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.
From my personal experience diversity brings about great performance in a project. Sometimes even working with people you know can slow a project as there may over familiarity.
Diversity has a role it plays in the success of a project. Diversity ranges from different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different gender and sexual orientations, experiences, ideas, skills and lifestyles etc. When there’s a team with diverse backgrounds, it brings about new ideas and innovations which facilitates the success of a project. It also leads to more creative and effective problem-solving, as different individuals can approach problems from different angles thereby bringing about productivity.
However, while there are positive sides in diversity, it also comes with its own challenges. These challenges include communication issues, cultural misunderstanding, slower decision making, discrimination and less trust. These challenges can be managed amongst team if there’s a strong leader or project manager.
It is also important to know that benefits and challenges of diversity varies depending on the organization and the project at hand.
In all diversity is more profitable.
Paul-Okonko Chiamaka
Cohort 7, Team 9
More diverse teams tend to perform better than homogeneous ones. Diverse team do well as a results of the situation being more focus on achieving the goal of the organisation by minimal available time, this translates into organisations’ performance and financial results.
The performance of a team is positively influenced by diversity. When team members have diverse backgrounds, they tend to bring in new ideas, perspectives, and innovation, which allows them to quickly focus on the task at hand without wasting time. However, while diversity brings advantages, it also presents challenges such as differences in cultural backgrounds and communication barriers.
The impact of diversity on project team performance depends on the specific nature of the project. In the example discussed earlier, the team leader may not have the opportunity to extensively assess the capabilities of individual team members. Nevertheless, the belief is that their diverse backgrounds, along with some level of training and experience, will enhance the team’s ability to approach problems innovatively. Each team member also strives to make a meaningful contribution to the new team, reducing the issues of over-familiarity and laissez-faire attitudes to some extent.
However, it is crucial to note that these benefits come with challenges if the individuals selected for the team project lack adequate training for the assigned tasks. Such a situation can negatively impact the success and performance of the project.
Diversity in a team can be advantageous for productivity and the success of a project. When a team with diverse skills and experience work together to deliver a project, it fosters a commitment and challenge every member on the team to contribute their skill set making a strong team achieving success at the end of the projects.
Diverse teams from my experience are better challenged and more motivated because of the mix of old and new minds or just random people who are brought together to work and are more productive.
On the other hand of challenges, a lot of individuals do not know how to work easily with new people and this might lead to isolation, click formations, etc if not properly manage and also competition because everyone is trying to show that they are experts at what they do and may not be open to learning
When it comes to performance, diversity is very vital because each team have different knowledge in terms of experience, abilities, perspectives etc and these put together gives a better output than the homogenous.
With all these benefits, it has it negative side when not properly spelled out especially the lack of effective communication.
There could be unity in diversity. As a project manager, I would explore diverse teams as they will have different ideas. My job is to make everyone aligned to the same goal (project success)
There’s a positive relationship between diversity and performance.when there is diversity among team members they tend to be more innovative, there new ideas, perspective etc and people get directly down to business,no time for delidarling. The problem of over familiarity is not faced there is diversity but with it comes some challenges like cultural background, communication barriers etc.
As a project manager, I’ll explore diverse team. Diverse team will bring about a blend of new ideas from the different members of the team and this can help solve problem faster if the different ideas are intelligently deliberated upon.
The relationship between project team members diversity and level of performance depends on the nature of the project. In the example provided in the last section of this module, the leader may not have the time to make a complete analysis of the capacity of the team members but on the believe that these individuals have had a form of training and experience, their diverse background will reinforce innovative approaches. Also every member of the team seeks to make an impact to get into the new team. The issue of over familiarity and laissez-faire approaches will be minimise to extend. However, these comes with a number of challenges if the individuals selected for the team project are not adequately trained for the task. Therefore affecting the project success or it performance.