Diversity: Two Sides of a Coin

Having diversity of opinion is something that's normal between a group of people, a team, coworkers, and several others, to mention but a few, and this comes up due to our different upbringings, experiences, and the ways we see and deal with things. The beauty of it all is to come to a consensus as a team on what best gets the job done at the end of the day, and to buttress on this, I'll love to share my experience of the different diversity of opinions I've had, which went both ways.

I remember I once wrote about how I worked as a supervisor at a factory in Kano State, Nigeria, and today I'll be taking about an incident that happens there that correlates with the subject matter of this week's prompt topic, so not long after I was given that position as the supervisor of a particular shift and to as well make sure they work effectively to generate more production after the day job.   I remember approaching the team members under me and stating some of the ways I'd love things to be done because I felt doing those would bring about changes and help us achieve more than they've been doing in the past. To me personally, the idea sounds great, and I had the belief within me that it'd work out well, but after concluding my speech, many of my team members downplayed the idea and said it wouldn't work. I was kind of annoyed by the way they said it and was trying to explain to help them understand my perspective better, but they seemed adamant about their beliefs.   While that was still going on, two of them told me such methods had been tried before by the former supervisor, and they failed woefully. While they still spoke, I heard others murmure that there was no point in arguing with me, that if I insisted that's what I wanted, then they should all agree and do it, and since if it backfired, I'd be the one who'd most likely shoulder the blame. With that in mind, I let down my guide and decided to follow their own suggestion.   And at the end of the day, it all worked out perfectly. In fact, I can bet that one of the core reasons it worked out well and fine was because it seems the former supervisor had never for once listened to their opinion but always let his opinion supersede all others, so my listening to them and following their suggested opinion made them feel safe with me, which made them put in more effort towards work and produce bountiful productions.

The other scenario of such diversity of opinion I'll be sharing would be at my current place of work, where I worked as a class teacher. I remember there was a time after the students concluded their examination that it was time for us to mark and script, award marks, and decide who'd be promoted to the next class and who would have to repeat the same class due to failure.   While the world has evolved and we've got modern programs and applications that have made calculations and differentiation much easier, as the app will calculate all the scores you've entered, do the average by itself, and also indicate which students got the required score to be promoted and who didn't, rather than using that which we've got in our possession, our superior insisted that we should do the calculation and result computation the manual way.

This raised eyeballs, and many of us weren't cool with the decision. We tried to speak our minds, but when the superior insisted, everyone had no choice but to do what the superior wanted. At the end of the day, there were loads of downsides to the manual method they asked us to use. First, it took a lot of time, and most teachers weren't able to conclude by the deadline date we were given.   Secondly, most of us made some mistakes either on the calculation or on average, and the like, which in the end made some students who ought to be promoted fail and have to repeat. Yes, I know we are teachers and ought to do better and be perfect, but then each teacher had to make over 800 scripts, record, calculate, do the average, and still manually write out the results all within just a week. To me, this is too much, and mistakes are inevitable inasmuch as you're rushing to meet the deadline.   At the end of the day, when everyone has submitted and parents start coming for their results, some of this mistake became glaring when some parents were surprised their wards repeated and had to study the results to know why. While studying, they discovered those mistakes and called the attention of the school to them. When the number of parents calling in for the same issues was getting out of hand,the superior had to stop issuing the results and call us back to the modern application we had.   This was a painful pill to swallow, as we were angry for the wasted effort, stress, and time, but we had no choice but to still do it by inputting the scores into the computer and letting the computer do the calculation and distribution of positions and others. Some teachers, out of anger, didn't even show up, and the superior had to hire someone else to help those people do it because none of us who did ours was willing to do it for someone else.   I believe the superior learned their lessons and won't be doing such again in the near future, and if they do, then I guess they'll face the consequences alone this time around because I first won't do manual and still come back to do computations.

_{Thumbnail and other photo werr designed and got on canva}

That's about all of my experience with diversity of opinion. I hope you enjoyed the read. Thanks for your time. Have a wonderful day ahead.