Diversity and Group Dynamics
Shakespeare said “All the world’s is a stage and all the men and women merely players’’. If we think about this quotation we will find that everything in this world needs group work and team players especially the fast growing and dynamic organizations of today. Organizations are groups of people and teams working together to create performance and success. But these teams do not always include members of the same backgrounds, thoughts, skills and abilities.
Teams are diverse and have players from different backgrounds and with different perceptions working closely together. The big question is Does group diversity have an effect on the work performance and employee satisfaction?
One of the most interesting recent findings in the area of work team performance is that the mere presence of diversity between team members such as gender or race can actually cue the team more together as there will certainly be conflict and different opinions within the team but the members will learn to deal with it as they will eventually come to expect it.
This will enhance the team’s ability to deal with conflict that arises within the group, and according to these findings this conflict is what helps the group to work more effectively and innovatively and create more ideas that can enhance the performance of the group, but this does not depend on the mere presence of diversity, but mainly on the group processes and the way a team deals with diversity is what makes good use of conflict, bearing in mind also that the conflict the research is discussing is the conflict of minds and ideas and not the conflict of personality.
Managers can help in reducing personality conflicts and increase the effectiveness of diversity through teams, this starts with the very early step of hiring people. By hiring the right candidate and the person with an attitude and perception that is compatible with the organization’s culture. This will reduce the resistance and the friction that happens when new calibers or players enter the group as new comers.
Role definition is another step towards reducing personality conflict, when roles are clearly defined within the group or the team it can help the members in increasing their performance when they feel they know what they are supposed to do and how their role is helping others achieve the target. This will also increase employee satisfaction stemming from understanding that his/her contribution is making a difference and can see what his/her role is adding to the outcome.
However employees should not keep on playing the same role all the time, as this will kill the innovation and eventually affect the performance. So if managers occasionally switch around these roles, known as job rotation, so that the player who is playing a devil’s advocate becomes a cheer leader for example this will help the team improve the performance, because if he stayed doing the same role every time he will be ignored by the group.
So diversity can be useful, it can help increase the performance of the team players, it can increase satisfaction when people feel they are adding something to the organization, but this depends mainly on how it is managed, and how this diversity is adding to the intellectual capital of the organization.
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