Gender Equality and Team Performance

In their HBR article To Address Gender Bias at Your Company, Start with Teams, Todd Warren and Michelle King point out that, like so many unsuccessful change initiatives, altering diversity and inclusion habits proves far harder than leaders initially anticipate. The authors argue that the key to addressing gender equality starts with team behavior. They describe three ideas for changing how work is done in order to address the social patterns that foster gender bias, reduce team effectiveness, and stifle careers.

The key to addressing gender bias starts with team behavior. Share via Twitter
The first is to focus on individual team norms to identify interactions that inadvertently promote bias. Many studies have shown that healthy team norms are the foundation of a high-performing team. Google’s Project Aristotle, a three year effort to uncover the drivers of team excellence at Google, identified team norms such as psychological safety and conversation equality as essential to team effectiveness. Second, teams need to employ feedback practices that create rich conversations about team member expectations vs. their actual experiences. In their April 2016 HBR article Vague Feedback is Holding Women Back, Shelley Correll and Carolyn Simad support that idea, emphasizing the critical role of feedback on performance. They cite the example of a program run at Microsoft called Step Up – a year-long leadership development process for women, during which they were provided with clear and actionable feedback. The program has achieved excellent early success in moving participants into leadership roles. Third, leaders need to regularly and systematically examine their own assumptions and habits concerning diversity and inclusion. This requires mindfulness, discipline, and a willingness to lead the development of new habits.

Current Research on Gender Equality and Teams

In their paper The Role of Gender in Team Collaboration and Performance, Julia Bear of the Israel Institute of Technology, and Anita Woolley of Carnegie Mellon University, reviewed the academic literature covering the effects of gender diversity on team processes and performance. Bear and Woolley focused specifically on women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and the increasing importance of team collaboration in these fields. They note a significant gender gap in the STEM fields and ask the question: Does gender diversity matter for team processes and performance? Their research results strongly supported the proposition that team collaboration is improved by the presence of women in the group. Concerning team performance, Bear and Woolley conclude that the effects of gender diversity are more complex. Their findings imply that in order to accrue the benefits of improved team collaboration and performance, women should be represented in parity with men (team size) along with equal clarity of purpose and role.

Building Diverse, Highly-Effective Teams

Research shows that team collaboration is improved by the presence of women in a group. Share via Twitter
The work of Warner and King, and Bear and Woolley, illustrates the importance of gender diversity and equality to team collaboration and performance and identifies ideas to establish the team foundations and behaviors that can change the status quo. My research supports their conclusions, demonstrating that the catalyst for improving team collaboration and performance is constant feedback on team member experiences versus expectations across key relationships. Specifically, exceptional teams are in the habit of:

  1. Establishing clear team values that ensure gender parity, conversation equality, and psychological safety.
  2. Regularly gathering feedback on team member experiences vs. their expectations – and pay particular attention to any signs of conscious or unconscious bias.
  3. Consistently closing gaps between team member experiences and expectations across key relationships – those between teammates, with the team leader, and across teams with shared goals.

Establishing those habits enables teams to take a leap forward in their efforts to end gender bias. Gender bias and a lack of equality in teams and in organizations is costly in terms of reduced effectiveness, productivity, and innovation. Addressing gender bias not only increases team effectiveness, but improves people’s well-being and happiness at work and beyond.

Bear, Julia & Woolley, Anita. (2011). The Role of Gender in Team Collaboration and Performance. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. 36. doi:10.1179/030801811X13013181961473.

 

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About the Author

Dr. Jeb Hurley is a leading expert on team dynamics and building high-performance hybrid / remote teams. He guides leaders in understanding and influencing human behavior and creating trust and psychological safety. Jeb’s innovative, behavioral science-based approach to leadership development improves team performance and people’s wellbeing faster and at a lower cost. Learn more about Jeb’s work at Brainware Partners.