Leading Diverse Teams

How do you lead diverse teams? This can be a very difficult question to answer and one which is often overlooked, or even ignored by the team leader. In fact, team member diversity itself might not derail the team in the pursuit of its objectives, especially if the level of diversity in the team is either very high or very low; however anything in-between can pose significant challenges for the leader. This is the central theory of an excellent article by Gratton et al, 2007, “Bridging Faultlines in Diverse Teams”, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol 48, No. 4.

Their theory is that strong “faultlines” emerge in a team where there are a few fairly homogenous  subgroups that are able to identify themselves on either a surface level (such as gender, age, nationality) or on a “deeper” level (such as values, personality and knowledge). When there are distinct non-overlapping categories, “faultlines” can become very strong e.g. a team made up of women under 30 years old and men over 50. Faultlines emerge when the team gets to know each others’ similarities and differences and can ultimately inhibit the exchange of knowledge and impede the team’s creative and innovative capacity.

Here’s how to tackle faultlines and lead a diverse team, followed by further implications (“et alors?”):

Leading Diverse Teams

1.       Diagnose the probability of faultlines emerging

It is important to note that faultlines are not a natural result of diversity per se, but are found in situations of moderate diversity, when a team is neither very homogenous nor very heterogeneous in member attributes.

2.       Focus on Task Orientation when a team is newly formed

The natural inclination of leaders to overcome the risk of emerging faultlines is to focus on relationships; however this can exacerbate the problem in the early stages of the team formation. Focusing on the task in the early stages can overcome this.

3.       Later switch to Relationship Orientation

Whilst being task oriented in the early stages can increase team effectiveness, the “deeper” faultlines will eventually emerge. These can only be addressed by relationship orientation which is vital to ensure longer term team effectiveness.

Et alors?

The rhetorical question that the authors pose themselves is “how does a team leader know when to switch from task to relationship orientation”? They suggest that the switch will only be “successful at the point at which the team has sufficient shared experience to have developed a clear protocol for communication and coordination of activities and an established operational structure.” An interpretation of this might be at that point when the team: 1. clearly knows the expectations of the project; 2. have clearly defined roles and tasks; and 3. are communicating regularly in a constructive manner. The authors state that leaders need to be able to answer themselves the question as to when to make the switch based on their team’s needs and characteristics (i.e. it is case specific).

The interesting point for many multinational companies is that faultlines are mostly found where there is “moderate” diversity. It almost appears paradoxical that full diversity might be easier to manage than partial diversity; however if that is the case and given that some diversity is inevitable, then more diversity must be the only solution! Notwithstanding the team members, consider the situation if the majority of team leaders originate from a “fairly homogenous subgroup” having the same education, nationality, approximate age and gender! As the authors state, knowledge transfer can be greatly inhibited along with creativity and innovation. Diversity should therefore not only be considered on a team-by-team basis but on an organization basis including reference to the leaders themselves!