Drawbacks of diversity teams

Diversity in a team is essential in ensuring an organization meets a frequent target.  This is because each person in a group has diversified skill that when merged with other skills forms a diversity team. Diversity team involves aspects of life, for instance, culture and race of an individual and gender. However, diversity teams cannot always ensure the success of an organization. There are some drawbacks of having diversity teams for instance diversity team can be the cause of conflicts when team members work based on their differences. Besides, some diversity teams are not productive (Scotta, 2018). Some team members may come from very diversified backgrounds, thus making working together with an issue. This affects the productivity of an organization negatively.

Among the main reasons why diversity training programs fail is the communication barrier. There may be difficulties in communication among the members in a team and resistance to change by individuals from dominant groups. There may be instances of miscommunication within the team when there are diversified backgrounds that have common words for different meanings. These communication barriers can lead to less effective teams and poor teamwork. In solving the situation, empathy and self-monitoring are encouraged (Scotta, 2018).

Besides, diversity teams may face resistance to change by some individuals as it leads to the adoption of company culture by individuals. Diversity affects the standard organizational norms of team members by creating a need for flexibility and the approval of a redefined culture. This may not be easily achieved as some of the members of the team may be resistant to change. Some of the members find it hard to bear the burden of fitting in a new culture, thus limiting the aim of achieving a diversity team in an organization.

Also, there may be instances where team members find it hard to define diversity. Diversity in teams may include religion, gender, age, race, disability, among more elements in life. With the many diverse backgrounds, team members may be classified into different categories, which makes finding the most useful categorization challenging. To solve this, a team must determine the components of diversity teams that should be included in a group to ensure productivity. This can be achieved by diversity management.

Another problem facing diversity teams is Homophily. Homophily involves the actions of team members to associate with those who are similar to them. The tendency may not only be presented in the hiring process of an organization but also the socialization pattern by team members. It’s common for people from the same backgrounds to bond and use their bond to create a preferential group setting among themselves. Managers need to manage this challenge through the promotion of grouping based on differences and critical thinking.

In conclusion, diversity teams can be essential in ensuring success in an organization. This is because the diversity teams involve people from a diversified background, which leads to increased innovation in an organization (Ratzmann, 2018). Besides, diversity teams allow an organization to expand and fit in different backgrounds and cultures. On the other hand, there are drawbacks to diversity teams, including conflicts between the team members and language barriers. To ensure that a diverse group is productive, diversity management is essential in determining the best diversity approach in providing the productivity of an organization.

References

Ratzmann, M. (2018). The price of team spirit for sensemaking through task discourse in innovation teams. Group Decision and Negotiation, 27(3), 321-341.

Scotta, F. (2018). Communication facilitators and obstacles within multicultural teams.