Embrace Diversity to Build Effective Teams, Essay Example

Summary

Dr. Marilyn Manning argues that effective teams are not random outcomes but require proper planning because team members have diverse characteristics and backgrounds and team members are often inherited rather than chosen. Dr. Manning suggests approaching the task of team development just like a project, thus, planning should include certain tasks such as defining desired outcomes, setting measurable goals, designing game plan, setting benchmarks and deadlines, and keeping everyone focused on same objectives (Katzenback & Smith, 1993).

Dr. Manning emphasizes the fact that teams are not the same thing as groups because groups may not always have cohesion among members while teams have. Members pursue their own agenda in groups but they are focused on mutual goals in teams. Diverse teams have become even more common due to globalization but organizations should not see them as merely a reality but instead treat them as assets because diversity brings richness to teams. Dr. Manning provides several guidelines regarding forming effective diversity teams first of which is to identify common values that are important to team members and engage team members on the importance of those values. The next stage is to identify behaviors that may enforce those values as well as behaviors that may undermine the values (Katzenback & Smith, 1993).

Dr. Manning argues that setting values and ground values makes it easy to manage teams including building teamwork, resolving interpersonal conflicts, and keeping the team members on track. Dr. Manning also suggests as fewer values as possible and advises the leader to be highly engaged with the process. The benefit of engaging the team members in setting values is that it also motivates team members to take ownership of the decisions reached (Katzenback & Smith, 1993).

Personal Opinion

Dr. Manning’s suggestions make sense because one of the idea behind teams is that individuals can accomplish more if they work together rather than on their own and unless they have a strong working relationship, they may simply be engaging in personal politics and wasting team’s resources. Individuals in teams come from diverse backgrounds and often have distinct personalities. Thus, one effective strategy is to emphasize the common things among the members instead of the differences, to encourage cooperative behavior. Similarly, setting ground rules and norms create an environment of equity and accountability. Moreover, by engaging team members in setting acceptable behavior and rules, the leader also increases the team members’ commitment to the group’s rules and norms.

But there is one serious shortcoming of this article. The authors’ assume that team members may always have some common values and while this may be quite probable in situations where team members come from the same culture or ethnic background, the differences between cultures in terms of values and norms can often be quite huge. In addition, if teams composed of diverse members are small in size, it may even be more difficult to find common values and norms. The authors don’t offer suggestion for scenarios like these as they may become quite common in the age of globalization if they had not already. It is possible that the authors’ didn’t foresee all the trends resulting from globalization as this article was written in early 1990s. The diversity of teams has also increased because internet technologies make it possible to form teams with geographically-isolated members.

Reference

Katzenback, J., & Smith, D. (1993). The wisdom of teams: Creating the high performance organization. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.