Diversity in the Workplace Is a Common

Diversity in the workplace is a common subject for management scholarship, because the issue can be very complex and challenging for managers. One of the lesser-known areas of diversity management is simply dealing with people who have very different personalities. This can be as challenging as managing people from different cultures.

Milliken and Martins (1996), in a relatively early study about managing diversity, note that diversity in group composition affects a number of organizational outcomes, including turnover and performance. Managers needs to be aware of the differences between the group members on key communication issues in particular, for example, affective, cognitive and symbolic processes. There is value in having a high level of diversity, but the team needs strong management that can actively engage with the different types of people within the group, or the group risks being less efficient.

One of the things that management will often do when faced with diverse personality types is to seek to build consensus and get everybody involved and working in the same direction. Harrison (2000) notes that increasing collaboration will enhance the positive effects of deep-level diversity on team outcomes. This points to a strategy of having collaboration between the different team members, and management's role being the facilitator of that collaboration.

Other research has shown that personality diversity is not always productive for an organization, in particular conflict about things like risk-taking. Richard et al. (2004) showed that risk taking in particular was negatively correlated with relationship patterns. While people can often disagree on other things, and have other types of personality differences and still work well as a team, differences with respect to risk orientation are the most challenging to overcome.

So the research shows that it is challenging to manage people with different personalities, at least when those personalities differ with respect to risk orientation. Other differences can be worked out through greater collaboration, for example, and this probably works because the people can start to understand the perspective of others. With risk, however, it is much harder to understand and respect the perspectives of others, and this presents some unique challenges for managing teams with differing risk orientations.

In the case of Sally and Charlie, it is evident that there is a significant divergence in personalities with respect to risk-taking. Senior management chose me to head this team because they want the team guided with my risk orientation, which is roughly that of Charlie's. So senior management, myself and Charlie are all pretty much on the same page with respect to spurring growth. We do not understand Sally's mindset. Now here is the management challenge. The case conflicts itself saying "neither has been effective…increasing profits" but "both are considered valuable to the organization." The reality is that if people aren't adding value, they aren't valuable. So Sally at this point is a square peg in a round hole, and she's not adding value. So we can lose Sally, but for the fact that as a highly risk averse individual she will be the last person to quit just because she's uncomfortable with the direction the company is going. I actually do not care if Sally no longer wants to contribute to the organization, but if she is going to remain with us she needs to get engaged and align her priorities with those of senior management. If she has a real objection, she needs to make her case, but right now she's objecting for the sake of it. I'm not interesting in enabling or encouraging that, because to me that is unacceptable behavior to indulge in logical fallacy just to placate one's fears. Emotions needs to stay out of this. I'm going to lay out the case for Sally about where the company is going, and she is going to need to choose to either come around and get on board, or be marginalized. I will not give equal voice to her emotions and Charlie's thought-out ideas; that is false equivalency and there's no place for that sloppy thinking in my department.