There is somewhat of a common misconception in many organisations currently:
Put a diverse group of people together, call them a team, and better performance will naturally emerge.
It’s true that diversity creates the potential for better outcomes. But it doesn’t guarantee it.
In fact, undervalued diversity can lead to disengagement, low morale, decision making paralysis, and high turnover. Without attention paid toward team culture and effective team support systems, diverse teams can underperform compared to more homogeneous ones.
Consider the most diverse team in an organisation represented in figure 1.1 below:
A Project Delivery Team.
Often, a Delivery Team is formed at speed and is a conglomerate of contractors, consultants, vendors and full-time employees. Team members are often in diverse locations, are often part-time or spread across multiple work packages and generally have an incredibly wide variety of work experiences, backgrounds and capability.
And projects fail, often.
Working with the sponsors of a large risk transformation program a little while ago, they were visibly frustrated with a Delivery Team’s lack of progress towards what they thought were achievable targets.
One leader commented:
“We have pulled together a group of highly skilled, well paid, extremely experienced people and have given them great direction with a significant budget. This is our #1 priority. Our everyday disciplines, governance and reporting is robust, and my door is always open to help solve problems. Yet, I am currently at a loss to understand why we are not achieving what we thought we could…”
What was missing from their Program was time and energy focusing on developing that diverse Delivery Team to behave as a team. Without that deliberate effort, the team was:
- Struggling with communication.
- Avoiding accountability.
- Failing to curate personalised everyday teamwork practices.
- Avoiding healthy conflict.
- Feeling pressure to assimilate rather than contribute authentically.
- Missing opportunities to celebrate and promote achievements.
Spending time with the Delivery Team outside of the cut and thrust of everyday delivery activity, they were given the opportunity to understand, embrace and put in place plans to utilise their diversity.
- They set goals around their culture becoming more collaborative.
- They placed higher value on communicating and contributing.
- They began choosing to start with a positive mindset.
- They identified what it meant to have a collaborative Leadership Style.
Simply put, they got to know and appreciate each other above and beyond a name on a kanban board.
And the Program is turning for the better.
- Deliverables are beginning to be celebrated.
- Problems are being identified in real time, with an emphasis placed on accountability and proactive decision making.
- Reds and Ambers on status reporting is trending towards Green,
- Planning for expected high staff turnover has evolved to future activity planning and forecasting with more confidence.
The importance of team diversity is being recognised by people leaders, but there is a need to do more than just putting the people together. Effort to explicitly champion diversity and its positive performance benefits is the next step, and we can help.
Workspring specialises in providing health checks for Delivery Teams and Development programs focused on the understanding and embracing a team’s culture, values, virtues and styles.