When Diverse Teams Think Alike

I have sat in leadership meetings where almost everyone around the table came from a different country. Different nationalities, languages and professional backgrounds, men and women who had built their careers in very different parts of the world. Looking around the room, it would have been difficult to argue that the organization lacked diversity.

And yet I can also remember meetings in which, once the most senior person expressed a strong opinion, that diversity seemed to disappear remarkably quickly. People nodded, the discussion narrowed, and alternative views became more cautious.

This was not necessarily because people lacked ideas or courage. Organizations teach us, often without saying a word, which behaviors are rewarded and which carry a cost. We become remarkably good at reading the room.

It raises a question that I think deserves more attention: Can an organization become more visibly diverse while becoming less intellectually diverse?

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Who is in the room is only the beginning

Organizations have rightly paid much greater attention to who gets access to opportunities and ultimately earns a seat at the leadership table. Representation matters. But representation is not the same as inclusion, and neither automatically produces intellectual diversity.

I find it useful to distinguish between three questions:

Representation asks: Who is in the room?

Inclusion asks: Can everyone participate fully in the room?

Intellectual diversity asks: Can people genuinely think differently—and say so—in the room?

People who look different do not necessarily think differently, just as people who look similar may bring very different experiences and perspectives. Demographic and cultural diversity can broaden the range of perspectives available to an organization, but only if those perspectives are actually expressed.

This is where diversity risks becoming performative. When visible diversity increases but acceptable disagreement decreases, an organization may celebrate difference while discouraging one of the differences that matters most: difference of thought.

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The real test comes with disagreement

Many leaders say they want people who challenge them. I probably said it myself many times during my years as an executive.

But saying “I want you to challenge me” is easy. The real test comes when someone actually does.

People notice whether disagreement produces curiosity or defensiveness, whether challenging the prevailing view affects how someone is perceived, and which opinions are safer left unspoken. This becomes even more complicated in multicultural organizations, where people may have very different relationships with hierarchy, authority and disagreement.

A leader may sincerely believe that everyone around the table has permission to disagree. That does not mean everyone experiences that permission in the same way.

Creating intellectual diversity therefore requires more than inviting different people into the room or telling them they are free to speak. Leaders have to create conditions in which disagreement is genuinely possible.

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Diversity should sometimes make leadership uncomfortable

Perhaps one indication that diversity is working is that leadership meetings occasionally become more difficult. Not disrespectful or dysfunctional, but less predictable. Different perspectives should sometimes challenge assumptions, expose blind spots and force leaders to reconsider positions they thought were settled. The objective is not disagreement for its own sake. Organizations eventually need to make decisions and execute them. But healthy disagreement before a decision is very different from resistance afterward.

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Disagreement is not an unfortunate side effect of diversity. It is part of its value.

Organizations have made considerable progress in asking who gets a seat at the table. The harder challenge may be ensuring that, once people get there, they don't all learn to say the same things.

 

And perhaps that leaves leaders with a more uncomfortable question:

If everyone around your leadership table feels comfortable agreeing with you, how much diversity do you really have?