Cognitive diversity in the office

Picture this: you and your sales team have a monumental pitch coming up, and your team has spent that past few weeks researching, preparing, and rehearsing the perfect presentation for the potential client. However, three days before you all are set to travel to your client’s headquarters to present, your team learns about a new market innovation that completely changes the nature of your pitch. How does your team respond? Do you scramble—and ultimately fail—to adapt to the new information, or do you synthesize and integrate the new findings into your original pitch to create a more nuanced presentation that wins over the client? Ideally, your team achieves the latter scenario in this thought experiment—cognitive diversity may be the key to doing so.

what is cognitive diversity?

Discussing diversity within the office space is nothing new. The topic of increasing diversity within a range of areas—including ethnicity, gender, and age—has been and continues to be an important consideration in any hiring and promotional endeavor. Newer to the conversation, however (and slightly more complex), is the concept of cognitive diversity.

Cognitive diversity, as defined by researchers Alison Reynolds and David Lewis of the Harvard Business Review, refers to the “differences in perspective or information processing styles” present in any given group of people. Similarly, leadership coach Janine Schindler describes cognitive diversity as “the inclusion of people who have different ways of thinking, different viewpoints and different skill sets in a team or business group.” In other words, cognitive diversity refers to the range of ways people think, especially in the context of a team or group.

Geil Browning, the CEO and Founder of Emergenetics International (an organization that specializes in cultivating cognitive diversity within the workspace),breaks down cognitive diversity in terms of seven brain attributes—four ways of thinking and three ways of behaving:

Thinking:

Analytical: Analytical thinking is all about utilizing existing research and data to make objective, concrete, and less-biased decisions. It’s the frame of mind that enables you to examine different options, allowing you to determine which ones will actually work.
Structural: This way of thinking is all about planning. The structural attribute helps you create a plan or process that is methodical, cost-effective, and—most importantly—doable.
Social: Social thinking enables you to relate with others. It entails your ability to listen, communicate, collaborate, and even inspire your fellow team-members.
Conceptual: This last way of thinking is all about big ideas. Conceptual thinking is the attribute that gives you the visionary ideas that lead to innovation and progress.

Behaving:

Expressiveness: If you have an expressive behavior style, then you have no trouble clearly communicating your thoughts and feelings about any particular situation.
Assertiveness: Someone with an assertive behavior style is able to voice their opinions, put pen to paper, and turn any idea into a reality.
Flexibility: If your behavior style is characterized with flexibility, then you’re open to multiple points of view—you can also adapt to thrive in a variety of scenarios.

These seven attributes are just one framework used to discuss cognitive diversity. But regardless of lens or method used, experts agree that cognitive diversity is essential to a team’s success.

the benefits of cognitive diversity in the office

In a study conducted by the aforementioned researchers from the Harvard Business Review, a variety of teams completed a strategic execution exercise that “focused on managing new, uncertain, and complex situations.” Within the exercise, each group was “to formulate and execute a strategy to achieve a specified outcome” within a designated time frame.

What the researchers found was that there was a “significant correlation between high cognitive diversity and high performance.” The teams that had more diverse perspectives and ways of processing knowledge were able to complete the exercise much faster than the teams that were more cognitively homogenous.

The researchers go on to explain that “a high degree of cognitive diversity could generate accelerated learning and performance in the face of new, uncertain, and complex situations,” meaning that teams with more cognitive diversity are more likely to adapt to and overcome a variety of scenarios. As put by leadership development expert Sara Cannaday, “companies produce the best results and are better able to innovate when their team members don't all think, process information or see the world in the same way . . . A culture that encourages (explicitly or implicitly) conformity of thought breeds stagnation and imperils a company.”

Interestingly enough, in the HBR study, other measures of diversity—like gender, race, and age—had no correlation to the team’s results. This may be because these more apparent aspects of diversity are more important when it comes to relating to and taking into consideration the wants and needs of a variety of people—but not necessarily significant when it comes to accomplishing specific tasks as a team.

cultivating cognitive diversity

The benefits of building a team ripe with cognitive diversity are clear; but how can a team better integrate cognitive diversity into their work space? Here are someuseful tips to keep in mind:

Recruit with cognitive diversity in mind: When it comes to the hiring process, recruiting for cognitive diversity goes beyond the traditional norms of looking at an applicant’s degree or work experience. By including carefully tailored questions meant to help you discern an applicant’s way of thinking in the interview process, you can have a better idea of where this applicant’s frame of mind fits in relation to your current team. Alternatively, you can utilize the tests provided by companies like Emergenetics to get an even better idea of how an applicant uses their brain to approach a problem.

Encourage constructive differences: Perhaps the biggest fault of an office that lacks cognitive diversity is the fact that there will be no one who challenges a charted course of action that was unanimously agreed upon by a team. Such opposition oftentimes will raise some important points that weren’t taken into consideration by the like-minded team-members, resulting in some significant changes in the proposed plan that are ultimately beneficial. Creating a space that encourages team-members to bring up criticisms or different angles to a project in a constructive way prevents your team from becoming too narrow-sighted, opening up the space for innovation.

in conclusion

In the end, diversity of any kind is important in the office space. But beyond the things that traditionally come to mind when thinking about diversity, is the act of thinking itself! Strengthening the cognitive diversity within your office can play a vital role in ensuring the success of your next big team project. But working in a team requires the perfect space to do so; and here at Facility Solutions Plus, we can help your employees put their brains together and tackle the trickiest of tasks by designing the perfect collaborative environment, from traditional conference rooms to open, modular floor plans. Because teamwork of any kind requires a place that primes your team for success—we’ll help you create that very space.

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