2. The challenge of managing diverse teams

If you ask what kinds of food do you like in an international student class, what answer will you get from them? A variety of different answers will drown you out. And THAT is the diverse team. You will never know what the answer you will get.

So, what kind of food do you like?

 

Diverse team is composed by a variety of people, who are from different cultures and growth backgrounds. They bring out the new ideas by the differentiation of their experiences and perceptions, moreover they are able to comprehensive consider for covering issues.

The diverse team delivers better works (Patrick and Kumar 2012). The statement has been proved by researchers, but why? In order to manage a diverse team efficiently, knowing the advantages of diverse team will be the first step moreover using these strengths achieves an outstanding managing. In advantages, the different views from different culture background members could provide the various information import and ideas which build a strong foundation for solving problems and even improving the quality of answers. A diverse team is more creative than a homogeneous team which has also been proved (Baumgartner 2006). On the other hand, diverse team has some disadvantages. Contradicting opinions make the difficulty of achieving a consensus, which has the possibility for causing miscommunication moreover conflicts further affecting the whole team performance.

The 4 Phases of Tuckman’s Teamwork Theory

Tuckman’s teamwork theory illustrated the link between the team relationship and task focus by a graph, which defied the team working process in 4 stages: forming, storming, norming and performing (The Happy Manager 2016). The theory indicates the importance of team working atmosphere and member’s relationship, and those are great lubricants for group communication.

Lego activity: message delivery from teller to runner

The experience of “Lego” activity in my leadership class gave me a profound experience the challenge of diverse team. Actually my group was not a quite complex language consists (only Thai and Chinese), but we still struggled with communication problem. When we was separated to 3 types of roles: teller, runner and builder and needed to describe the Lego sharp only with “talking”, the communication has been very difficult. Due to the different background and personal understanding, communication does not stand on the same base and language also hindered the accurate level of expression. Even the problem is hard to solve, but we got a much better result when we execute the process again. From this activity, the practice highly improved the group performance. The deeper understanding about the processes of task and even a closer relationship between each member could keep everyone on the same page.

Lego activity: message delivery from runner to builder

In recommendation, a manager who wants to well managing a diverse team has better achieved these points: communicate with examples, always give feedback, link members closely, be open-mind for taking opinions and treat everyone equally (Interactive 2013). Communication is always the biggest problem in a diverse team. The manager should aware miscommunications are easily happened therefore using examples and feedback will be useful options to confirm that members are on the same understanding base.  Building relationship not only has the effect for improving working atmosphere but also deepen the understanding of each member which is positive for avoiding miscommunication.

The final two points are the keys for creating an effective diverse team. The purpose of composing different background people is taking more and more different opinions and ideas in order to select the best solution, and the manager has to create an environment which makes every member feels free to express therefore an open-mind and fairly manager is the best person driving a diverse team.

 

Reference list

• Baumgartner, J. (2006) Why Diversity Is The Mother Of Creativity | Innovation Management[online] available from <http://www.innovationmanagement.se/imtool-articles/why-diversity-is-the-mother-of-creativity/&gt; [12 June 2016]
• Interactive, H. (2013) Top Ten Tips: How To Manage Diverse Teams – Management Today[online] available from <http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1181428/top-ten-tips-manage-diverse-teams/&gt; [12 June 2016]
• Patrick, H. and Kumar, V. (2012) “Managing Workplace Diversity: Issues And Challenges”. SAGE Open2 (2)
• The Happy Manager, (2016) Teamwork Theory | Tuckman’s Stages Of Group Development[online] available from <http://the-happy-manager.com/articles/teamwork-theory/&gt; [2 June 2016]
• Whatishumanresource, (2016) International Recruitment – What Is Human Resource ?[online] available from <http://www.whatishumanresource.com/international-recruitment&gt; [5 June 2016]