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.
There’s indeed a relationship between diversity and performance just as researchers have shown.
A team of people coming together with little or no familiarity will bring about expertise from different backgrounds and experience, thereby boosting the level of productivity and team performance
Variety is the spice of life they say and I can’t agree less.
I agree that there is a strong relationship the between diversity and performance. The more heterogenous the team the better the performance.
In a diverse team, there is a mix of people with various experience and skill which yields high performance and output.
I have worked in several diverse team, from school projects teams to training teams and job teams and what is the common among these teams is that people from different academic backgrounds, different ethnicity, with different skills, knowledge and experience come together to achieve a common goal.
The challenges I have observed in these diverse teams are some moments of disagreement which in this study is called the *storming* phase, but with the intervention of a good team leader this quickly dissolves into the *norming* phase which is the agreement phase and the work progresses and succeeds.
Ejiro Ogbon
Team 4, Cohort 17
Yes, there is a relationship between diversity and performance. Numerous studies have shown that more diverse teams can lead to better performance for several reasons
People from diverse perspectives, careers and experience coming to work together provides enhanced innovation and creativity on projects they are working on.
challenges that may arise when working in highly diverse environment are role confusion, disagreement on how work should be done and coordinating a diverse team can be challenging.
I would say a diverse team has it good and bad. A diverse team gives room to experiment with different ideas at different levels. They provide solutions based on different perspectives/environments/social/cultural rather than homogeneous teams where ideas may be limited because they are all from the same environment.
The disadvantage of a diverse team would be agreeing to a decision but it is up to the project manager to help them stay focused on the goal and guide the team in selecting a solution
My name is Pamela Ogechi Anibuko
Cohort 17, team 2
I see a very big link between diversity and performance in many ways than one. When a team is diversified and has so many ideas to bring to the table,they tend to have a lot of options to choose from and hence opportunities to learn more and execute in the project.
I do believe that teams with greater diversity produce greater work, because,like I stated earlier on, there are many ideas to pick from hence making performance high.
One of the many challenges of working in a diversified team is the challenge of agreeing on one thing. Because there are so many ideas by so many members who feel that their own idea is the best,most times there could be disagreement and they may not agree on a particular idea to choose from.
It has been discovered that the team that perform best in complex and challenging environment are diverse team. Diversify has a connection with performance, as different perspectives with good directions can best promotes project well,diversity allows members to be opens to new ideas,skills,and the ability to learn through others previous performances,perspectives and challenges. Diversity help aids performance.
Diverse team tends to do better work because team members feel respected and safe to be themselves,to express their individual perspectives and use their unique technique hence aid collaboration which in returns produces expected outcomes.
The challenges of working in a highly diverse team is that the individual perspectives may hinder the immediate commencement of the project,another may be that some of the team members want their ideas to be preferred than others,ways of understand and communications may be slow,lack of ethics, individual experiences can be a challenge as well.
Omolola Kolawole
Team 6
Cohort 17
Applying What You’ve Learnt in the past week.
As a Project Manager for MTD, I have come to understand that MTD projects are susceptible to four basic challenges which are represented by the VUCA framework – volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity.
However, not all the challenges may be considered complex depending on the circumstances presented. In order to judge any project situation aright, it is important to identify if the project challenges can be considered as simple, complicated or complex indeed.
To ensure all factors are put under control under whatever project circumstances MTD may experience in the course of managing project delivery, the use of a hybrid method would be used in any project approach. Doing this helps to deploy the right method in tackling any challenges.
Another challenge to manage is the challenge of building the right team. I also learnt that project managers may not have complete influence over a project team members build up. This is why diversity occurs in project team as the project manager may have different characters of team members to contend with and manage well.
For instance, any aspects of MTD projects that is well understood, whose users and stakeholders requirements are well known as well as the availability of credible information is made certain can best be handled using the Linear approach. But other aspects of a project believed to likely be susceptible to frequent alterations, early requests for outputs, need for regular feedbacks by users before validation for progress is granted as well as having the project scope subject to regular changes would demand that an iterative approach be used.
Another challenge is the challenge of team formation. The difficulties associated with the inability of project managers to have 100% control over team build up makes it a daunting task when it comes to managing team members from diverse cultures, language and background etc.
For me as a project manager, I always anticipate variation in behavioral pattern and response. Knowing that no two human beings are exactly the same, my expectation of the obvious tendency for misunderstanding among rival members may occur.
However, as daunting as the complexity of diversity in teams may seem, using Bruce Tuchman’s model of Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning, would be helpful to redirect the teams dynamics towards achieving thevproject goals. it is possible to use the diversity factor to an advantage by using the Chartering technique to build team cohesion. To get the best out of a Project team with diversity,
I would promote the need for mutual respect, allow members the freedom to contribute to the project, promote self-worth and reward members for worthwhile success, provide equal opportunities for all thereby avoiding the risk of reliance on single member to avoid overall project failure.
Emmanuel Olusegun Omotere
Team 4
Cohort 17
Diverse teams, in my experience tend to perform 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 know there maybe be more viable solution to the same problem and make each member not to be focused only on his/her perspective.
As a social entrepreneur, leading and organizing social impact campaigns, I have been in a setting where diversity was obvious. The result was achieved with every team member having the goal in mind and focused on their assigned roles, leading to learning some skills to do the job or play their parts in the role well on the go, as well as appreciating the diversity of knowledge of other team members. Diversity makes everyone in the team feel important as anyone can be assigned to any role to get the result.
In my banking experience, it is usually the variety of the team that generates different viewpoints, leading to creativity in solutions and high performance. Problem-solving and decision-making are enriched by different backgrounds and experiences. However, challenges include possible communication barriers and cultural misunderstandings. It requires efficient leadership and inclusive practices to effectively draw on this diversity and offset these challenges. Overall, I have seen that diverse teams often deliver better results and make for a more lively work environment.