Research has consistently shown that diverse teams produce better results, provided

they are well led. The ability to bring together people from different backgrounds,
disciplines, cultures, and generations and leverage all they have to offer, therefore, is a
must-have for leaders (Ibarra and Hansen 2011: 71).

First, it is essential to define the concepts of Leadership and Team diversity. According to Yukl
leadership is defined as the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what
needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts
to accomplish shared objectives. Team diversity can be defined as differences between
individuals on any attribute that may lead to the perception that another person is different from
the self (Sage 2013).
Due to globalization, workplace diversity is found to be one of the most important challenges
faced by todays managers and leaders in any organisation. For instance, a diverse team
contain members with different gender, race, culture, age, ethnicity and other characteristics.
(Harrison,

Price, & Bell, 1998). According to me, Diversity in team is regarded as two sides of a

coin where one side makes positive impacts on performance of organisation and other side
makes negative impacts on relationships. A diverse team can only work well and efficiently if
they are led by a good leader. If they are not led by a good leader, it brings tension and conflict
in an organisation.
In 2002, Barclays bank acquired a major stake of Absa bank in Africa. HR director of Barclays
Africa and Middle East, William Gibbon observed around 15% of group workforce i.e. around
12000 people were sitting in Africa. Barclays was struggling to attract talent and investment
around that time. They had around 80% of members as UK ex-pats in Africa. Gibbon sat down
with top team and devised a plan to bring Barclays successfully in Africa. He made tremendous

changes in executive team of Barclays. He brought many African people and removed UK expats. He played a key role in creating space for people to grow and space for other leaders to
lead. Barclays was the only organisation around that time that was successful across Africa that
got partnership agreements with 12 different unions. (Pollitt, 2006)
I picked Barclays as example as Barclays is an organisation that got success in Africa
practising team diversity. Homogenous team can never adapt to different cultures need. They
are not successful in a long run as they lack in thinking differently. Heterogeneous team always
provides different range of ideas and solutions for a given problem in any organisation. Targets
can be achieved efficiently with diverse teams when following factors are present. (Lazear
1998)

Team members should have range of skills and abilities.

All skills and abilities must be relevant to each other.

Communication is important for knowledge transfer and to perform tasks assigned.

The basic strategies which are used by leaders to make use of full potential of diverse team in
an organisation are
1. Understanding nature of creative problem solving
Innovation process in an organisation is not always good. At times it is messy, non-linear
and irregular. During that time, leader should step back and give diverse team the time and
space necessary to work out things in their own way. (Hcareers 2012)
2. Pushing the team
Its human nature to gravitate toward people who share their views, opinions etc. But for
benefits of workplace diversity, leader should create cross disciplinary teams that cut across

departments, social groups and cliques. The true meaningful innovation can take place in
this type of environment only. (Hcareers 2012)
3. Cultivating culture in an organisation which is open to new ideas
If new ideas are not welcomed then the most diverse team will not be able to innovate and
sustain in an organisation. If a company has traditional, hierarchical structure and culture,
subordinates take some time to feel comfortable and exercise the problem solving skills. A
leader can speed up this process by praising and respecting staffs input, feedback and
suggestions. (Hcareers 2012)
4. Planning how to overcome conflict
We all know new ideas are borne out of the clash of different opinions and thinking in an
organisation. This often results to conflicts in a diverse workplace. A leader must plan to
settle this conflict in a peaceful way. Leader can give training to staffs on basis of effective
cross cultural communication. (Hcareers 2012)
I can conclude that heterogeneous (diverse) team produce better results compared to
homogenous team for an organisation. Also diverse teams efficiency is optimum only when
they have a good leader to manage and led. Thus leader must have ability to integrate and
bring together skills of all employees from different cultures, ethnicity, beliefs and thinking for
attaining optimum efficiency of an organisation.
References
1. Harrison, D. A., Price, K. H., & Bell, M. P. (1998). Beyond relational demography: Time
and the effects of surface- and deep-level diversity on work group cohesion. Academy of
Management Journal, 41, 96-107.

2. Hcareers (2012) How Does Workplace Diversity Impact Team Performance? - Hcareers.
[online] Available at:
http://www.hcareers.com/us/resourcecenter/tabid/306/articleid/327/default.aspx
[Accessed: 19 Feb 2014].
3. Lazear, E. P. 1998. Personnel economics for managers. New York: Wiley.
4. Pollitt, David. (2006). Diversity in the Workforce.14th Vol. Bradford, GBR: Emerald Group
Publishing Ltd. p16-17.
5. Sage Journals (2013) Considering diversity: The positive effects of considerate
leadership in diverse teams [online] available
fromhttp://gpi.sagepub.com/content/16/1/105.full.pdf+html [19 February 2014]
6. Yukl, G. (2010) 7th edn. Leadership in Organizations. N.J.: Pearson Higher Education