The Importance of Diversity and Inclusive Practices in High Performing Teams

A diverse and inclusive team performs three to five times better than a homogenous team. However, a diverse team without inclusive practices may underperform due to a lack of common information. Inclusive practices involve building foundations, shared expectations, and processes, celebrating disagreement, and ensuring everyone participates. Intensive care units with inclusive practices and doctors listening to every team member had 18% fewer deaths, highlighting the significant impact of diversity and inclusion. Diversity is about surrounding yourself with people who are unlike you and learning from each other, while equity involves creating fair expectations. Inclusion is about making implicit things explicit, opening up job opportunities to the team, providing feedback when someone is not selected, and encouraging growth. More effort should be made in implementing these practices.