different backgrounds. Managers must understand the advantages and disadvantages brought on by different cultures. Cultural and ethnic differences are a fact of life in the workplace. People tend to stereotype individuals from other cultures or races. This can be challenging but must improve. To be effective and provide a better working environment, managers and employees need to recognize, respect, and capitalize on their differences. This will and can reduce stress and make a better workplace. Women in the workplace are still at a disadvantage. Women are regarded as inferior to men at the workplace in relation to job level and salary. In order to understand diversity in a professional workplace, it requires organization to develop policies and procedures that employees need to follow. According to the Health and Humans Services organization, cultural and linguistic competence are a set of behaviors, attitudes, and policies that enables effective work in cross-cultural situations and conveys information that is easily understood by diverse audiences. According to Huffington post, there is still a lot of work to be done with educating people in the acceptance of the diverse cultures and ethnic groups. In conclusion, we can offer videos, literature, activity and role playing as ways to educate individuals to better adjust to the diverse cultures that are around us. Acceptance and respect are the biggest issues. As a manager, we must first accept and acknowledge the culture and learn to grow.