F. Scott Fitzgerald, author

The recent US election is a clear example of how polarised our world is becoming.  Social media provides us with more and more of what we tell it is important to us, pushing us further and deeper into our individual confirmation biases. 

How does this spill over into our organisations and our leadership?

'As a leader, being able to genuinely assess information and insights that don't align with our own and to challenge ourselves to change our beliefs on any given topic is crucial to excellence in performance.' 
Martin Moore, Your CEO Mentor, Episode #113
To successfully move beyond our own view of the world and our work, we need to be exposed to a diversity of thought in the first place, and then have effective strategies for really, genuinely leveraging that to improve everything! 

We know that diverse thought is essential for creativity, innovation, planning, stakeholder engagement, decision-making and ultimately, effective organisational outcomes.  Yet, our tendency is to follow the same processes, consult the same people and produce the same kind of results.  To counteract this, you have two main levers: firstly, select and retain a diverse range of team members, and secondly, unlock the diversity that already exists in your team.

Creating a diverse team

You don’t always have the luxury of creating a team from scratch, but you can be conscious of selecting new team members with diversity in mind.  Doing this well requires a deeper dive than merely looking at broad diversity categories. For example, you may seek to achieve gender balance in your team, but if all your male or female staff are from the same age group, racial background and academic training, true diversity hasn’t really been achieved. 

Instead, think about a range of diversity dimensions and how you can hire to increase true diversity in your team, in a number of different areas.

Another strategy when that isn’t possible is to borrow others from across your organisation or externally for particular projects.  Even just bringing in people with a different perspective or background for early project conversations can be highly effective in generating new approaches.

Unlocking existing diversity

Martin Moore notes it is absolutely foundational for building high performing teams to harness the different experiences and viewpoints you already have.  This gives you instant access to a wide range of inputs to inform any decision you might be grappling with.  He also offers some useful and practical tips for doing this well, which I have adapted and blended with my own thoughts below:

Your team know whether or not you really have an appetite to hear what they have to say, or if you're just going through the motions. Unless they believe that you are open to their ideas, willing to be challenged and curious about doing things differently they are unlikely to speak up.  I have seen many leaders asking for contributions from their team but then push back and defend their original position.  To demonstrate that you want to hear: 1.  Listen carefully, ask clarifying questions and summarise what you have heard 2.  Invite each person to contribute 3.  Use open questions to help them turn a random idea into a valuable contribution 4.  Check yourself regularly to ensure that you are willing to shift your position

Value information on its merits 

Be aware that you have unconscious and cognitive biases at work and that it is easy to put other’s contributions through your filters, discarding contrary information. This can also prevent you from seeing how  one person's contributions can be synthesised with other information to create new possibilities.  This requires sensitivity to ensure the person  contributing feels that their ideas have been confirmed.  To counteract bias ask yourself:   1.  Could this be true?2.  What if it were true? 3.  How would it change my current position? 4.  How does this viewpoint interact with the data I already have? 5.  How would I use this new information to adapt or modify my existing view?

Set the expectation that team discussions are not a spectator sport and that everyone has a valuable perspective to add, but not necessarily every time.  The leadership tension here is to balance the need for consultation with the need to make decisions in an appropriate timeframe. Strategies include: 1.  Encourage consultation and collaboration without treading over the accountable peron's decision rights.2.  Choose who attends a meeting based on their expertise and capability for the specific topic 3.  Create a facilitation process that aims to extract the maximum amount of information in the minimum amount of time, then use that data to shape understanding of the issues and risks and the potential options for resolving them.

Draw out people's differences

A need to maintain team harmony can prevent team members from offering alternate views and squash healthy challenging of ideas. Leaders need to become comfortable with passionate discussions and encourage it by: 1.  Setting a standard of debating issues passionately, but not personally.2.  Coaching your team to get discussion back on track if they become unproductive or hurtful 3.  Acknowledging it when someone is courageous enough to put their opinions out there 4.  Making the best result for the team and the organisation the main thing
What will you do to harness the power of difference in your team?

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