TED Talk: How Diversity Makes Teams More Innovative

The last 20 years have seen a rapid change to the way we live our lives, for the better. Bringing more diverse workers into companies not only make them more representative but also allows for cognitive diversity. This means that when we have different people in a given workgroup, we allow for new ways of thinking, and so, new ways to find solutions to problems.

Download the entire lesson below in A4 PDF format:

TED Talk_ How Diversity Makes Teams More Innovative

Warmer questions

Where you work or go to school how many men to women are there? Is it in equal numbers?
How many male business leaders can you think of?
How many female leaders can you think of?
What changes will you see in the future with gender and leadership?

Reading section

One small step for a woman

There is a revolution happening in businesses all across the world. No, it’s not related to finance, technology, or politics. Instead, the change is coming with women in the boardroom. While over the last 50 years great progress has been made in how women are being represented under the law, little change has occurred at the very top of society. Many leaders in politics and business are still mainly men. The UK, Germany, and other nations have now made legal requirements to have more gender diversity in leadership positions.

Only 5% of the 500 CEOs on the 2016 Fortune 500 list are women, a mere 27 out of 500. [source]

It is, however, true that there is a steady stream of women who are joining the elite ranks of company leaders. That said, progress is slow and at current rates achieving 30% female representation on boards of directors would require at least 30 years.

If there is a desire to make changes at the very top of companies, legal methods must be employed.

Table data from Catalyst.org (source)

Quotas

To improve the gender ratio in senior boardroom positions Germany and (soon to be) California is going to require by law to have a certain percentage of female leaders. There is some controversy in doing so. Some think that having a minimum number of female leaders would mean that ‘lesser’ qualified workers are placed in senior positions. Studies (like that of the TED Talk in this lesson) show that this is not the case, as the pool of qualified, educated, and experienced workers are increasing each year.

Some have been trying to understand why this might be the case. A study in Canada has shown that perhaps the reason is not merit but image related. Many senior leaders have an image of the “ideal worker” or the “best characteristics” for a CEO. These images do not function around skills but perception and as such, female candidates are excluded.

There is hostility toward quotas in countries that don’t have them and enthusiasm for quotas in countries that do have them. [Source]

Group Discussion task

Imagine you are the leader of a large company in a developed country. You currently have 80 senior managers and leaders but they are all men. You want to have more gender diversity in the firm. Consider the following questions;

People view quotas as being negative as some people would feel women being promoted is just to increase diversity. How would you change the image of quotas?
If there is a single woman in a group of other leaders, there is a tendency for her to be isolated and opinions ignored. What method would you use to avoid this?
How would you define an ideal candidate for promotion or hiring for leadership positions?
There may be a negative reaction from male members of the organisation, how would you reduce this discomfort?

Download this discussion task in PDF format. TED Talk Debates: How Diversity Makes Teams More Innovative – Discussion Task

Change the narrative. Framing the idea as increasing diversity, or increasing intellectual diversity, or allowing for different points of view in the leadership can help. Just saying we have a quota will create negative reactions.
Critical mass. Studies have shown that once there are roughly 20% of positions are women then the culture of the department changes and their isolation ends. At 40% then the department will see the benefits of female leadership, and the previous culture has reversed.
Research has shown that people have prototypes about the ideal worker, or the ideal leader, which is typically male. Recruiters need to expand their idea of an ideal candidate beyond the male prototype and create a large pool of qualified female candidates.
Discomfort is to be expected. Moving to quotas may not be a smooth process. Even in Norway, where there is general satisfaction with quotas now, there was a period of transition. Organizational change is never easy, but it is the price to pay for the benefits

Vocabulary matching

Match the vocab on the left with the correct definitions on the right.

Vocabulary	Definitions
1. Diversity	a. A company’s income.
2. Innovative	b. A standard which something can be judged.
3. Homogenous	c. A product or service which makes a company have an advantage in the market.
4. Political correctness	d. When there is a variety of people.
5. Ratio	e. A type of expression which can insult socially disadvantaged people.
6. Competitive advantage	f. New ideas, methods, and thinking.
7. Comply	g. When lots of pieces of evidence can be grouped together
8. Revenue	h. When objects are similar, matching, alike.
9. Criteria	i. Following someone’s wish or demand.
10. Leadership style	j. The number of two objects relative to each other.
11. Correlation	k. When once action can be the result of another action.
12. Causation	l. The culture of the decision makers.