How to Work With and Lead People Not Like You

CHAPTER 6How to Break the Ice and Build Trust in Diverse Work Groups

As a leader, your role is to bring groups of people together to generate the greatest possible productivity and best outcome for your company and customers. That can take many forms: innovation, greater efficiency, greater output or production, new products or services, greater profitability, enhanced customer loyalty and retention, employee engagement, and more.

Study after study shows that working with diverse groups of people leads to all of the above. Why? Because teams of people who are largely the same usually have the same backgrounds, same mindsets, same experiences. They view things through the same lens of life. Consequently, they tend to think alike and aren't as creative when it comes to innovation or developing new solutions to problems.

Teams of people with diverse backgrounds and experience bring new ideas, new perspectives, and different ways of viewing issues. This fosters better thinking, which leads to better idea generation and more innovative problem solving. It's proven. It has a real, measurable effect on the bottom line as well, such as greater sales and profits or greater value of a company's stock.

As a leader, you probably know all of this. You have been entrusted with moving your business forward, with the team or teams you oversee. Your company believes that you possess the skills that will drive success.

Leadership is tough—that's why there are so many books and courses and webinars ...