In this GrowthTrack, David Livermore will help you learn how to use diversity on your team as a catalyst for innovation.
David Livermore’s research says that having visible and invisible diversity on teams will help you innovate.
David urges us to pay attention to the invisible diversity on our teams not just to visible diversity such as skin color, age or gender.
The first step in leveraging diversity is to measure what kind of diversity we have—to map it so we can more strategically use the diversity that’s on our team.
David talked about mapping the differences on your team. Below are links to several popular assessment tools.
Strengths-Finder (Now known as Clifton Strengths)
1. How might these assessment tools (or others like them) help you uncover the visible and invisible diversity on your team?
2. If you haven’t already done so, take one of the assessments above. Then, gather with your team to discuss your visible and invisible diversity.
3. How can your team better lean into those differences?
1. Take the “Driven By Difference” Assessment and then review your responses:
2. Calendar it! Block time in your calendar to go through this course—5 minutes per lesson.
Instructions:
Use the scale below to rate yourself.
1 – Never True of Me
2 – Rarely True of Me
3 – Sometimes True of Me
4 – Mostly True of Me
5 – Always True of Me
Assessment Questions:
1. I have visible diversity on my team, such as skin color, gender, age.
2. I have invisible diversity on my teams such as different personality profiles (strengths, introverts and extroverts), cultural values (certainty v. ambiguity), etc.
3. I measure the diversity on my team to strategically use it.
4. I double check with each team member to make sure expectations are aligned.
5. When generating new ideas, I tell the team that I expect an idea from each person.
6. When generating new ideas, I offer a variety of ways, besides brainstorming, for people to give me their idea.
7. I first want to understand the other person’s perspective when dealing with issues.
8. I seek to understand the information and back ground that led that person to their perspective.
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“We welcome and encourage comments on this site. There may be some instances where comments will need to be edited or removed, such as:
If you have any questions on the commenting policy, please let us know at heretoserve@globalleadership.org”