Redefining the concept of Diversity in organizations and its impact in team performance

In 2007 I was asked to write a chapter in a book to commemorate the 50th year anniversary of EADA business school in Barcelona. I wrote: “Redefiniendo el concepto de diversidad y su efecto en la efectividad empresarial”, which can be translated into something close to the title of this post. I had lived in the United States from 1995 to 2002 and I was surprised to find out that I was part of a minority in the US. I also found that the government policy and organizational quotas were a safe, artificial, and insufficient attempt to fundamentally solve the problems of inequality and discrimination. All of this led me to research, reflect, write, and teach about diversity and inclusion. I published this article at a point of my career where I had been heavily focused on business, and prior to beginning any formal research into leadership development. I wanted to better understand how businesses and teams could get better at integrating diversity into their teams and what were the benefits and challenges of doing so.

After 15 years, I’m rewriting this article with a similar focus: to reflect on what should go into building a diverse team as a first step toward high performance. While I’m not going to address the general issue of diversity and discrimination in society, which in my view, has been approached in ways that have not been very helpful because it puts us all in classifications of minority and majority that reinforce tensions between groups and artificial delimitations of our uniqueness. I think, instead, an effort should be put in helping us to understand and accept that each one of us are our own minority. We are all unique individuals and I believe we need to focus more on our own individualities than commonalities between groups.

This article focuses within the organizational context because I believe that organizations can change the world, especially large ones as they seamlessly transcend cultural and racial boundaries. I experienced this in my own skin early on in my career when I worked at Hewlett-Packard. I was not conscious about it at the time, but I saw everybody that worked for the firm and whom I cross paths around the world, as “HPers”, then Black or White, women or men, Spanish or American, etc. Organizations that endure the test of time are respected, followed, and copied. The fastest way to influence positive change in the world is by transforming admired organizations and use them as mediators of societal change.

By focusing this article on the context of organizations, I can indirectly address some of the issues of injustice we face inside and outside the business world. If we are to change people and the world, we must start by changing our own attitudes and this article offers some space for doing that. We can certainly set quotas in organizations to favor certain minorities, and Governments can dictate minimums to comply with, and we know that the only sustainable change is the one that comes from within. Personal change means questioning and reframing our own mental models, attitudes, and biases.

The concept of diversity is frequently narrowly defined. Most texts limit the concept to differences of sexual orientation, religion, age, nationality, race, ethnicity, and abilities. So, I’m offering here an expanded view of diversity that encompasses all traits that make one person different from another. Whether those differences come from our genetics or from our upbringing (innate or acquired traits), they will cause us to see life with a different lens and analyze the same problem differently. And in organizational life, we are going to be interested in all human differences as they will make our team more or less diverse and effective.

Let us therefore analyze the range of human diversity traits; differences that shape our identity and make us unique and different from anybody else. We can divide these personal identity traits into biological, cultural, functional, and personal. The following list represent some of the most important aspects of diversity, but it is not an exhaustive list, nor follows any particular order.

Biological diversity traits:

• Age
• Gender / sexual orientation
• Physical appearance and abilities
• Intellectual capability
• Race / ethnicity

The biological diversity is our HARDWARE. These are innate differences and form the basis of the other traits of personal identity that we will acquire during life, especially in our early years.

Cultural diversity traits:

• Nationality / country of origin
• Culture
• Mother tongue language(s)
• Social values
• Religious beliefs (we could obviously change these beliefs later in life, but these are arguably part of our cultural heritage and upbringing and would leave a permanent mark in our brain)

The cultural diversity is our FIRMWARE. These differences, mostly associated with where we grew up, could be large or small but, on their own, they could be powerful enough to mask other diversity traits. Our sense of hierarchy (technically measured by the power distance index), for example, could have a significant effect in how we show up in a team, and how we manage and lead others.

When I worked at Hewlett-Packard I travelled extensively to Asia Pacific, and I remember one relevant anecdote in Singapore doing a presentation to one of our suppliers. I was waving my hands, speaking loudly, moving back and forth in the room and looking at all members of the group straight in their eyes. After 30 minutes of eloquent exposition, the team leader approached me and in a few more words told me that I will have to repeat the presentation, “they did not listen to anything you said”. He told me that they were afraid of me because in their culture (a composition of different nationalities from Asia Pacific), my body language was so out of the norm that they simply couldn’t pay attention to what I was saying.

There is obviously a lot more I could relate about my cultural diversity that defines who I am. Each one of us have our own stories that somehow influence how we show up at work and in life.

Functional diversity traits

• Education and knowledge
• Functional area of specialization
• Hierarchical position in the organization
• Corporate values (or department within the organization)
• Social position (outside the organization)

The functional diversity is our SOFTWARE PLATFORM. Our education and acquired knowledge along our career will influence how we see reality or what information we decide to pay attention to. Also, working in a certain functional area for a long period of time might skew our point of view about things. Think about a meeting between R&D and Marketing, sometimes it seems they speak different languages.

Personal diversity traits

• Personal experiences
• Character and personality
• Communication style
• Bias and mental models
• Spiritual beliefs
• Personal values

The personal diversity is our SOFTWARE APPLICATION. All previous traits of diversity being similar, this diversity traits will make two people different. And this diversity is never considered when we address issues of structural or systemic discrimination, but they can be as relevant and important as other factors, certainly they are for building a diverse high performing team.

Have we thought about which of these diversity traits are more important and relevant for working effectively in a team? Is it our culture or are our biases and mental models? Is it our gender or our education? It is probably a beautiful combination of them all, which is why I posit that limiting our diversity to grand categories such us our gender and skin color is very limiting and misleading.

At this point of my initial article, I went into evaluating the effectiveness of a team’s communication, discussing the importance of its composition, dynamics, and communication processes (roles and responsibilities, leadership, facilitation, and clarity of objectives). I also spoke about the importance of trust in creating a diverse high performing team. I will omit these sections in this post entry, but I want to discuss whether it is always beneficial to increase the level of diversity of a team or not. My original article can be found (in Spanish), in chapter 2 of the book "50 Lecciones de Management", Ed. Granica, 2007: https://www.amazon.com/lecciones-management-Biblioteca-Varios-autores/dp/8483580438

Is diversity always good for my team?

Researchers seem to agree that if we need a team capable of generating innovative ideas without a very strong temporal pressure, we should increase the degree of diversity of our team. That means that if we have at least a few months to bring a new team together and we expect such team to make strategic decision and solve complex problems of any kind, we definitely need to recruit as diverse as a team as we can. Years ago, I consulted for a large European public company that told me they had a diversity problem within their senior leadership team: “All of them are white man in their 50s, studied in the same prestigious school system, grew up in the same city and vote for the same political party”. While there are a lot more diversity factors than gender, age, education and political affinity, my point is that it was a very homogeneous group. Later I’ll talk about how to add diversity into a team like this.

On the other hand, research on diversity indicates that if we need to assemble a team capable of operating quickly together on more operational tasks, we should form a more homogeneous team. I remember when I was in Singapore once visiting a supplier, the plant manager told me that they tried to mix line operators from several countries and ethnicity to see if productivity increased but they realized it never did, it actually worsened it. First, the work was very operational, requiring little cooperation between workers, and second, they had high personnel rotation levels making it difficult for them to invest in team integration. At the end, what worked best for them was to have the Malay production line, the Chinese line and the Indian one. I explain this case to show a real example when diversity was not justified, at least in the experience of that company. But, when we are thinking of senior teams with high level of responsibility, diversity will always be a key success factor, even if we will need to invest time developing the necessary trust among members, which will take obviously longer than in a more homogeneous team.

There is a second question I frequently get asked. How much diversity is necessary? Can we just break our homogeneity with a touch of color (metaphorically speaking)?

Research also suggests that adding only a little diversity could be counterproductive and generate minorities within the group that could be more dysfunctional than beneficial. In the large European company that I was describing above, introducing a younger woman, from another country with a different background and political affiliation could be counterproductive for the team performance. Instead, we would need to change several of its members to break the majority-minority effect.

Conclusion

This article defends that team diversity goes beyond the typical characteristics of gender, race, ethnicity abilities and sexual orientation. And I classify the range of individual human differences that shape our identity in biological, cultural, functional, and personal traits. I also posit that solving any diversity issue involves a shift of individual values and attitudes and I suggest that understanding and appreciating that we are all different, is a way to change the world.

My aspiration is that one day we all will treat each other with the same respect, independently of our differences. But for that to happen we will need to train our reptilian brain. Our initial reaction may be: “OMG, she wears a burka, OMG he has 3 piercings, OMG she has a tattoo in half of her face, OMG he has a very weird accent…" all those are very natural and instinctive reactions that happen in our unevolved brains, and it is hard to control them. But our cognitive brain then needs to kick in and say to our reptilian brain: “Hey, relax don’t judge them by their appearance and by what you think is normal or right, give them a chance, listen to them, get to know them… relax reptilian brain! Let’s work together!”. I think it is a matter of self-awareness and then self-regulation.

We just need to treat everybody with respect, and the simplest way I know is to think that everybody is YOU, aren’t we all the same? Many religions say that we are all ONE. We are only parts of the same system. You are just meeting another part of yourself.

Ava DuVernay, an award-winning filmmaker, who directed the powerful civil rights movie Selma, said, “When we’re talking about diversity, it’s not a box to check. It is a reality that should be deeply felt and held and valued by all of us.”

Enric Bernal