Cogitamus, ergo Sumus
(We think; therefore, we are)
Over my 20+ years of executive experience, I have led and participated in many teams. As I prepared my beet gazpacho (see pic below), I started to reflect on the topic of teams and diversity. I realized that, in my experience, the teams that provided the best results for the organization where those that, using Tuckman’s words, stormed early on and frequently, took a long time to norm (if ever) and, at the end of the day, form a special bond despite and sometimes, because of the differences in opinions and perspectives. What made the team performance supreme in those cases? The inclusiveness of the team leader that tap into the team members’ differences in experiences, cultures, functions, backgrounds and personalities to capture the richest of solutions. Even individual differences in the final desired outcome proved to be useful in more than one occasion — it forced all of us to challenge our assumptions and to unearth the raw source of our desired outcome, instead of focusing on specific goals. As Renee Descartes once said, “in order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of your life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things”. The inclusive leader made us question everything, forcing us to adopt a new out-of-the-box perspective to get to the root of what we wanted and needed to achieve.
While conducting research for a diversity and inclusion training that a colleague and I were given to a law enforcement agency in Colorado, I read that the concept of culture was not a thing which one could see, hear, feel, smell or touch, just like the definitions of evil, motivation, needs, peace or fairness would vary by individual. Basically, all these concepts are intangible and not visible. Sure, you can have representations or symbols of those concept, for example, the white dove holding an olive branch as the symbol of peace or the cultural iceberg that we, consultants and educators, like to display when talking about culture. Still, those concepts are ideas created and developed by people, refined by social forces, and codified by society. Ideas that only exist within a determined context. And what happens when a leader encounters those diverse interpretations and perspectives within a single team? As leaders, should we rely and cultivate the heterogeneity of our teams or seek to find some common fundamentals to develop a team sub-culture?
Most of us reading this blog would automatically argue that diversity is necessary and essential to develop creative and productive teams. After all, I am taking the time to write about inclusiveness and diversity and you are taking the time to read it. From a scientific point of view, the answer to these questions is not as clear as it seems. Diversity research has yield conflicting results on the benefits and complications of diversity as it relates to group work effectiveness.
Some researchers have concluded that diversity was predominantly a positive influence on solving complex issues that required high levels of creativity and/or a high level of critical thinking [1]. A well-managed diversified team (defined in the studies on the basis of ethnicity, gender, function, cultural-identities, age, status, or cultural-background) should yield different perspectives to successfully approach complex issues. Well-managed referred to the ability by the team leader and eventual self-efficacy of the team members to prevent the heterogeneity within a group from negatively affecting the cohesion of the team (through norming process) and delivering an effective communication process among team members despite the existing individual biases and stereotypes. The leader must ensure that all team members have their opinion heard; that group-thinking does not occur, preventing hegemonic ideas from prevailing without challenge; that the team evaluates all ideas, identifying potential bits of value in each of them and building a better mouse trap; and that the group enjoys an open, supportive and candid climate, inviting full participation of all team members. This last statement represents the fairly complete and detailed definition of inclusive leadership.
In my opinion, one of the leader’s priorities should be to establish a communication structure that invites all group members to comfortably and voluntarily voice their opinions on relevant critical group issues, including comments and feedback on the existing team dynamics as well as the processes being utilized within the group. Challenging any assumptions made by group members is also an important requirement for the success of the group. The team leader needs to recognize individual team member contributions, highlighting the uniqueness in thoughts that stir the group towards a more innovative way to address the group’s mission. This is part of the behavior modeling by the leader to develop an inclusive team sub-culture, a common foundation from which to build and succeed.
Self-awareness will also be an important part of that team culture. It is fairly safe to assume that every individual that joins a group carries his or her personal luggage of biases and stereotypes which helps him or her simplify interactions with different group members and deal with new unknowns. While those biases or stereotypes may be helpful in the early formation of the group, they will also be damaging in the long run, and should not be incorporated into the norming of the group. Norming stereotypes or biases will contaminate the communication synergies among team members as well as the communication between team members and the team leader. One of the team leader’s responsibility is to detect those potentially negative biases, challenging those assumptions at the team level and, shifting the team’s focus towards similarities or “common building blocks” shared by all team members. Those similarities would be an essential part of the common foundations to inclusiveness, fomenting the creativity and complex problem-solving abilities that diversity within a team cultivates.
[1] Levi, D. (2009). Group Dynamics for Teams. Third Edition. Sage Publications Inc, Thousand Oaks, California.
