Week 6: Diversity in teams
Introduction
Welcome to Week 6 of the course.
In Week 5, you learnt about effective communication and looked at different techniques for some of the most important aspects of cohesive teamwork, such as giving feedback, resolving conflicts and reaching a consensus with fellow team members.
This week, you will turn your attention to team diversity. There is a growing recognition that diversity within teams can lead to significant advantages, both for team members and the businesses they work for. However, difference can also lead to conflict, and you’ll explore how ‘value diversity’ plays a key role in this.
To begin Week 6 watch the following introduction from Lynne Johnson.
Download this video clip.Video player: wdt_1_week_5_lynne_new.mp4
Transcript
LYNNE:
It's worth taking a moment to consider what you've learned so far. You've already looked at Belbin's nine team roles and explored the different stages a team is likely to pass through before it functions at optimum performance. You considered your own team experiences and roles and how to help to move a team on through its stages of development.
This week, you'll be returning to a theme that we started to explore in an earlier week. Teams today are far more diverse than they used to be, and there's evidence that increased team diversity is a good thing. But what do we mean when we talk about increased diversity, and why do employers want to employ more diverse teams? You'll consider what has contributed to the changing makeup of the teams we're likely to be part of in the workplace today and what organisations can do to foster diversity in the workplace
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By the end of this week, you will be able to:
- understand what ‘diversity’ means
- explain a range of factors contributing to increased diversity in the workplace today
- recognise diversity in some of the teams that you observe or belong to
- identify what some organisations are doing today to foster diversity.