by Christine Straw In a world faced by increasingly complex challenges, it is commonly accepted that teams with a diversity of members – whether diversity is racial, gender, experiential or professional - can lead to innovative solutions. Team diversity brings a range of knowledge and perspectives that can trigger new ways of thinking. Conversely, diversity has been shown to trigger ‘ingroup’ trust and ‘outgroup’ antagonism, limiting engagement, communications and the opportunity to generate innovative ideas and solutions. What determines whether diversity will lead to innovation or conflict? A recent study (Mitchell & Boyle, 2015) reveals when professional diversity has positive vs. negative effects on innovation. In studying interprofessional healthcare teams, they focused on the role of diversity, professional identity salience and openmindedness norms within teams. Logically, being aware of different professions’ perspectives and being open to learning from people different from oneself should lead to innovation. Indeed, the researchers found that a combination of awareness of professional identity and openmindedness predicted greatest innovation on these teams. They concluded that team diversity leads to innovation by increasing the salience of different possible professional contributions in teams. However, professional salience only benefits diverse teams when they are highly openminded teams, hurting their performance when openmindedness is very low. For most teams that are in the middle range of openmindedness, greater professional diversity and the visibility of that diversity had no effect on their innovation.
While the study was limited in the context it explored, the implications for team leaders and facilitators tasked with leading teams to develop innovative ideas are notable. The greatest potential for innovation is realized when teams are both aware of professional differences and welcome divergent views, are willing to examine and change their own assumptions, and different views can be communicated without restriction.  The study confirms the importance of the time and effort dedicated to increasing openmindedness and the importance of interventions that can accomplish this including the development of a common purpose, cooperative goals and a safe environment, tasks so central to the work of conflict resolvers.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
References:
Mitchell, R., & Boyle, B. (2015). Professional diversity, identity salience and team innovation: The moderating role of openmindedness norms. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36: 873–894. doi: 10.1002/job.2009

Tags: conflict resolution, diversity, leadership, teamwork

Categories: Blog, Uncategorized, Workplace Conflict

Published December 3, 2015