Creating diverse teams. Who benefits? What happens to productivity in these work groups?

Organizations who have diverse teams have an edge against other institutions with more homogeneous ones. There is an art to bringing team members from diverse backgrounds on board to share the same goal and people management skills are at the center of that.

One’s ability to listen and learn can go a long way. Being flexible, taking interest in others, developing soft skills and the ability to relate are also important skill sets that leaders need to learn if their goals are to lead diverse teams and have them on their side.

It seems to me that it’s time to forget the over-simplistic and pointless debate of young versus old. What we need is a simple recognition that age in and of itself is not the issue. Skills and attitudes are what matter. If you want to give your customers excellent service, there is a strong argument for hiring older people. And even if they are slightly more expensive, you’ll recover these costs in longer tenure and enhanced customer loyalty. If you need the sort of perspective that the young have and can afford to replace them frequently, then hire young people. But don’t expect there’s anything you can do to keep them for long.

Let’s not be trapped by the pointless argument about which is better. The key to getting the best business results is about understanding the distinct merits of young and old, a variety of colors and both genders and then making hiring and team composition decisions on the value of each and the requirements of the role regardless of the candidate’s age, race or gender.

Resistance to Change

Most people like the familiar. No wonder why 1 out of 2 freshmen attend a college within 100 miles from home. The irony of resistance and change is that implementing change is in the leader’s job description!

Leaders must embrace change rather than resisting it yet resistance to change is real and occurs in every continent across the globe. That’s why leading diverse teams to move in the same direction as the leader when the leader is afraid to change can be so challenging. Tolerance for change varies among leaders.

We are creatures of habit. Loss of control, breaking the routine, fear of the unknown and elements of surprise are all reasons why leaders fear change. There is however, a direct correlation between one’s ability to lead and developing a comfort level with these former reasons why leaders resist change:

So, how do you develop a diversity strategy that gets results? The companies with the most effective diversity programs take a holistic approach to diversity by following these guidelines:

• Link diversity to the bottom line.
• When exploring ways to increase corporate profits, look to new markets or to partnering with your clients more strategically.
• Consider how a diverse workforce will enable your company to meet those goals.
• Think outside the box.
• Match leaders to the types of challenges they relish.

At a Fortune 500 manufacturing company, Hispanics purchased many of the products. When the company hired a Director of Hispanic Markets, profits increased dramatically in less than one year because of the targeted marketing efforts.

Commit to the best

Use relevant examples to teach small groups of people how to resolve conflicts and value diverse opinions helps companies far more than large, abstract diversity lectures. For any training to be effective it needs to emphasize the importance of diverse ideas as well. Workers care more about whether their boss seems to value their ideas rather than if they are part of a group of all white males or an ethnically diverse workforce.

In addition, train leaders to move beyond their own cultural frame of reference to recognize and take full advantage of the productivity potential inherent in a diverse population. How can you provide age-diverse work group training at your company?

Find winners and recruit them to your team. Search for those characteristics and deliverables. Please do not let your applicant tracking software give you just skill sets without imagination and experience. That’s just lame.

Acting as a team player rather than an autocratic dictator, having effective interpersonal and non-verbal communication skills, along with the ability to receive critical feedback and engaging in storytelling can be excellent ways to forge and bring a diverse team to high levels of sustainable productivity. Winners deliver. Winners teach, share and mentor. You can have it all if you start with the strategy of recruiting winners to your diverse team and its mission.

Measure your results. Conduct regular organizational assessments on issues like pay, benefits, work environment, management and promotional opportunities to assess your progress over the long term. Keep doing what is working and stop doing what is not working. How do you measure the impact of diversity initiatives at your organization?

Create internal and market-related case studies. Problem. Methods we used. Results.

Cited sources:

https://www.lifehack.org/785437/people-management

Age-diverse work groups and productivity: a long-content slide deck by Joe Slade © 2018.

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