Originally posted on September 25, 2023 | By: John Hackston
Teams are important, often essential.
Are you a member of one or more teams at work? If you answered “no,” then you are in the minority compared to most workers. In recent research by the careers site Zippia, more than 50 percent of workers in the United States said that their jobs depended on collaborating, and three-quarters rated teamwork and collaboration as being very important. In the same survey, 86 percent of managers and leaders blamed lack of collaboration as the top reason for workplace failures.
Teams are critical for organizational success, and teams, particularly diverse teams, have advantages over individual workers in terms of factors like innovation. There are of course some situations in which less diverse, more homogeneous teams can outperform more diverse teams. For example, when a team is using existing, set processes to carry out simple tasks in a steady-state environment with low levels of uncertainty and ambiguity.
However, diverse teams perform better where innovation, creativity, or new processes are needed, where the situation is changing, uncertain, or ambiguous, or where more complex responses are required. Today, the business environment for most teams in most organizations is much more likely to be like the second of these alternatives.
Read the full article on diversity in personality types and teamwork here.