If diversity is the answer, what is the question?

Valuing diversity is unmistakably one of the dominant themes of our times. I was asked recently why I had not blogged on this topic before. I thought I had, but found I had not. This request was not challenging the moral value of respecting people's differences, but rather wondering why it is so popular to see it as the solution to every problem. There is a frustration by thoughtful people that diversity is almost always, without question, viewed as THE ANSWER to every question. 

So, I was asked to ponder, "is it really?"

Diversity is one of the topics that I taught in management classes at the university level. Its an important topic, not because valuing diversity is viewed as "politically correct," but because the way groups of people handle differences in their members affects their effectiveness. This is what people who study diversity want to find out, "does diversity make teams and broader organizations more effective?" In what way does diversity alone make things better? I think this is what many decent, thoughtful ponderers want to know. When diversity is thrown around everywhere as THE ANSWER, should we not better understand the question to which it is the answer?

When I began my lecture on diversity, I would ask each student to look around them at all the other students, then list ways in which the class was diverse (students were different). Invariably the students would list, sex, race, age, looks, height, weight, hair color, hair styles, etc. No one noticed diversity of personality, ability, experience, values, biases, experiences, and such. Are these differences unimportant? No, they are just UNNOTICED. In fact, if I put together a team to accomplish a task, these unnoticed differences would matter more in the team's effectiveness than what the students' listed as their sense of diversity. 

At least, that is what the research on diversity has found. The first list is called "observable diversity." The second list is called "unobservable diversity." In summary, research has found that in the initial moments people are asked to work together, observable diversity is not helpful. In fact, observable differences create emotional barriers to cooperation and collaboration because of social categorization and social attraction (stereotyping). Yet at the same time, unobservable diversity helps tasks that involve information processing, such as decision-making, because diverse views create more options to choose from.

Given sufficient time and relationship building opportunities, the emotional conflicts attributed to observable diversity are mitigated and the team becomes more effective when unobservable diversity is high. Thus, when the question is asked, "does a diverse team perform better than a more homogeneous team?", the answer is best understood by the diversity we do not obviously see. Given time and greater inter dependency in tasks, teams where individuals are different in ways we do not see is preferred.

Whereas, observable diversity gets all of the headlines and attention by social fairness minded people, visible differences in people are not what makes groups of people more effective. In reality, the diversity the culture values can be harmful, not helpful to higher performance.

If diversity is the answer and success is the question, look beyond what is politically correct about diversity and value the diversity that really matters!

That's how I ponder diversity and encourage others to do so too ....