What you say reminds me of a conversation I once heard about hiring biases: “A-level people want to hire A+ people so they can improve. B-level people want to hire C-level people so they will feel smarter.” You must fit in that A-level category.

Thanks for your comment. I’m looking forward to the movie.

I’ve always picked teams based on how our strengths complemented each other. For example, there would be a finance expert, a legal expert, a fundraising expert, and a jack-of-all-trades. Diversity truly is good for the bottom line.

I’ve also liked to work with people who were smarter than me. I’ve never been insecure about that at all. Smarter people teach me a lot and make me look more smart too!

Hi Jenny,

Thanks again for the great insight. Having diverse teams only for the sake of diversity is too costly. These diverse team members need to be carefully listened to, or it will just be a drain on an overburdened precious resource.

This past Tuesday I had an interesting related conversation with a colleague. He was commenting that often the more introverted and more thoughtful members of a team (regardless of their gender) don’t get a chance to put their thoughts and meaning into the “shared pool” because all the rest of us are talking the whole time (I think he was looking at me).

His solution was that if a team member hadn’t had a chance to share their thoughts, he would intentionally ask, “Karen, what are your thoughts on this?” That is, he’d give the person the space to share what they were thinking. It’s a great idea. Another baby step forward.

Best,

Brian

Thanks for your fast reply Brian! It’s surely true that we must accept baby steps on the way to true diversity. For those baby steps to be moving in a forward direction, it has to be more than surface-level.

I do think that if a company wants to change it’s culture, and the leadership is truly dedicated to that goal, deliberately choosing diverse team members will improve things, especially if those leaders reinforce and support those choices.

Just recognize that adding those diverse members demands even more work from those individuals – work that they are already doing and not getting credit for. Or sometimes even getting overlooked for.

It’s interesting to me that you thought I was referring to a 15-year old study – in reality I was speaking from my experience today, working for and with one of the top ranking fortune-500 companies on the diversity scale. This progressive, technically innovative, global technology company has won awards for it’s diversity strides and it has indeed made excellent progress.

And yet often women engineers still must work 2-3 times harder than men to get their voices heard and their work respected. This isn’t a study, it’s my workday.

The practice of choosing women for teams specifically to increase effectiveness or productivity only works if the men on the team are willing to listen and work with the women. Otherwise this advice backfires and the men use it as an excuse to reinforce the old male-oriented culture. Same thing applies to any minority.

I thank you again for listening, and taking some time to think about the perspective of the diverse members of those teams from a practical, real world standpoint. Changing culture isn’t easy or fast, but the more we include everyone’s ideas, the better it can get.

Hi Jenny,

Those are excellent points. The study you mentioned was published almost 15 years ago. There’s some evidence that thinkings starting to shift — there’s a growing interest about unconscious biases in companies — but it’s still moving in baby steps.

What I particularly liked is your notion that if we were all trained to gather “input from everyone, making smart and effective compromises, social support, and win-win problem solving” we wouldn’t need to use heuristics (e.g., “we need a couple women on this committee”). That is a great insight, and it’s a good one to aim for.

For today, however, if that’s not something a company can do, at least the heuristic is a baby step in the right direction.

Your thoughtful comment underscores that although we might be taking the right step, we can do better and we need to expect more from ourselves and from others on our journey.

Best,

Brian

Thank you for your comments Sallie. At VitalSmarts, we believe in redemption, it’s baked into our values and our skills: starting with heart, mastering your stories, and influencing change, to name a few. We have known Brian Wansink for years, long before a small portion of his work was thrown into question. As a long-time friend and colleague of Brian’s, Joseph has chosen to highlight the qualities he most admires, rather than past mistakes which we as an organization acknowledge, but also forgive. Thanks for also having an open mind and welcoming Brian to the newsletter. We really appreciate it.

That was supposed to say “it’s the devalued traits and not the gender of the people on the team…”

One frustration that I experience is that the advice “include at least two women on your team” often puts women in an awkward place. In male-centric corporate cultures, the traits you point out that women bring are often less valued, specifically because they are seen as weak or feminine.

Women in our society are raised and taught to have those skills all through their lives only to find that a male-centric work environment values the opposite. But when they adopt the valued traits of the men, they are devalued for that too.

So if a team that has this culture follows the letter of your advice and includes women on the team, yet continues to devalue those “feminine traits,” work life is now impossible for those women. Being suddenly on-the-spot to provide a perspective that you’re frequently ignored or devalued for having requires a certain level of mental gymnastics. Most people don’t have the stamina for that.

If the only reason women are included is because having them there is supposed to magically bring stellar results, that team will be disappointed, because it’s the and not necessarily the gender of the women that bring those results.

If corporate culture valued those traits- gathering input from everyone, making smart and effective compromises, social support, and win-win problem solving – it would not matter what gender the people are in the room, because EVERYONE would be taught those skills and to value them in the workplace. This would take us to the next level of gender equality.

I like that Moose and Abbie raised the question (I was wondering, too). I like that Brittney responded. In the link to VitalSmarts’ 2018 statement, it says, “when we reference Wansink’s work, we need to acknowledge his misconduct.” So, shouldn’t a link to that statement have been included in Joseph’s introduction? That being said, this was a helpful article, I look forward to Brian Wansink’s future contributions, and I trust Joseph’s testimony and judgment.

Hi Abbie, as an editor of The Crucial Skills Newsletter, I wanted to address your concern. VitalSmarts made a statement regarding Brian Wansink back in 2018 and we stand by it today. Please review here: https://www.vitalsmarts.com/crucialskills/2018/09/vitalsmarts-response-to-the-retraction-of-brian-wansinks-research/. We are hopeful our readers can find as much value in Brian’s future contribution as we do. We hope you’ll stick with us.