Chapter 6 |

FORMING YOUR TEAMTECHNOPRENEURSHIP | LUIS G. SISON

“The success of any kind of social

epidemic is heavily dependent

on the involvement of people

with a particular set of social

gifts.”

- Malcolm Gladwell

Why Productive Teams Have 3

Kinds Of Diversity

There are many different kinds of diversity. Here are a few you likely

haven’t considered–and how they considerably help your work.

Here’s the bad news: People hire people who are identical to them.

Here’s the good news: Working with people who aren’t identical to

you is good for you work.

How so? A growing body of research shows that diversity–in gender,

thinking styles, and intro- and extroversion–is needed for teams to

be their most productive.

Writing at 99u, Christian Jarrett, the psychologist-turned-writer

behind the British Psychological Society’s superlative Research

Digest blog, helps us to see why.

Why Productive Teams Have 3 Kinds Of Diversity

The best teams have men and women

Jarrett references a Credit Suisse analysis of almost 2,400 international companies that

found that companies with at least one woman on their board tend to be the

strongest performers–the authors say that the non-homogenous groups had a better

balance of leadership skills.

If you’ll forgive some brief editorializing, it’s woeful that one woman might count as

diverse–like Warren Buffett said before, the less gender balance a group has, the less

its capacity.

This has been shown in research: A 2011 study showed that teams with a 50-50

balance of dudes and ladies did best in a business venture. Why? Because they were

doing more “mutual monitoring”–that checking to make sure everyone’s doing their

job.

Why Productive Teams Have 3 Kinds Of Diversity

You need introverts and extroverts

The loudest person in the room isn’t necessarily the one with the best

ideas, Quiet author Susan Cain has told us.

A UCLA study showed something similar. Groups of students–both

introverts and extroverts–worked on projects over 10 weeks. Perhaps

predictably, the extroverts were esteemed at the onset for their brash

influence, but by the end people cared more for the introverts. With

longevity, status equalizes.