In today's fast-paced and ever-evolving business world, effective team collaboration is crucial for the success of any organization. A group of technical experts, each outstanding in their field, can collectively fail at a project if they cannot figure out how to work well together. Some ways in which collaboration can fail is if teams prioritize results over collective well-being, or if they allow one toxic personality to dominate the group, or if they disperse their efforts in disparate directions without aligning toward a common goal.
How does this happen? In our experience, culture sabotages strategy when leaders fail to recognize the central importance of culture and let it "take care of itself." Many small organizations I worked with over the years relegated their people and culture operations to apps like Zenefits. While the app in itself is a fantastic tool, it cannot be a substitute for proper - read, strategic - management of people and culture. Many large organizations I worked with over the years reminded me that 99% of the time, the people who are there to manage people and culture do so in the name of limiting corporate liability, rather than maximizing organizational and individual employee achievements. There is a better way. By consistently putting people and culture first to execute on a well-devised strategy, we will always improve performance.
Affinity and Diversity
Putting people and culture first requires mastering some basic skills and understanding some basic human realities. No matter what kind of organization you belong to, you are confronted with the interplay of human sameness (affinity) and difference (diversity). Neither is negative or positive per se, but a skillful leader will use both to the organization's advantage.
On one hand, we have a tendency as humans to "flock together" with "birds of a feather," or to hang around with people who are like us. This tendency is the result of a common cognitive bias known as affinity bias. Bias, while negatively connotated as a word, is not a negative thing in itself, it is simply a name for how our brains take shortcuts to process large amounts of information. Affinity bias is our tendency to be more favorable towards people who are like us in some way - without realizing it. In organizations, affinity bias is highly influential at key moments in the talent management lifecycle in organizations like hiring and succession planning. Affinity bias can result in unintended homogeneity within organizations, that is, an organization full of people who resemble each other in key characteristics. This can thwart innovation.
On the other hand, despite the prevalence of affinity bias, organizations are rarely made yp only of people who are similar to each other. There is always a measure of difference, or diversity, in any given workforce. For example, you may be a small, privately owned financial services company with a workforce of 50 people, most of whom are white, middle-class men who went to similar schools. They may be excellent at their jobs and performing well. Yet, behind these cultural similarities, what differences lay hidden? Could there possibly be individuals who are keeping skills, ideas, and energy hidden due to a fear of that difference reflecting negatively on them? What treasures could we unleash if we created an environment that valued differences instead of ignored or suppressed them? Research and practice both show that valuing human differences helps organizations go from good to great.
Valuing Human Differences: How?
To build an organizational culture that values human differences, we start with the simple idea that cultural diversity is an inherent and valuable condition of all organizations. This doesn't mean you have the right mix of people in your organization at the current moment, but you won't know that until you examine what diversity you do have.
Why should you care about diversity? Human differences in the workforce are important because they are the proven source of innovation and growth. Research clearly shows that homogeneous organizations do not achieve the same great outcomes that heterogeneous organizations achieve. We know that working well together with people who are different from us fosters creativity and innovation, allowing us to be more than the sum of our parts.
In other words, we need difference in our organizations to achieve great results. The good news is, we have – right now – differences in our organizations that we can start working with with, today. Diversity is both an inherent condition AND a desired outcome to achieve in any organization, but we don't have to wait. We can get started right now.
We begin where we are - by assessing and developing the core skill of human interaction: intercultural competence. This is a technical term for the ability to shift perspective and adapt behavior when confronted with any form of human difference. For example, in the small financial services organization, there were a few brilliant minds who had come from atypical schools, a few people with specialized skills from outside the U.S., and several highly skilled women. However, because the ways of working were so heavily dominated by the majority, the unique contributions of these minority identities were not being maximized. Not only was there no ill intent on anyone's part, but only a few people (HR practitioners and executives) could realize that they were missing out on the contributions of their top talent due to a culture of assimilation. Once they received assessments and training to increase their intercultural competence, they became more aware of the gaps in front of them and excited about working to close these gaps.
Intercultural competence - the ability to see things from another perspective and to adapt behavior accordingly - this is the skill you and your managers need right now to begin recognizing and leveraging the cultural diversity currently present in your organization, We develop the skill by working on our "cultural intelligence," or our ability to understand our own and others' cultures and shift our behavior in ways that make everyone more productive. Where do we start? With curiosity, excitement, and empathy.
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