Some teams form around very similar strengths, interests, proprities and thinking styles. Others, and this is often the case the in projects due to their temporary nature, are wildly jumbled together.
Each of these two scanarios can harbour issues. Lets look at the first one: In the first scenario, all may seem well, the team appears coherent and everbody might feel like they are pulling on one string. 'Great minds think alike' is a great English saying and there is much truth in this.
BUT
If you work in a bubble of people who are too similar, you are extremely likely to be less innovative or risk-adverse, miss important aspects, or dream up pipe-dreams that are unrealistic. Forbes magazine writes: 'Studies show that more diverse teams perform better. Setting aside DEI, not considering diversity leaves enterprise performance gains and business success on the table — it’s a neglectful business decision.'
That's because there might be no-one in the group who pushes for the bigger progress, nobody who can see beyond the risk and see the opportunity, you may miss the details of how something might look in 'real life', or even come up with wholly unrealistic unicorn ideas. Any which way, a team that is too samey, runs into deep danger to under-perform.
What can you do?
-> ASSESS the diversity of your team. One way to do that is to understand and explore the cognitive make-up of each team member. This is something I can facilitate for you and I know this has brought huge insights, increased diversity of thought and brought real joy to teams as they understand each other better.
-> ENCOURAGE your team to think beyond their ususal paths. Once you understand your cognitive preferences better, it's a lot easier to know where 'outside my comfort-zone' is. As a team leader, you can encourage thinking beyond the usual space.
-> Intentionally RECRUIT new team members who bring a different cognitive strength to your team. This is a natural way to increase the diversity of thought in a team to enrich thinking. BUT there is a big caution: you can not bring someone int your team who bring a different angle to the whole team's thinking, without everyone being onboard to grow with that difference! If, what will be hugely enriching and powerful, is frowned upon and not met with a really open mind, the person with a different cognitive approach will soon feel lonely, excluded, un-heard and under-valued...eventually, they will leave and your team has not expanded their strength of thought.
So, if you think 'I have no idea how how my team may differ (or not) in their thinking and I certainly don’t know whether we really have diversity of thought', I'd be very happy to talk to you about the process of facilitating this. Just contact me, and I'd be very happy to show you how that is done, and how you could then use this for yourself and your team.
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