Have you ever thought about when you come together as a team, what often helps us to determine how we are going to be on a team? It seems as though as team members, that we often try to find characteristics that are similar to determine who we are going to be on a team with, or who we are going to be friends with. We allow our outward appearances determine our circles of interest.
During the labeling activity students are asked to get in groups. The thing is though, stickers with different shapes, colors etc were put on each of their back right beforehand. None of the participants were asked to use the stickers to get into groups, but automatically they used the stickers as a group determinant.
So if stickers are used to differentiate people, what inherent outwards characteristics do we use as teams to come together? The students were then asked why they put themselves into teams using the stickers. They deep down inside though that is the way it was supposed to be. Essentially, we often rely on the fact that people look like us or that we have very similar likes and dislikes to determine teams, but in the corporate work place, we are often challenged to work with various people, no matter if we selected them to be on our teams or not.
Allowing students in college and years before that to select the teams they want to be on, does not allow students to be flexible to the diversity of the workplace. Corporate teams are often lost in how to work with different people. That is why diversity trainings and 2+2=5 really does work. People need to be trained to allow their team to flourish rather than be discouraged and torn apart by diversity.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/clevercupcakes/2981399236/
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