Sir George Buckley, who wrote the foreword to Leadership for Engineers, values diversity of backgrounds and ideas: “I really loved the idea of contributions from people who…didn’t think like me. They had different perspectives on the same things and I thought ‘that’s interesting, I’ve never thought about it that way.’”
We saw another kind of diversity in a leadership workshop with a group of women professional engineers. We conducted an experiment based on learning styles, one of the measures of self-knowledge.
Before the workshop, each participant was assessed using the Kolb Learning Styles Inventory. Women with the same learning style were grouped together and given a problem to address. Results varied: One group finished in five minutes; another didn’t reach any conclusion in the half-hour given.
We then put the participants in new groups that had a member with each learning style and assigned a new problem. The difference was dramatic. Not only did all groups complete the assignment, the solutions were better. Diversity improved the speed and quality of results.
How does this example fit with your experience? Do you have diverse workgroups? Are you encouraging diversity in teams to improve performance quality and speed?