While teams made up with people with similar personalities and perspectives may enjoy smooth meetings, they may not be the most productive teams. It’s not good for your company (or your clients or margins) to be staffed exclusively by people who share the same worldview, the same personality type, or the same approach to business.

 

In fact, every company would benefit from hiring for cognitive diversity — even if it creates conflict.

 

Why? Because the conflict that arises from cognitive diversity is good conflict.

 

In this Leadership Insight episode of The Enlightened Executive, we dive into the topic of why you need cognitive diversity on your team. It’s actually conflict that results in better products, happier customers, more effective systems, and fewer missteps. In this episode I discuss the definition of cognitive diversity, what sort of conflict arises from it, and how you can make sure you have a cognitively diverse team.