101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees: A Manager’s Guide to Addressing Performance, Conduct, and Discipline Challenges

CHAPTER 3Cultural and Religious Differences

Today’s workforce is the most diverse in history. We work at a time when many of us take for granted the fact that men and women of various ages, ethnicities, and religious beliefs work side by side every day, and for good reason: As a society, we’ve become a lot less judgmental and open to other people’s differences. On a more practical basis, we’ve learned that diversity in the workplace is a profitable business practice.

This positive trend has been due to the gradual expansion of our tolerance and acceptance levels—not to close a blind eye to others’ differences or to pretend that they don’t exist. Instead, as a working society, we’ve come much closer to living by the mantra “Each to his own without ...