Diversity Drives Innovation

In this edition of my ongoing newsletter, I am delighted to delve deeper into our critical and enlightening dialogue on diversity and inclusion, with a special emphasis on unraveling the dynamics of diverse teams that exemplify high performance and innovation. Understanding and embracing the elements that foster an environment where varying perspectives and experiences converge to drive organizational success and elevate our collective potential is crucial.

You probably have encountered some workplaces that are not diverse. You generally know what that looks like. There are too few people who are different. Everyone is around the same age, everyone does the same things after work and they shop at the same stores. In other words, they live lives at work and outside of work that are very similar.

But there are other, more subtle signs that your workplace isn’t very diverse – even if it may look like it is based on the statistics. In those workplaces, people who are not white men sit around the edges of every meeting and do not participate.

In those workplaces, people frequently don’t talk to each other in a natural way because they’re afraid. They don’t engage with people who are different from them because they are afraid of saying the wrong thing – of offending someone.

Some workplaces that struggle with diversity have diversity training, but the employees don’t learn how to work with someone different from them.

What do you see if you pick your head up and look around you at a truly diverse, high-performing workplace??

When you look around a room, you see a cross-section of people. They look different, they sound different, they have different experiences and perspectives. And most importantly, people can show up as they see themselves.

Across the board, diverse cultures are high-performing cultures.

There is real idea generation and real discussion, which means disagreements. People can respectfully disagree with one another because they bring different perspectives to the table.

So, in a high-performing culture, there is not unanimous agreement all the time – but most decisions end up driven by consensus because people listen to lots of input and ideas, but share common goals and commonly perceived problems.

On a high-performance team, people like showing up. They want to bring all of themselves to work.