Today’s organisations are facing increasingly complex environments, where rapid change is at the forefront and disruptive innovation is an imperative for their survival. This goes beyond product and service innovation; it encompasses marketing, customer value delivery, competition and the reconfiguration of organisational structure and culture.
This environment, where innovation and creativity are essential in organisations, is leaving behind those algorithmic works marked by defined, unambiguous, ordered and finite rules, giving way to heuristic works where finding, discovering and finding will lead us to the resolution of the problem.
This inevitably implies the evolution of the necessary characteristics that a transformer team must have, rendering heterogeneous teams obsolete and giving way to multidisciplinary teams.
But is it enough that these multidisciplinary teams exist in the new organisational environments?
According to Wikipedia one of the definitions of a multidisciplinary team is:
“a group of people, with different academic backgrounds and professional experiences, working together, for a given time, to solve a complex problem, i.e. they have a common goal”.
According to experts, this is not enough, because if we want to achieve truly diverse teams of thought and experience, to enrich decision-making we must promote innovation and stimulate creativity.
We will have to be multidisciplinary and diverse teams in terms of culture, gender, sexual identity, thought, religion, functionality, ethnicity, … because working with people who are different from you challenges your brain to alternative ways of thinking and sharpens your performance.
Diversity in the workplace is not just a trend or a social commitment, it is a business necessity. According to McKinsey & Company’s “Diversity Wins” (2020)report , companies with gender and cultural diversity in their executive teams have better financial performance.
Winning characteristics of diverse teams
As to what are the specific characteristics of a diverse team that are more likely to lead to better performances, different studies conclude:
They focus more on the facts and process them more carefully. This leads them to be more objective and make better decisions. They are not as biased, as they learn to see things from very different points of view and overall more objectively.
They are also more innovative, as studies show that culturally diverse leadership teams are more likely to develop new products or services than more heterogeneous teams.
So what is hindering the faster increase of diversity in organisations?
In my opinion, the biggest enemy is the unconscious biases (preconceived thoughts based only on gender, race, ideology, physical appearance, age, …) so deeply rooted in all areas of organisations and passed down over the years, which are difficult to deal with.
There are some that are better known, such as gender bias, age bias, weight bias, beauty bias, cultural bias or even name bias, but there are many others that are still largely unknown. I share with you some examples of these more unknown biases:
The “Anchoring Effect“, which occurs when the first impression of a person (any information, for example, that they do not have a driving licence) is the only information we use when making a decision.
The “halo and devil effect”, effects related to affinity and confirmation biases. These effects occur when we focus on a positive (halo effect) or negative (devil effect) quality and do not take anything else into account.
I would also like to highlight the following:
“Status Quo Bias”, the bias that “defends our comfort“, that unconsciously watches for things to stay as they are because we tend to feel more comfortable within our comfort zone, with things and people that are more familiar and more relatable to us.
How can we accelerate the mainstreaming of diversity in organisations?
One of the many solutions inevitably involves having more inclusive leaders in organisations. The inclusive leader is characterised by the same skills that I shared with you in the article “Diversity and women’s leadership to face the new environment”, and these are the characteristics that define the leaders of the future.
I remind you of some of the main characteristics of these leaders:
- Oriented towards people regardless of their name, age, gender, appearance, etc.
- Open-mindedness and flexibility to be able to accept, appreciate and adapt to the different ways of doing things in the team.
- More cooperative and inclusive, integrating the whole team in a common strategy.
- With a high emotional intelligence that will allow him/her to be able to face adversities and difficulties that may arise from the different needs of a diverse team.
These inclusive leaders see diversity as a necessity and an opportunity, not as a trend, social compromise or difficulty to overcome.
In conclusion, diversity and inclusive leadership are not just trends, but an imperative in an ever-changing business environment. Multidisciplinary and diverse teams promote innovation and objective decision-making, but we must overcome our unconscious biases. Inclusive leaders, with skills such as open-mindedness and emotional intelligence, are critical to embracing diversity as an opportunity. This transformation is not only a smart choice, it is essential for the success and survival of organisations in the future.
Do you have enough inclusive leaders in your organisation?
