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.
In my opinion, diversity is has a connection with performance, with different members having different approach in solving problems. It can also be disadvantageous if there isn’t good communication between team members and it can be time consuming.
Aishat Aiteseme Abdulrazaaq
Cohort 17
Team 1
Working with a diverse team sounds interesting. Since there is less or no time for cohesion, the very thing that will be in the heart of the team is the goal to be achieved and what achieving this goal will mean to the organization, the whole team and the individuals. The challenges of working in a highly diverse team are communication (language barriers, cultural nuances and individual communication styles), trust and relationship building, conflict resolution, decision making, etc. From my experience working with a diverse team, the above challenges surfaced and it was quite difficult but at the same time, we forged ahead to achieve the goal and target set before us.
As the saying goes, ‘diversity is the spice of life’, this only reinforces the importance that diversity has in bringing out the best results. Hence there is a co-relation between diversity and performance as teams are better equipped to be more critical in their thinking thereby making them to make better decisions.
The challenges of working in such teams could be communication gap and longer decision making time.
Team with a diverse members tends to produce morep superior work compared to homogeneous teams. Such teams have members who have different perspective, ideas and approaches to solve a given problem. Usually it brings out more results than working a homogeneous team, hence ,they are no limited to a single perspective or similar ideas and approaches to solve the given task. However it may be time consuming as each of this task are given to the team members and each person has the liberty to carry out the task using his own ideas and not necessarily a universal approach as everyone else on the team .
Diversity means different ideas and the task broken down to smaller tasks. Each individual in the team can be assigned to area of specialty. However, agreeing on the steps to follow the to complete the task may be time consuming therefore affecting time line for the project
better because the background and different way of thinking of team members bring fresh perspectives, skills and solutions to the team.
The challenge is in getting them to work together, letting them see there maybe be more than one viable solution to the same problem and make each member not to be focused only on his perspective or not be too attached to his ideas but to communicate freely in search of solutions.
Diversity in teams get things done faster, when everyone has diverse approach to solving problems, they is a room for multiple options on the way to go about things. And the best approach to getting the problem or project solved will be picked. It fosters brainstorming which will eventually leads to higher chances of getting things done in a short frame of time.
Oguche Emmanuel
Cohort 17 Team 7
I think diversity in teams is a huge advantage. When everyone has a different approach to problems, it brings about swift solutions and different ideas in terms of applications to a project also means more brainstorming which I think increases the chances of high quality returns.
Diversity and performance are linked and they can be positive and negative. Positive in the sense that there is a blending of different ideas which can produce a hybrid which in most cases is of super quality. Thus performance will be of high value. The negative side is that it can take a long time to agree on the basics of the perspectives given. In turn it affects the progress and timelune of the project.
Your Experience of Diversity in Teams
I have had opportunity to participate in some projects both personal (informal) and official (formal) over the years.
Speaking of my experience of diversity in project teams, this bring to the fore my experience as a temporary team member on a Software Deployment project for one of the renowned insurance firms in Nigerian in the year 2006.
The Company needed to automate their insurance services through the deployment of AIMS application – Advanced Insurance Management Software licensed by a company in Jordan.
A team of developers travelled all the way from Jordan to Lagos Nigeria for its implementation and as a staff in the IT Department at that time, I was privileged to participate as a team member to aid the upload/ Data Entry of company’s insurance portfolios and clients information in preparation for the testing and Deployment stage of the Project.
During this period, members of the team comprises people from different work domains and languages. For instance, the programmers were Muslims and Jordanians, the Project Manager was the Head of IT Unit a Yoruba by tribe, while other members included Head of Risk Compliance, HR staffs and a few from Marketing and Finance Departments respectively with some variations in tribal affiliations.
Looking back at that moment of the project implementation for the organization validates the positive impacts diversity played in the progress and actualization of the project goals. Team members understood the need to place highest priority to the outcome of the project than concentrating on personal differences and dislikes and that helped to focus on growth and performance of individual roles to create more values and deliverables based on the project timeline.
The diversity nature of the team helped foster respect for each other. In fact, it helped to bond better at the end of the implementation than when at the beginning.
Emmanuel Olusegun Omotere
Team 4
Cohort 17
Like they say ” diversity is the spice of life”. Diverse teams come to the team with fresh and unique perspectives, experiences and ideas, resulting in cross-functional collaboration, fast problem solving skills, skill expertise and so on which makes them outperform homogenous teams.
However, there might be few challenges that comes with diverse team such as communication barriers, cultural and social differences etc.
Possible solutions to some of these challenges is encouraging or including inclusive culture to the organizations value such as having an open communication system, respect for individuals culture and background, showing empathy etc
Gbemisola Atunda-olu
Cohort 17 Team 5