Managing the rainbow
Professor Laura Graves's research
John Chang felt puzzled and frustrated when interacting with his new project team at work. Although the youngest member of the group, he somehow felt expected to know answers and solve problems that stumped his colleagues. But he felt uncomfortable confronting them, all of whom were older than himself. As John struggled with the unexpected level of responsibility, it became increasingly apparent that the team would not meet its project deadline.
Management professors
Laura Graves and
Priscilla Elsass
know that an astute project manager would have spotted the problem plaguing John's work group. Owing to a stereotype of Asian-Americans as being especially smart and hard-working, John's team members had unrealistic expectations of his abilities. Unreasonably confident of his ability, they let more than his fair share of the project's success rest on John. And John, having grown up in a culture that taught deference to elders, felt unable to challenge their expectations.
Diversity in work groups
In today's competitive business climate, managers must be aware that racioethnic and gender diversity in a project team has the potential to either hinder or expedite problem-solving. A diverse team has a wide range of useful viewpoints to draw upon when completing a task. Unfortunately, the creativity and functionality of the team can be impaired if stereotyping results in women and people of color being marginalized. To be effective, team members must not allow stereotypes to prevent them from accessing and utilizing each member's strengths and weaknesses.
Strategies for moving beyond stereotypes
The research of Graves and Elsass suggests several strategies a project manager could use to get John's team back on track. All of the strategies encourage team members to see past stereotypes to the unique qualities of each individual team member. The project manager could
- Help to create a "positive diversity climate" in the workplace by utilizing techniques designed to raise employees' awareness of stereotypes based on race, gender, and other ways of categorizing people.
- Make each team member responsible for a specific set of tasks, thus preventing any one member from being overburdened.
- Establish rules for decision-making that require the input of each team member.
- Provide relevant personal information about team members that will help them be seen as individuals.
- Make sure that resources and time allotted for the task are comfortably adequate. The ability of people to move beyond stereotypes can be hampered by stressful working conditions.
Understanding diversity dynamics
Graves and Elsass have developed a model* to help managers understand the dynamics that might prevent diverse work teams from achieving their goals. Focusing on groups predominantly composed of white males, the researchers examined how stereotypes about women and people of color can lead to differences in social and task interaction between group members.
On first meeting, people tend to categorize each other on the basis of gender, race or ethnic group. Those categorizations are frequently accompanied by assumptions about how a person will behave or should be treated. If those stereotypes are not challenged, they can negatively affect both social and task-related behaviors in the work group, forcing women or people of color into unproductive or inappropriate roles.
Graves and Elsass's model suggests that there are four patterns of behavior that can occur in a diverse work group:
- Engagement. This is the preferred scenario, in which stereotyping has not been allowed to obscure each group member's strengths and weakness. This behavior pattern is characterized by a high level of both social exchange (members provide mutual support) and task exchange (resources, information and opinions are shared in an equitable fashion).
- Exclusion. This is the least productive scenario, in which stereotypes have not been challenged. As a result, there is a low level of both social and task exchange. Women or persons of color are marginalized; their input is not solicited or supported and their contributions are ignored.
- Complementing. Here, women and people of color are allowed to contribute socially to the group, but are excluded from meaningful task participation. For example, it may be expected that female group members be supportive and nurturing.
- Contributing. Graves and Elsass identify this as the most likely to occur of the four patterns. In this scenario, women and people of color are able to participate in the task, but they receive little social support. The contributing pattern is more likely to occur when each member has been assigned specific tasks.
Occasionally, events will occur that can serve to disable stereotypes. Sometimes a stereotyped individual will act in such a way that obviously challenges or contradicts the stereotype; for example, a woman might refuse to make coffee for the group. Additionally, concern about being unable to meet a project goal or deadline might trigger group members to reassess their task strategy, and in the process reconsider the social and task inputs of each group member.
* A model is a way of structuring a process so that it can be more easily analyzed.