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.
Research suggests that diverse teams can offer several benefits, ultimately contributing to better work outcomes in some instances. Here are some potential advantages:
Increased Creativity and Innovation: Diverse teams bring together individuals with varied backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. This diversity of thought can lead to more creative problem-solving and innovative ideas, as team members challenge each other’s assumptions and consider broader possibilities.
Broader Skill Sets: Diverse teams often consist of members with different skill sets and expertise, which can be advantageous when tackling complex projects or multifaceted challenges. This diversity of skills can lead to more comprehensive solutions.
Enhanced Decision-Making: Diverse teams can foster robust discussions and debates. When team members have varying viewpoints, decisions are more likely to be thoroughly considered and evaluated from different angles before implementation.
Better Problem-Solving: Diverse teams are better equipped to identify potential blind spots and biases in decision-making. This can help prevent groupthink and lead to more well-rounded solutions.
Joel Nnamani. Cohort 9, Team 5.
My experience in a team with diversity is a positive one. I work for a financial institution. As a field officer, I am involved in loan recovery at the beginning and end of every month.
Teams are usually formed to carry out mass recovery exercise. It is proven that we recover more money and even faster when the team members are made up of diverse people: staff from different branches and members of loan recovery unit.
Similar thing happens each time we go out for a mass sales or market storm with teams that are formed by picking officers from different branches, locations and departments and age bracket.
The challenge with these diverse team members is that making decisions take time when there are arguments and misunderstanding.
From my experience too, for a team that has a lot of cohesion, decisions are made very fast when there is a misunderstanding.
By and large, teams with diversity of people in terms of ethnicity, believe system, gender, profession, departments etc perform better in projects and assignments.
There is a great relationship between diversity and performance as this helps bring different perspectives to project execution.
It has also been discovered that diverse teams tend to do better work than homogenous teams due to the wealth of experience and exposure from different field being brought by all involved in the project.
Also, the major challenge faced by highly diverse teams is firstly communicatioion as there is need to establish a proper channel for this and as well the tenedenct for individuals to want to impress their opinions on the team due to their background or wealth of experience.
Diversity, acknowledging the fact that different individuals, with different backgrounds and mindsets, this is what makes up a team?…then you would appreciate the role ‘diversity’ plays in improving performance.
Human interactions differ, personalities differ, different individuals process problems differently and profer solutions differently too. Knowing this, helps you appreciate diversity and accept it as a way of life, the value of individuals when properly managed, through effective communication skills, inter-personal relationship skills and proper allocation of duties/tasks(knowing who can handle a particular task).
The major problem encountered whilst working with highly-diverse teams are largely because of lack of proper communication, either it’s a language barrier or just plain complacency.
A project team is a group of individuals that an organization brings together to perform individual project tasks and achieve the organization’s goals to produce positive results. By assembling a project team, the organization allows the members to complete the project on time successfully. Each team member may report to the same manager, but it’s common to see a cross-functional project that has team members working together from different department.
Project team differ from any other team in an organisation because Usually, project teams are cross-functional—meaning they’re made up of individuals from different groups or departments within the organization, working toward a common goal. Project teams are responsible for successfully completing a project according to the project schedule and overall project objectives.
relationship between diversity and performance For one, diversity increases productivity. A more productive workforce translates to higher profits. Secondly, diverse teams tend to be more creative and better at problem-solving.
Diversity in the project executions has a high degree of outperformance than homogenous but with a great disadvantage at the outset, which is communication due to language barriers, as the PURPOSE, ALIGNMANT AND SITUATION need to be well communicated using communication system or interaction system that will cascade the output/outcomes of the project, however this will have a large impact on a short time projects as in the case of STEVE WILLIAMS and his team that could be formed under 10 minutes due to the seriousness/severity of the business of RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institute) after which the cohesion needful of the team to execute further project would be built at intervals this will enhance the synergy needful in the team going forward.
Diversity in the project executions has a high degree of outperformance than homogenous but with a great disadvantage at the outset which is communication due to language barriers, as the PURPOSE, ALIGNMANT AND SITUATION needs to well communicated using communication system or interaction system that will cascade the output/outcomes of the project, however this will have a large impact on a short time projects as in the case of STEVE WILLIAMS and his team that could be formed under 10 minutes due to the seriousness/severity of the business of RNLI (Royal ) of the after which the cohesion needful of the team to execute further project would be built at intervals this will enhance the synergy needful in the team going forward.
Working in an homogeneous team has a huge lot of advantages one of which is the vast knowledge base, available for the project execution by the wealth of experience the team members possess. This is however to be brought into check for proper utilisation by the project manager to prevent unessesary agitation between team members which may result in open confrontations stemming from conflicts between professional interests, professional values, etc. This if not checked may reduce commitments of some key team members towards fulfilment of the overall set goals for the project.
Diverse team tend to produce quality output within a short period of time working together on a particular project due to
every team member as an expert will quickly identify all possible unforeseen situation that may arise.
The better approach is implemented
social ethics are easily maintain as signs of appreciation for coming together from different background and ethnicity.
project time will be short in delivery as most would be eager to return to their comfort zone.
as lovely as it is ,keeping them together for a long period of time might become a time bomb as supremacy challenges will begin to show up,,and this will be a difficult task for the project manager.
Cohort 9 team 8
Yes my personal experience with diversity align with APM acknowledgement but it only outperforms in cases of short period of time. The longer the time working together the more conflicts, competition and lack of participation arises.
Based on my observations, yes there’s connections between diversity and performance because both works by collaborating interdependently, balancing tasks, working and process productivity.
Yes, according to research teams with greater diversity produce superior work, just as there’s greater output there’s also greater risks
The challenges that arise when working in highly diverse teams:
1. Wide range of knowledge
2. Ethnicity
3. Difference in cognitive abilities
4. Group decision making
5. High social cohesion
6. Time
Yes there is a connection between diversity and performance. It depends on the type of work and the time frame. I believe there are advantages and disadvantages to every side. Firstly there’s great team work and effort put in to make tasks go smoothly and efficiently. Challenges like time, ethnical and cultural diversity,cognitive dissonance etc can arise when working in highly diverse teams.
Working in diverse teams has its advantages and disadvantages, but from my experience, its advantages outweighs the disadvantages.
A diverse team with Professionals from different backgrounds and different patterns of working, coming together to contribute their knowledge and experiences is better because different contributions that align with the project to achieve the set goal of the project is good.
Though diversity may be a problem at first because of the different patterns of work, miscommunication, misinterpretation, religion, ethnicity, race, gender, cultural background etc. Once all of these can be properly taken care of, according to the standards and mode of operations of the project required, the best team will have probably been formed.