Due to increasing globalisation, large number of the organisations faces the vicious competitions and they are collaborating with others in a complicated atmosphere. Such kind of environment basically comprises of diverse teams. In the past few years the concept of diverse teams has got approved and welcomed by various companies. Diverse teams refer to teams with members of unlike characteristics such as social and cultural background, nationality, ethnicity, gender, age group, educational background etc. This only means teams consisting of members having divergent skills, distinct ideas and independent thought process (Ginkel & Knippenberg, 2013).
A diverse team achieves highest efficiency when individual skill and all creative ideas of all the team members are merged and integrated. The team leader is responsible for integrating the skills of each member within a team. So it is very significant for the team leader to learn the procedure of effective integration of skills within a diverse team. In order to lead a diverse team the leader should potentially inspire and positively motivate its team members by interacting with them and ultimately lead the team towards the achievement of the mutual goal. The concept of Transformational Leadership will be an aid for this type of leadership. Transformational leadership encourages the leader to combine his strategy with the vision of that organization. For any industry, managing a diverse team is a challenge as well as the most important skill for the manager of the industry. The basic four elements of transformational leadership that the manager needs to implement are refined motivation, perfect influence, cerebral stimulation and consideration for individual (Ellwart, Bündgens, & Rack, 2013).
Perfect influence describes charm and passion of the leader. It is the leader’s personality and charm that creates a driving force within his team. The leader becomes the role-model for all his team members. It designates the managers who are impeccable and role models for his associates. Managers having idealized influence can be respected and relied by his colleagues while making any decision for the organization. Refined motivation recounts managers who motivate his team members and associates to achieve the organizational goal. The team spirit is encouraged by the managers in order to attain the desired growth. Cerebral stimulation explains managers who inspire and encourage its associates to innovate and creatively challenge the traditional perspective and understanding of an individual or group. They encourage the team members to think critically in order to solve organizational problems more efficiently. Individual consideration denotes managers who function like mentors and advisors to their colleagues. They motivate other people of the organization to work together in order to achieve the target. Thus, a leader surely needs to have different leadership aspects to manage diverse teams (Yeager & Nafukho, 2012).
To combat the threat of diverse teams, managers must follow certain principles as listed:-
Don’t be partial- According to a study; one out of three employees complains that their manager is partial. Some managers cannot understand that everybody is working and contributing in a team. Differentiation and discrimination leads to undesired results and problems within a team.
Give feedback- All the members of the diverse team should interact with each other and give feedback to generate productive results for the organisation.
Understand the culture- In order to understand a team member from a different cultural background a manger needs to work on it. It is not an easy task and consumes a lot of time.
Use of Social tools – In case of a diverse team it is very important to share the information and knowledge with the other team members. Social media can play a major role by helping in operating and controlling internal and private information sharing.
Have an open-door policy- A leader should be open to listen to all the problems of the team members. As diverse team consists of various type of people, some issues are commonly become an important problem for the entire group. The group leader should handle these problems in a flexible manner.
Handling conflict and building work culture- Among a diverse team, conflict arises and the leader should handle it efficiently. A common workplace culture should be developed in order to avoid conflict within an organisation (Lloyd & Härtel, 2010).
As an example, the diverse team of Nokia can be taken into consideration. In 2011, a diverse team of Nokia which had 13 people of different age group, gender nationality and educational background. Being a multinational company it adopted the idea of diverse team for the sustainable growth and development of the organization.
In conclusion it can be said that the diverse teams brings out better outcome compared to the homogenous team. The effectiveness of a diverse team will be highest only when the team leader understands the team members and motivate them to work together in order to achieve organizational goal.
References:
Ginkel, W. P., & Knippenberg, D. (2013). Diversity mindsets and the performance of diverse teams. Organizational behavior and human decision processes , 121 (2), 183 – 193.
Lloyd, S., & Härtel, C. (2010). Managing Diverse Work Teams Well. Journal of Managerial Psychology , 25 (8), 845 – 875.
Ellwart, T., Bündgens, S., & Rack, O. (2013). Managing knowledge exchange and identification in age diverse teams. Journal of Managerial Psychology , 28 (7/8).
Yeager, K. L., & Nafukho, F. M. (2012). Developing diverse teams to improve performance in the organizational setting. European Journal of Training and Development , 36 (4).
Leading in Changing world 