Cultivating the diversity of thought is crucial to a company. There is now considerable scientific evidence for the idea that cognitive or deep diversity - that is, diversity in how people feel, think, and act - has significant benefits for organizations, particularly if it is managed well.
DEI has long been integral to businesses' people strategy, fostering diversity in age, gender, and ethnicity among other demographic characteristics over the years. These elements of diversity are important in any workplace. The advantages of acknowledging cognitive diversity are rapidly gaining recognition as well.
Cognitive Diversity significantly influences an individual's approach to and success in fulfilling their role or job’s assigned tasks. Thus, impacting how teams collaborate and how a business as a whole is able to innovate. Similar to other forms of diversity, it is an essential element contributing to a teams’ success.
Diversity drives organizational growth
Companies with above-average diversity on their management teams reported innovation revenue 19 percentage points higher than that of companies with below-average leadership diversity. Among profitable companies, increasing female representation at board level from zero to 30% delivered a typical firm a 15% increase in profitability.
Cognitive diversity is especially critical when organizations select employees mostly on technical skills, such as with software engineers. Indeed, their ability to perform highly as individual contributors is very much dependent on their technical expertise and IQ. So, often the development of people skills or interpersonal skills is neglected, which are key not just to working with others, but also - and particularly - to managing and leading others.
Four ways to build a cognitively diverse team
1. Hire people different from you, even though it makes your job harder.
People unconsciously prefer those who are similar to themselves: so if you are methodical and analytical, try finding people who complement your talents through creativity and spontaneity. Using personality tests like Deeper Signals identifies your thinking style vis a vis candidates during hiring processes.
2. Broaden and deepen your candidate pool
Rather than competing with companies like yours, target ads in non-traditional talent pools. For example, look for talent from arts and humanities, rather than top technical schools. Or reduce the focus on technical qualifications — after all, Steve Jobs was a drop-out.
3. Extend team thinking
We naturally play to our strengths, which is a means of reinforcing what we already do well. Instead, have the team pair up with people different from themselves and compare approaches to problem solving. Having people play against type is a great way to boost creativity and deepen relationships.
4. Create a safe space for sharing ideas
Foster a psychologically safe culture where expressing divergent opinions is valued. True psychological safety also means challenging the thinking of others (respectfully). In a safe environment people can go beyond the one right answer and generate a range of alternatives.
Harness cognitive diversity with Deeper Signals
You as a leader can help your teams maximize creativity and output by building cognitively diverse teams. This requires commitment and the right tools. Deeper Signals is devoted to providing leaders with the means to create high-performing and cognitively diverse teams. Explore our range of solutions.
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