Experts have a clear understanding of the potential advantages that diversity brings to teams and organizations.
APM acknowledges that diverse teams generally outperform homogeneous ones. This correlation is increasingly evident in the performance and financial outcomes of organizations.
Does this align with your personal experience?
In a previous section, you explored exceptional and high-performing teams. Based on your own observations, do you see a connection between diversity and performance? Do teams with greater diversity produce superior work? Additionally, what challenges arise when working in highly diverse teams?
We are genuinely interested in hearing about your experiences and thoughts regarding these questions in the discussion section.
Diverse Teams – if diversity is well harnessed and directed towards project goals will provide better performance depending on the ability of the project manager to manage diversity
The challenges of diversity teams are :
Too many ideas that may cause slow in decision making.
Not communicating well because they all want their ideas to be counted.
I believe diversity has a connection with performance. Each team member brings a distinct flavor to the output.
The submission of APM acknowledging the superior nature of diverse teams and how it drives the performance outcomes aligns with my personal experience. We are the Health finance team of a financial institution saddled with the responsibility of pitching our product offerings, identifying new markets and opportunities and other health value chain businesses. The team is a combination of experienced retail sales officers, medical doctors and experienced pharmaceutical marketers. This is a diverse team of professionals with varied backgrounds, experiences, diverse cognitive abilities which has helped the unit to consistently outperform other units in driving the agenda of the bank and grow its profitability margin. The team has also been instrumental in rejigging our product paper to reflect current realities in the market and sector where we play in.
There is a great connection between diversity and performance as it helps to see from different perspectives which in turn can be useful in addressing potential challenges that may arise during the course of a project.
The major challenge of diverse teams for me could be communication barriers, aligning diversity to goals, discrimination, biases and cultural discriminations. As a project manager, the ability to be able to harness these diversities and address these challenges will produce successful project outcomes.
A diverse team will bring in more perspective and they will be more dynamic and creative. A diverse team will drive performance and growth. However, attention need to be made on the barriers to effective diverse team such as communication and conflict of interest.
The ability to bring a wider range of perspectives, experiences, and ideas to the table will factor in the superiority of diverse teams at work, whereby they achieve more innovative problem-solving. However, working in highly diverse teams can present challenges such as complex communication, potential misunderstandings due to different beliefs, conflicts, and lack of trust and cohesion among team members with different backgrounds and values.
Cohort 13 Team 6
A diverse team can contribute a greater range of knowledge and experience to the project, but there may also be bias in the form of racism, discrimination, and other hurdles to communication.
For me I would prefer Diversity of team members, one of the vital importance of diverse team is the opportunity for team members to gain various skills and ideas on how to do a particular project in different ways.
Another advantage is that there won’t be unnecessary tension between team members everyone will be focused on carry out designated activities in making sure that the project is successful.
Challenge
There might be conflict on how a project should be carried out due to difference in experience and the HOW?
A perfect example is a team of caterers saddled with the responsibility to bake a cake, there maybe conflict on what flavors, quantity of ingredients to put in the cake for perfection due to differences in experience and several ways and patterns of baking.
Research suggests a positive relationship between diversity and performance in teams. Diverse teams often bring a variety of perspectives, skills, and ideas, leading to more innovative solutions and improved problem-solving. However, the effectiveness of diverse teams depends on how well they manage challenges.
Challenges in highly diverse teams can include communication barriers, differences in work styles, and potential misunderstandings due to cultural or personal factors. It requires effective leadership, open communication, and cultural sensitivity to harness the benefits of diversity without letting these challenges hinder collaboration.
In summary, while diversity can enhance team performance, addressing and managing the challenges associated with it is crucial for reaping the full benefits of a diverse team.
From my experience having worked and lead a diverse team, they tend to work out impressively because there isn’t chance to be left behind and everyone would want to have an impact on the team. Only issues that sometimes arises is due to the various opinions and contrasting ideas at times, these can be characterized as the storming stage but once the team is able to move past that, you’ll discover they end up being a high performing team and tasks are carried out well
Okafor nneka
Cohort 13, team 10
I believe a more diverse team works out best in most teams as they just have their first contact with each other; everyone comes with a mindset of proving themselves and most often would bring their best game, knowledge and expertise.
In contrast, homogenous groups already have developed a certain degree of familiarity and may have a hard time obeying their leader thus leading to conflict of interests.
From my experience, I believe diversity breeds multiplied ingenuity in a team. A diverse team brings on board varied range of experiences, background, know-how, skills, perspectives, wide spectrum of emotional capabilities, social competence and professional capabilities. The output is always more robust and outcome desirable.
Challenges in a diverse team maybe at the storming phase when the team is just getting to familiarize. Questions of differences in perspectives may arise. But as soon as the team settles in, it produces its finest work as a result of its rich diversity