The Team Diversity Paradox

One of the main objectives of teamwork is for individuals to work together creatively to produce unique and innovative outcomes. From aerospace and automotive engineering, to pharmaceuticals and information technologies, nearly all of our greatest achievements are accomplished through creative collaboration rather than by the talents of one person.

It’s reasonable to assume that heterogeneous teams are more likely to be innovative than homogeneous teams. Diversity, after all, is a good thing right? Well, before we can safely arrive at this assumption, we need to develop a clear understanding of what exactly is meant by “diversity” in the first place.

Surface-level diversity is the type of diversity we can see. It’s the kind we increasingly hear political and business leaders promote inside and outside their organizational structures. This kind of diversity involves demographic characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation, etc. 

Deep-level diversity on the other hand can’t be seen and is therefore more difficult to observe and measure. It’s often explored heavily in psychology and social sciences because it’s entirely cognitive in nature. It consists of the diverging thoughts, attitudes and beliefs between individuals. 

Diversity = Creativity?

Contrary to popular opinion, most creative researchers agree that surface-level diversity is not significantly related to team performance and weakly correlated with collaborative creativity. In fact, it may actually reduce team innovation.

That’s right. Team diversity does not necessitate team creativity. But why?

The answer can be found in Byrne’s similarity-attraction theory. This theory states that individuals often prefer working with those who support rather than challenge their beliefs and attitudes. Like it or not, when we are tasked with working with others that possess surface-level characteristics unlike our own, our automatic response is to protect ourselves from outside threats. As a result, we tend to socially categorize / stereotype other members of our team.

Research shows that social categorization often leads to unproductive conflict over time, usually involving disputes over planning and processes involving roles, or interpersonal relationships and interactions between members. While studies show that a sterile environment free of conflict can actually limit creative growth, these kind are arguments tend to have only negative consequences on team creativity.

To be creative, team members absolutely need to communicate effectively. If not, they won’t be able to cross-pollinate and build on each other's ideas. Even if social categorization doesn't directly create unproductive conflict, it tends to deteriorate knowledge and information sharing within teams that in turn restrains the generation of new ideas...not good when teams are expected to innovate!

If superficial differences can be viewed as innovative benefits instead of obstacles, diverse groups have the ability to transcend beyond their cursory differences to become creative super-teams.

The Diversity Paradox

Paradoxically, surface-level diversity has the potential to mitigate the very issues it creates. After all, individuals with diverging surface-level characteristics also offer their teams deep-level diversity because they often possess different backgrounds, knowledge, attitudes and experiences. The good news is that these characteristics have been shown to have a positive relationship with collaborative creativity. 

For starters, teams with high deep-level diversity are less likely to engage in social categorization as a response to their differences. Instead, they tend to reconcile their diverging characteristics through more productive processes such as engaging in critical discussion and problem solving.

With a wide range of perspectives and values within teams, collaborative creativity can be supported because members are given the opportunity to experiment, combine and build on each other’s ideas. If teams know how to operate effectively, over time the negative effects of surface-level diversity weaken while the positive effects of deep-level diversity strengthen. Therefore, if superficial differences can be viewed as innovative benefits instead of obstacles, diverse groups have the ability to transcend beyond their cursory differences to become creative super-teams.

The Team Diversity Secret Ingredient

Orienting teams around deep-level rather than surface-level diversity can be a difficult task, but the most effective resource to do so can be summed up in a single word: leadership.

Strong team leaders have been shown to improve social interactions and help teams stay motivated by focusing on objective tasks. They can also improve moods that help mitigate value-based rivalry, and create psychological safety that inspires members to share their ideas openly. 

It’s vital that teams be led by knowledgeable leaders who have the expertise and ability to empower and motivate others, regardless of their differences.

When working with highly diverse teams, leaders who have prior life experience interacting and engaging with diverse others tend to appreciate and enjoy the diversity that exists within their teams more than members who lack such diverse mindsets. 

In multicultural teams where cultural boundaries exist, effective leaders become cultural brokers by eliciting and integrating knowledge, viewpoints and ideas. Encouragingly, research shows that cultural brokerage can significantly enhance team collaborative creativity and may help limit the negative effects of social categorization

Leaders who act as cultural brokers don’t necessarily need to categorically belong to any one cultural group, so long as they possess the characteristics that make up a culturally diverse mindset. This makes this type of leadership approach universal and applicable to a variety of team-based scenarios.

Let’s illustrate what cultural brokerage might look like. As an example, eliciting knowledge might take the form of a leader asking certain representatives why they approach their work a certain way and then assist in transferring this knowledge to other team members so it is better understood. Once knowledge has been elicited by the leader, it can then be integrated into the team’s work. This might look like adjusting certain tasks and approaches to the needs of all team members, and using cultural differences within the team to provide new ideas and approaches that then stimulate creative discussion in ways otherwise not possible.

While there is no question that diversity plays an important role in collaboration and creativity, it is important to appreciate that the more diverse teams become, the more opportunities and challenges they present. It’s therefore vital that teams be led by knowledgeable leaders who have the expertise and ability to empower and motivate others, regardless of their differences. This will help teams thrive and capture the many benefits of diversity they knowingly or unknowingly possess.