Leading Diverse Teams
Recently I was given an opportuntiy to speak at an event called Idea Day. This is a national leadership conference sponsored by my local church. I was asked to speak on the topic of Leading Diverse Teams. Below is the presentation I gave that day.
Intro
Diversity can be the greatest strength or greatest weakness of your team. It’s up to you on which outcome happens.
I grew up in a small town in Lakeland, FL, born to Christian parents who belonged to a local independent Baptist church. I was at church every time the doors were opened. I was enrolled in a local Christian school in kindergarten and first grade, shortly after my parents started to homeschool my sister and I. My church started an umbrella school that helped us with fine arts and sports. This and my youth were the main arenas for my social setting growing up. When I graduated from high school I went to Bible college in a little town outside of Knoxville called Powell, TN. This is where I got my college education, it is where I met my wife, and it is where the new step of my life would be setup to happen. During my Senior year of college I decided to apply part-time for a job at Apple and become a salesperson from them. After I graduated I planned on pursuing an internship in a local church out in Phoenix, Arizona, all the while continuing to get income from working full-time at Apple. I learned a lot at this stage in life, but this was definitely not the highlight of my career days for sure. I was lazy, apathetic, and very selfish. The work at the church was going well, but not great, they truly needed something that I was not; it was literally a round peg in a square hole situation. Meanwhile at my job, things were going well. I had transitioned into a role that let me spend time one on one with people mentoring them, providing feedback on performance, training key initiatives, and giving a lot of group presentations. Eventually I got a chance to lead a small team of 6 people who were in charge of the training of customers who came into our store. This team would go on to be #1 in customer satisfaction in the entire world not for just one quarter but two back to back quarters under my leadership. The success I saw leading that small team eventually led me to interview for a manager position here in Las Vegas. I got the job and started at the Fashion Show mall on August 12, 2013. That brings us to present day.
I spend amount of time all to tell you this one point, everything about my life has been not set up to succeed in this area but yet I’ve been able to have great success.
Leading
“Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could.” — Steve Jobs
So you find yourself surrounded by a team of people by which you have nothing in common and somebody says, “go lead them.” Now what do you do? For one reason or another you were given the role of leadership. Despite your opposition or dislike of the position it is yours. So then the question no longer is if you are going to lead but how you are going to lead because as we’ve already established its on your shoulders.
One of the hardest things for any leader to do is to lead the team they are in charge of through some kind of change. Luckily for us, there has been work done by an organization called Kotter International.
John Kotter has a wonderful model for making strategic change in any organization. It’s called The 8-Step Process for Leading Change.
With God’s help and by following this model, I have been able to lead my team through many instances of change in the workplace. I hope these tools have been as big of a help to you as they have been to me.
Diversity from a Biblical Perspective
The Origin
“Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.” — Genesis 11:7–9
Up until this point mankind was of one race and creed, as a side note, they were not caucasian westerners.
The Body of Christ
“For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith;” — Romans 12:4–6
The example of the Body of Christ is one that we can practically walk through as it relates to diversity. Imagine this, if you are a nose and you walk into a room filled with ears one thing is bound to happen. You walk up to the group of ears and all they are saying is man it sounds so good in here. You in turn say to the group of noses, “hey I don’t know about the sound of the room but it sure stinks in here.” They all with a look of shock and amazement say oh really? We had no clue.
From this example we can learn a lot of things, but one of them is this. Often what irritates you the most is the reason that you have been placed where you are.
The body of Christ is diverse for a very specific reason, for the furtherance of the Gospel. The diversity that makes up the body of Christ is essential to its survival and progress around the world. If we were to try and stifle the diversity of the body of Christ we would be going against God’s design and not letting the body function up to its full potential.
Building Effective Teams
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” — Michael Jordan
Your team should be a reflection of the customers you serve. If you operate a business in New Orleans and your entire staff is 40 year old white men you might have a diversity problem.
The team I lead today consists of the following elements…
Age — I have team members that are as young as 17 and as old as their late 60s
Religion — There are Christians, Muslims, Mormons, Jews, Agnostics, and Atheists to many of a few of the religions represented
Ethnicity — People range in origin from America to Mexico, Philippines, China, Japan, Australia, United Kingdom, Russia, Israel, and Africa
Sexual Orientation — People who I lead are straight, gay, bi-sexual, transsexual, and gender neutral.
It never ceases to amaze me the random people the come into my store. Sometimes for a moment you look at a person and say to yourself, “how in the world am I going to be able talk on this persons level?” or “Based on their body language, I have no clue how I am going to be able am calm them down.” But the most amazing thing often happens next, a team member steps up to the plate, who I never would have thought, and relates to them as though they are long lost buddies and are practically hugging each other on the way. This is where having a diverse team is at its strongest; it exists to meet a specific need from a random assortment of people.
The following model for The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team is a study done by Patrick Lencioni.
I don’t have time today to talk about all of the dysfunctions but I do want to get us off the ground with at least the firs two concepts and this is the absence of trust and fear of conflict. I want to talk about two specific tools for each that will help your organization solve these dysfunctions.
Absence of trust
The number one inhibitor of any effective team is a lack of trust.
Trust is gained through effective communication. Effective communication takes place when two people can agree on the language that is being used.
Lominger Competencies are a tool used by many of the Fortune 500 companies. It is a tool that helps align the language and behaviors of employees and bosses alike. A boss might give an employee an assignment and a due date. The due date passes and the might just assume that the employee is lazy and does not want to complete the assignment. In reality the boss might not know that the employee has been given 10 other things to do by his other superiors and was just afraid of saying no to that one boss. This is where the Lominger tool can come into help. Quantifying this behavior into something like an unskilled use of Time Management helps to bring an objective look to the situation. There are 67 competencies that can be used to quantify distinct attributes about a person. By aligning on the language spoken communication can happen and thus trust can be gained.
Fear of Conflict
The best tool that has ever helped me in the face of conflict is fearless feedback and the feedback grid
There are four types of feedback. A visual way to tell them apart from one another is assigning them to a grid. If you do a quick google search for feedback grid, you can find many examples of this explained. I have found this one that will hopefully help our discussion.
The four types of feedback are positive general, negative general, positive specific, and negative specific. The two types we are most familiar with are negative general and positive general.
Positive general: good job, you’re great, you are so amazing, I love you
Negative general: you could have done better, you are so lazy, I hate you
I would challenge you to never be a person of negative general feedback: you are better than that, you are smarter than that, the world deserves better, up your game. Positive general feedback is great, but it does not last for that long. It’s like a sugar high after eating a piece of candy.
So we are left with two types of feedback both being very specific. Specific feedback is the gift that I am trying to plead with you to give other people. My college pastor has two quotes that have always stuck with me. The first quote is, “Nothing is dynamic until it is specific.” The second quote is, “Always be grateful when somebody tells you the truth.” Whether the feedback you have to give somebody is something very specifically negative or specifically positive, swallow the lump in your throat and give the feedback.
Resources for the future
The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team
Kotter’s steps to change
7 habits of highly effective people
How to win friends and influence people
My blog drewpolanycia.com
