Diversity > Homogeneity
Lessons
The best candidate is the one that brings fresh ideas to your team
Diversity of perspective will lead to innovation and unreplicable advantages
Build a strong team by emphasizing team commitments and goals over individual ones
Definitions
Diversity is an incredibly sensitive topic, so first let me define diversity as it will be discussed in this article. Diversity = Variety of perspective. Though the protected classes contribute largely to our individual perspectives, our perspectives are not formed solely by these things. Therefor, we will discuss the broadest, least specific definition of diversity I can think of in order to maximize the value of this post. Diversity = Variety of perspective.
When the topic of diversity in the work place comes up in group conversation, there is almost inevitably the argument that is something along the lines of, “Shouldn’t we just hire the best person for the job?”. Most people would agree that objectively, the answer is yes. We all want to hire the best person for the job. But having previously had this thought myself, too often we stop there and fail to think critically about what “best” actually means.
Is “best” the person that satisfies the most bullets in the job description?
Is “best” the person with the most years of experience?
Went to the best school?
Worked for the best company?
Best fits the company culture?
Is asking the least amount of money?
Has the most growth potential?
This is not an easy question to answer, there are almost an endless number of factors to consider when making a hiring decision, and ultimately it will come down to how your organization, and how you as a leader, decides to define “best”. Here is mine:
Best person for the job = the person that can satisfy the highest priority needs of the team in a way that is not already present. First off, this means you need to define and prioritize what the team you’re hiring for needs. When asked to do this, most people jump straight to skills, but I would argue that a particular set of skills is rarely the actual highest priority need of a team, unless qualified applicants are incredibly scarce - like, say, lion tamers. Usually though, you’re going to have a decent pool of people who apply for the job who either (A) Already possess competitive amounts of the required skill or (B) Have the ability to acquire competitive amounts of the required skill with some coaching (which is your job as a leader). With a little digging and critical thinking, what I find for most teams I’ve worked with is they actually have the same need: innovation, out of the box thinking, fresh ideas. Almost anyone can learn almost any skill with some coaching - unique perspectives and fresh ideas are much more scarce and in demand.
Value of Diversity
This brings us to the value of diversity (variety of perspective). Though I would argue that concept of boxes is possibly the worst way to think about human beings, I’ll briefly use this familiar imagery to more easily illustrate diversity’s value. When you hire people that all come from the same “box” you’re going to get inside-that-box thinking. These will be the same ideas, solutions, and approaches that you’ve always gotten, and thus the same results. If you have a team that all come from the same or similar boxes, and it hasn’t hit a performance plateau, it’s going to very soon. When you hire for diversity, or people from many different and varying “boxes”, you suddenly break out of the box your team was stuck in. You’ll be getting new unique ideas no one would have thought about previously because no one has that perspective or experience to allow them to get at the problem from that angle. You’ll be boxing problems like Mike Tyson. You’ll be able to box up your stagnation and throw it out. You’ll be…ok I’ll stop. Unique experiences and perspectives create unique ideas. Unique ideas, innovation, make organizations highly competitive and incredibly difficult to compete against. See where I’m going with this?
But don’t just take my word for it. Diversity is a topic that has been heavily studied, and it’s value has been heavily reinforced by those studies. For example:
A McKinsey report from 2015 studied 366 companies and found that the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean, and those in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15% more likely to have returns above the industry mean.*
A Credit Suisse article cites a report of theirs that found that “large-cap companies with at least one woman on the board have outperformed their peer group with no women on the-board by 26% over the last six years”.*
In a study published in “Innovation: Management, Policy & Practice”, the authors analyzed levels of gender diversity in R&D teams from 4,277 companies in Spain. Using statistical models, they found that companies with more women were more likely to introduce radical new innovations into the market over a two-year period.*
Diversity in Action
But here’s the struggle - diversity can make team building more difficult. It’s easy to communicate on the same wave length as people who share your background and perspective because you speak the same language. The more different someone is from you, the harder it is to communicate because you're using, both figuratively and sometimes literally, a different language. But when, as a leader that’s read all my articles :), you have the skills to foster teamwork on a diverse team, you’ll get to watch the sparks fly, the magic happen, the rubber meet the road, (insert other cheesy metaphor).
One of the easiest and lowest-barrier-to-entry strategies for building teamwork, especially on a diverse team, is to focus them on team goals and commitments, and de-emphasize the focus on individual goals and commitments (in the team setting). Then, reinforce this focus through constant reiteration of team commitments over individual commitments, praise people who exhibit this focus, coach people that don’t, and you’ll see that magic in no time.
Diversity of Skill Level
I want to specifically highlight one form of diversity that I believe gets overlooked too often when building or adding to teams - skill level. A team whose members all share a lower skill level, often but certainly not always seen as less experience, can be very time consuming and exhausting to coach. You’ll spend most of your time building very basic skills with them and that takes time and more importantly repetition. If you have a team that consists solely of people who are highly skilled, you’ll probably have some that are looking for leadership experience, but without lower skilled, less experienced people, it will be difficult to find those opportunities for them.
This is where the value of diversity in skill level kicks in. With a skill-level-diversified team, the lower skilled, less experienced members are able to glean lessons and knowledge from those that are higher skilled and more experienced. In the case of less experience specifically, they are also able to lend a fresh perspective and creative new ideas as they’re not bogged down by years of repetition and reinforcement. Likewise, the higher skilled members will be able to exercise their leadership skills, assuming they want to, and coach and mentor the lesser skilled team members. Even if they don’t overtly coach them, the higher skilled members will, by a sort of osmosis, knowledge share naturally with the others. You keep the higher skilled members challenged and you get to invest early and for less money in lower skilled, less experienced people and watch them grow and develop into huge assets for the company. It’s a win-win-win.
Conclusion
Remember, Diversity = Variety of perspectives. Think creatively about how to find that variety. This could be people from different locations, different career backgrounds, different hobbies, different attitudes - people that are different. Differences make us unique. They give us unique perspective, allow us to have unique ideas, and help us generate unique solutions to unique problems. Things that are unique are hard to replicate. If you embrace these differences, your organization and your team will thrive and find unique success, helping you to pull away from the competition.
Lead Happy (and diverse)!
*Study found via McKinsey article, “Why Diverse Teams are Smarter”