Reader Question: Could you talk about the impact of diversity on teams? I’m on a team that has some merging cultures and am experiencing some challenges.
Our response: As our workplaces become more and more diverse, managers have started to appreciate, more deeply, the value and the need for diversity on a work team. Few would argue the fact that diversity of any fashion typically yields diversity of thought which should be considered invaluable in teambuilding. In addition, although recognizing the benefit, few would argue that diversity of thought often puts additional strain on teams and their managers. Therefore, so much emphasis has been placed around managing diversity and the importance of being able to leverage the strength that diversity brings to a team atmosphere. Diversity can easily be one of the greatest strengths or greatest weaknesses of a team based on the team management’s ability to leverage the benefits of diversity.
In my experience with facilitating the 2+2=5 program at this particular elementary school, it appeared that a vast majority of the student population was homogenous from a diversity perspective at some of the schools at which our staff was instructing. I expected the children to struggle with the activity because most of the students did not have exposure to a wide degree of diversity.
The activity, called ‘Labeling’ involved addressing how we use labels to identify and classify each other and how people tend to put people in groups or classifications based on one or two outward characteristics. As I briefed the class on the importance of diversity for teams, my co-facilitator placed a label on the back of each student. These labels each had a shape on it with various patterns or colors. Some people had stickers with circles, squares, or triangles and with various colors. Then the students were instructed to put themselves into a team, without talking.
The students in the class began the activity by scrambling to look at all of the other students’ labels. The students used gestures to communicate what shape the student had on their back. Some students pointed to different colored objects to communicate the color of the shape. While other students, noticeably leaders, were actually dragging some students into groups that had similar shapes. Some of the children were using color as an identifying characteristic, while others were using the shape as the identifying characteristic as to how they were separating into teams based on the stickers. For more on the labelling activity and how to facilitate it, consider purchasing a copy of What a CEO Can Learn From a 4th Grader.
When teams are made up of generally homogeneous team members, growing up in the same schools, with the same cultural background, the same family life, the same values and the same social construct, teams are generally less productive, less effective, and less successful. Diversity on a team helps with team brainstorming and problem solving. When people look at a problem differently, the range of solutions tends to expand, allowing a team to find the best, most effective solution to a problem. When one team member offers a solution that falls within our expected solution set, we fail to challenge the team to find solutions outside of our expectation set. In more simple terms, we fail to think outside the box and team diversity can be a big part of the solution!
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweettradephotography/286423882/
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