Everyone has worked on a team at some point in their career, and we all have memories, both positive and negative, of those experiences. While the details of the projects we work on might fade, the experiences we have and the relationships we form tend to linger. Who we work with on a team has a profound impact on our feelings about that team, and research over the past few decades has shown that team makeup impacts team performance and organizational outcomes as well. Diversity within a team can have positive direct and indirect impacts on idea generation, goal attainment, and problem resolution. The relationship between team diversity and performance is a complex one, so let us take a deeper dive into this topic.
Hundreds of peer-reviewed journal articles and trade publications have discussed the topic of diversity and team performance over the years, and one of the most disputed aspects of this research is how diversity itself is defined. Teams can be diverse in the demographic backgrounds of the members, the level of experience, geographic location, educational background, or even personality types. Going back to 1998, Harrison et al probably defined it best by separating diversity into “surface-level” characteristics (e.g. age, race, and gender) and “deep-level” characteristics (e.g. attitudes, beliefs, and skills) that team members come to learn about over time. Deep-level diversity generally has a stronger impact on team performance than surface-level diversity, but teams high in surface-level diversity tend to be high in deep-level diversity as well. This means that forming teams based on surface-level characteristics will usually lead to the desired outcome of high deep-level diversity.
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Team makeup is the first ingredient to a successful team, but that alone will not lead to success, and if no other action is taken, the results could be disastrous. For a team to be successful, the members need to know how to communicate with each other and understand how other people might have different experiences and beliefs from their own. Therefore, it is important for all team members to learn new communication skills and develop empathy. In some cases where teams operate across different countries, team members may need to go through training on cultural differences.
Leadership is also an important ingredient in successful diverse teams. When a team consists of people with different beliefs, experiences, and personalities, conflict is inevitable. Conflict helps us challenge the status quo and develop innovative solutions. But when left unchecked, conflict can lead to frustration, low engagement, or worse. Successful team leads know how to harness team conflict into positive outcomes and manage conflicts that are moving away from goal attainment and towards personal attacks.
When diverse teams are trained and managed properly, there is no limit to what they can achieve. But teams rife with conflict can be noisy and attract the attention of decision makers, which can draw the wrong kind of attention to diversity efforts. This is why it is important for leaders to take care when managing teams and consider what they are trying to achieve when establishing teams.
Diverse teams are much less likely to experience group think, which is the tendency for everyone on a team to navigate to and latch on to a single idea. This means diverse teams are capable of generating multiple ideas for innovation or problem solving. Again, leadership is critical here to make sure everyone is heard and that teams can objectively evaluate which ideas should move forward. Team members will be more engaged in the process if they feel they have had enough opportunity to present their ideas and understand that if their idea was not chosen, it was for a good reason.
Working to increase team diversity across all areas of a business helps the organization as a whole innovate and pivot in an ever-changing world. Organizations that are thoughtful in their selection, training, and leadership of diverse teams are rising to the top and showing the world how beneficial diversity can be.
Darrin Grelle is Principal Scientist with SHL and works with a team of psychometricians focused on developing fair, valid, and accessible cognitive ability and competency-based assessments.
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Darrin Grelle
Darrin Grelle is Principal Scientist with SHL and works with a team of psychometricians focused on developing fair, valid, and accessible cognitive ability and competency-based assessments.
