Free Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations by Rich Karlgaard, Michael S. Malone Page B

not be able to, as usual, leave them be. Rather, an external manager will be required to provide regular oversight. 23
    Besides increasing the quality and participation of direct management, you will also need to be constantly vigilant against a number of threats to the team’s continued existence. These threats include the following:
    Turnover
    Turnover is a problem in groups in which the members perceive each other as too different. The added stress of dealing with the “other” will drive some people to seek the safety of being with people more like themselves in other teams. The best way to counter this centrifugal force is to foster social identity —that is, to cultivate the process by which a person’s self-concept becomes derived from his or her membership in the group. Social identities—team titles, stories, recognitions, shared adventures, and so forth—build members’ loyalty to the team and serve as social glue in groups that would otherwise explode. Experiments show that people who highly identify with their team express a stronger desire to remain in that team despite the presence of an attractive exit option. 24
    Framing
    Framing is how a potential challenge or opportunity is presented to team members in relation to their overall project. Thus, how the challenge of workforce diversity is framed by the team leader will affect how team members manage diversity-related tensionsand whether this diversity will enhance or detract from the group’s functioning effectively. In 2001, the Harvard researchers Robin Ely and David Thomas studied three professional service firms and found that each dealt with diversity with a different way of framing the challenge:
    •        The integration and learning perspective —the first company framed diversity as a mechanism for helping teams enhance their capacity for adaptive change. (“Your differences in experience will help us to react quickly to a rapidly changing marketplace.”)
    •        The access and legitimacy perspective —the second company framed diversity as a way to better connect with an increasingly diverse marketplace. (“Your differences in cultural backgrounds will help us understand the global marketplace.”)
    •        The discrimination and fairness perspective —the third company framed diversity as a means to ensuring fair and equal treatment of all. (“Our differences ensure that there will be no bias against anyone.”)
    According to Ely and Thomas, only the integration and learning perspective provided the necessary rationale and guidance for harnessing significant benefits from diversity. By comparison, the discrimination and fairness perspective, while sounding noble, had little effect on performance. And the access and legitimacy perspective actually proved to be destructive, by creating the perception of a status hierarchy. In other words, frame the value of your team’s diversity as a matter of staying competitive and emerging victorious. They are in it to win, not to feel better.
    Belief
    Research has found that teams with prodiversity beliefs are better at harnessing the power of their own diversity. That is, if theybelieve that their diversity is a competitive advantage, it will usually turn out to be so. Why this self-fulfilling prophecy? Because the believers are willing to engage in more sharing of information and perspectives—and that sharing ultimately pays off. 25
    In a test of this theory, multiple four-person teams (each composed of two men and two women) were persuaded of either the value of diversity or the value of similarity for group performance. They then were provided with either homogenous (every member got the same) information or heterogeneous (everyone got different) information. Each team was then tasked to generate, discuss, and select as many useful items for survival in the desert, based on the information and rules provided to them.
    The result? The diversity beliefs of the teams