4 steps to building a diverse team


Businesspeople in meeting

Can you feel it? There’s a shift occurring. Businesses are changing from a company-centric view to one where the primary purpose is to add value for their customers. This calls for innovative solutions and ideas, as leaders must look at the challenge in a fundamentally new way.

Steve Denning wrote in a recent Forbes.com article that a discontinuous paradigm shift in management is happening whether managers want it or not. To aid in this shift toward new thinking, leaders are seeking the answers in diversity and creativity.http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/

How do you define diversity?

The process of integrating diversity into an organization is specific to the way a firm is structured. As a leader, you will first need to get everyone on the same page regarding diverse thinking and relationships. For starters, begin by defining “diversity” and then form a well-structured, culturally diverse team.

American social scientist Scott E. Page conclusively argued in his research that a cohesive unit from dissimilar backgrounds will be more effective than a group of highly qualified individuals with the same perspective. This leads to a diverse range of ideas colliding with and feeding off each other, ultimately instigating the formation of strategies that are fresh and complementary to the new business paradigm.

Creativity can be learned

Diversity of relationships and thought in a company goes hand-in-hand with the creativity and innovative capabilities of the workforce. Unfortunately, there is the idea that creativity is endowed from birth — you either have it or you don’t.

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