This discussion forum is designed to get you to think about diversity in teams and how to manage it.
Although Equal Employment Opportunity laws have been a central part of HR practice for many decades, the management of diversity and inclusion for has taken on new urgency in this Black Lives Matter era. It is largely within work teams that the challenges of diversity must be faced in order for the value of diversity to be realized. Research suggests that different types of diversity can have positive or negative effects on team performance and commitment depending on how it is managed.
In the teams you have worked in, what types (surface or deep level) and sources (e.g., functional expertise, status, values, nationality, gender, race, etc.) of team diversity have been the most challenging to manage? Did diversity type, team task type, and time play a role as suggested in the text? What strategies and practices mentioned in the text or otherwise were used to manage these types of diversity and how effective were they? What recommendations does the discussion group have for the effective management of each type of diversity
By Wednesday, March 30:
Post your initial response to the questions above. Your first post should identify the context of the team (e.g., type of task, age of the team, etc.), the type and source of diversity most prevalent in the team, the challenges and the approached used to manage diversity.
