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.
I’ve had the opportunity to work in both homogeneous and diverse project teams and I must say, performance and output is based on how the project manager leads and the motivation levels of team members.
AMAKA ESEKA, COHORT 9, TEAM 2
I have had the opportunity to work is diverse and homogenous teams and there is improved performance with diverse teams based on the wealth of knowledge, innovation and balance they are able to bring into projects. A gender diverse project team is able to as the women are able to bring in their intuition and emotional intelligence in handling projects. Men on the other hand are able to be logical and stern in their dealings on a project and this helps to reduce friction, helps better in handling the storming phase and leads to improved project outputs. Diversity also creates a better working environment leading to higher productivity and better performance.
Some of the challenges with highly diverse teams are:
1. Clash of opinions due to cultural differences and mode of handling issues.
2. There might initially be some confusion at the beginning of the project due to different ways of reasoning.
3. Frustration with other team members work ethic or mode of handling the project.
4. Frequent miscommunication and discrimination
THADDEUS ASOTIE|COHORT9|TEAM10
APM’s acknowledgment; that diverse teams outperform homogenous ones aligns with my personal experience.
There is a connection between diversity and performance.
Teams with greater diversity do not necessarily produce superior work.
Challenges that arise when working in a highly diverse Team.
1.High coordination cost
2.Unhealthy competition
3.Commitment cliques.
4.Difficulty of team members understanding each other.
5.Thinking in Silos
6.Dysfunctional social interactions
7.Low team cohesion
And many more.
as long the purpose is met/deliverded,its doesnt matter which team executive it
Research has shown that there is a positive relationship between diversity and performance.
More diverse team do better work in complex project.
The challenges of working in highly diverse teams includes, discrimination, decision making is slow, there is communication issues and cultural misunderstanding.
As long as the goal is to deliver a good project on time with the stipulated budget, diversity in a team I presumed in most cases is to the advantage of the project.
I am totally agree that diversity matter in a team. However, having quality on howto envolve the different skills that team member have is crucial. But sometimes, we have to handle the one who are not agree for everything
Diversity and performance have both a good and bad relationship. Diversity with good relationships will motivate team members to put forth their best efforts because they are aware of the potential consequences of if one member of the team slacks. Diversity with bad relationships may result in conflicts amongst team members because of some extremely strong beliefs held by a team member and compromise may be quite challenging. The familiar teams have a propensity to be overly familiar which can stall or delay initiatives. Team cohesion is important since it enables them to function well as a group and complete the project’s intended aim.
1) There is indeed a relationship between diversity and performance within teams. Research has shown that more diversify teams have the potential to greater performance. However, team memebers are able to provide varied and complimentary solutions when faces with challenges such as:
● Decision-making through diversify
● Strong problem-solving.
2) Working in an environment that promote diversity will make teams feel motivated to work on a project which will reflect on a successful project.
3)There are a lot of challenges when working in a highly diversify team. Some of the challenges are:
● Communication issues: communication can be common in a diversify teams and for a wide variety of reasons such as language barrier, different communication styles or preferences etc.
● Slower decision making
● Discrimination
Lawani Shadrach Ogiriga, Team 6, Chort 9
From my experience, there is a strong relationship between heterogeneous team and productivity/performance.
When a team is diverse in most projects, there is a high tendency of the team members to perform better due to the fact that everyone would like to bring to bear their different or diverse skills, motivation, expertise, experiences, and perspectives because everyone will want to deliver at their best to avoid getting blames for the failure or delay of the project. In my organisation, the first task that was given to us (as a team), all team members gave their opinion/suggestions on how well to ensure that the deliverables are met on or before the deadline. With this we were able to view the implementation of the project from multiple perspectives and this helped us to use the best approach for the execution of project.
A team with diverse membership (in terms of social cohesion, age, ethnicity and sex) are more likely to cooperate and meet project outputs and outcomes as a result of the motivation of the members to work together, especially when it is the first time of doing so than homogeneous team.
However, there could be challenges too. Some of the team members may not have the required skills, expertise or experience to function effectively in the team. There could be misunderstanding among team members. This could lead to delay in meeting deadlines, waste of funds or project failure. A diverse team needs a strong and open communication to carry every member along so that no one will feel slighted.
From my own view of experience, diversity fosters and increases the performance of a project team as it reduces too much familiarity and feeling of too much relaxation thereby slowing down project completion. Even though where we have large diversity among team members, I believe clearly stating our roles incorporating a linear project system won’t reduce performance. Naturally, teammates will learn about each other’s. cultures. this leads to a broader understanding of the world on a much deeper level, this happened to me in a project in which i was forced to learn language.