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On Demographic Heterogeneity - Tianke and Katherine

10/1/2020

 
After reading "Tensions Between Diversity and Shared Leadership: The Role of Team Political Skill" (Xu, Chiu, & Treadway, 2019) with the GRIP Lab, Tianke and Katherine discuss their thoughts on the paper.

Tianke and Katherine are really glad to have been part of the discussion about the function of “demographic heterogeneity” on shared leadership in teams. In their article, Xu et al. argue that demographic diversity — in gender and race specifically — inhibits people’s motivation to share leadership roles with others. Since people with similar backgrounds are more likely to identify with their team, they are more likely to hold shared group values and engage in a higher magnitude of shared leadership. On the other hand, people who have different backgrounds tend to be less inclined to share leadership with others in their group (Xu et al., 2019). 

Katherine thinks some parts of the article to be valid and relatable to her own experiences and observations. Over the course of her life, she has gravitated toward people who were similar to her. However, she believes that some parts of the article may be overgeneralizations. There are many forms of diversity, including age, major, socioeconomic status, and political ideology. She wonders what the results of a study that examined these other forms of diversity while controlling for ethnicity and gender would look like.

Tianke, on the other hand, feels strongly that diverse groups work best together. He believes that humans are meant to experience new ideas, to meet new people, to embrace new ideologies and perspectives, and to grow. To do that, they need to encounter demographic heterogeneity in their lives. In a group work setting, this demographic diversity matures discussion, helping the group draw a fuller picture of the world by combining the perspectives of many people’s eyes.

Katherine and Tianke both also had some reflections about Zoom breakout rooms. Katherine believes that through random allocation, breakout rooms eliminate personal biases in creating groups, so everyone has the chance to interact with people they might never have otherwise. However, she has found, in general, that communication through a screen is more awkward and uncomfortable than communication in person, that it is harder to develop and maintain connections with other people, especially when some of them turn their cameras off. Although diversity is promoted, Katherine wonders if the tempering effects of political skill could be hindered. She also wonders how relationships forged solely through on-screen calls would carry over in real-life –– whether they’ll grow weaker or stronger.

Tianke, on the other hand, recently had an experience that showed more promise for relationships within heterogeneous groups, even those in virtual environments. This past Friday, he organized an event called “Space Gathering,” where he invited eight of his friends who didn’t know each other beforehand to a Zoom meeting where they had a dialogue for two hours. He purposely selected the participants to promote diversity, as there was a mix of genders, majors, personality types, and nationalities. He designed several group activities to see if connections could be made among these “familiar” strangers. To maximize heterogeneity for each team, he pre-arranged breakout rooms so that every person would meet two people who have different backgrounds with them. After each person shared two identities and real stories behind, Tianke told the groups to use generative and reflective listening skills to validate each others’ stories and feelings so that each person could be heard.

As Xu et al. suggest in their article, people are disinclined to share leadership roles with dissimilar others. Tianke expected his friends’ discussion to go into a dead end; however, that was not the case. During the debrief, people shared that their natural curiosity towards those who were different inspired them to explore the others’ stories, experiences, and ideas.

“As a person who always interacts with people who are similar to me and who usually stays in my comfort zone, I was really excited to listen to people’s diverse experiences and imagine their living environments,” one participant reflected. “I agree,” replied another participant. “My desire to connect with people dissimilar to me, along with our shared curiosity, made us consciously active when engaging in conversation, motivating us to seek an optimal solution using group efforts.”
Zhiyuan Tao
10/1/2020 12:42:02 pm

It's really interesting how people will act in those breakout rooms without knowing each other about their backgrounds. Sharing your related experiences could be embarrassing for some of us.But it would be great for building connections with a stranger.

Ally
10/1/2020 01:36:32 pm

It's really interesting to know that people participated in Tianke's event actually built connections and had a great conversation with each other! I wonder, however, about whether the people who were invited to his zoom meeting (chosen by Tianke) are actually those who are kind and love to make new friends? I do believe that diverse groups work the best together, but I think there would be at least something in common among them, such as political ideology or belief, as mentioned by Katherine. In Tianke's case, for example, it can be that they all love to embrace new changes and make new friends?

Tianke
10/1/2020 03:12:02 pm

Hi Ally, thank you for your comment — I love it! Indeed, I wondered the same thing while writing this blog. When I invited people to my "Space Gathering" event, I unconsciously picked those I knew very well. Although none of them knew each other beforehand, they are all my friends. As you commented, I agree that "being my friends" unavoidably created hidden shared commonalities among the participants. After all, I make friends with whom I could get along well with, meaning that they might all share some similar personalities, values, habits, intellectual capacities, you name it.

That being said, I think Katherine's idea about the overgeneralization of Xu et al.'s article is valid. By definition, diversity itself is a diverse concept. I couldn't help myself but wonder what would happen if, instead of inviting my friends, I asked random people from a theoretically diverse background to the event. In Xu et al.'s article, they acknowledged that future studies should look into other aspects of heterogeneity and its influences on shared political skills in teamwork, such as personality, socioeconomic status, political affiliation, etc. Our lab plan to conduct relevant research using the datasets we collected about student teams to analyze if a particular variable (a type of diversity) would affect team performance and efficacy in any way. I will keep you updated as we move forward with this project. Thanks again for your comment!

Thomas Zhou
10/2/2020 08:03:53 am

Like other participants, I also feel excited to talk with other people and sharing their life experiences, feature, and characteristics. However, I do not think this activity could have changes on our relationship. At the beginning of this activity, all participants are strangers and sometimes our group talk may fall into silence or even embarrassment. When we got some connection to each other we are more like “familiar” strangers and after this meeting, we all feel that we can make friends with anyone in this chat. This activity inspired me a lot on how we work with people who have different backgrounds. Are people with different backgrounds not suitable for working together? Or what they need is just a suitable environment.

Scott
10/2/2020 12:11:41 pm

Interesting blog post! As a guy who has faith in harmony rather than monotony, I believe that differences should not be an obstacle to people's communication. On the contrary, I consider it an exciting journey to interact with people of different ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, and cultural background. Diversity, in my opinion, is crucial — it brings in new ideas and experiences, which leads to better problem-solving.

But I will point out that I agree with what Ally commented. The participants, who are friends to Tianke, were more likely to share similarities. For instance, as Ally said, his friends might be more eager to meet new people from different backgrounds, just as Tianke is.

Another question I have is about the definition of leadership. Since I've not read the original paper yet, I wonder what the indicators of shared-leadership in the original article are? As the results of Xu's paper are aligned with shared-leadership, I would love to see a discussion on the relationship between the communicative performance of diverse groups and their so-called shared-leadership in Katherine and Tianke's response.


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