Copyright 2003 © by IMD International, Lausanne, SwitzerlandNot be used or reproduced without permission

Managing team diversity

Rhoda Davidson

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Sources of team diversity

• Cultural background• Gender• Age• Thinking style• Profession• Education• Family situation• Work experiences• Life experiences

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Team diversity and performance

Number of teams

PerformanceLow High

Homogeneous teams

Diverse teamsmanaged poorly

Diverse teamsmanaged well

Source: DiStefano & Maznevski (2000) Copyright © IMD

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Exploring diversity with team roles

• Complete the diversity icebreaker survey and score yourself

• If you have time, you can take a look at Joe and Martha’s paper on diverse global teams.

• Wait for further instructions

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Exercise 1: Who are you and how do you compare to them?

• What are the characteristics of your own colour, personally and the way in which you interact with others?

• What are the characteristics of the others’ styles? For example, if your predominant colour is “red” then what are the characteristics of the “blues” and the “greens”? How can this create problems for us?

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Red

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Blue

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Green

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Exercise 2: How can you work together effectively?

• What behaviours can you use in your communications to appeal to others’ styles? Take each other colour separately. For example if your predominant colour is “red” then look at first “blue” and then “green”.

• What do you have to watch for in your style that can create problems for others?

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Dealing with diversity

Destroyers - Show negative stereotyping, mistrust, and as a result, poor

performance

Equalizers- Overlook or suppress differences

Creators- Recognize, accept, nurture and leverage differences to get

high performance

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M.B.I. Gives high performance

Source: DiStefano & Maznevski (2000) Copyright © IMD

MMap

Understand the differences

PersonProfessionFunctionRoleEtc.

BBridge

CommunicateAcross the differences

Approaching with motivationDecentering without blameRecentering to commonalities

IIntegrate

Manage the differences

Building participationResolving conflictsBuilding on all ideas

HighPerformance

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Exercise 3: How can you create value from diversity in your team?

• How can you create value in your team from your different colour characteristics?

• How can you leverage strengths? How can you mitigate weaknesses?

• How are you doing at detecting and resolving conflict?

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Back-up Slides

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Norm table for men and women

NormsN=1378

Blue Red Green

90-100% >42 >37 >35

80-90% 39-41 34-36 31-34

70-80% 36-38 32-33 29-30

60-70% 34-35 30-31 27-28

50-60% 32-33 29 25-26

40-50% 30-31 27-28 23-24

30-40% 28-29 25-26 22

20-30% 25-27 23-24 20-21

10-20% 22-24 20-22 17-19

1-10% <21 <19 <16

Source: Bjorn Z. Ekelund, Human Factors Copyright © IMD