In a recent article in McKinsey, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink said that "the most important component of good management is ensuring “diversity of mind,” (See Talent management at BlackRock: A conversation with Larry Fink).

He makes the important point that the diversity that really matters to an organization is not gender or cultural diversity per se, but cognitive and emotional diversity. In order to avoid groupthink and tunnel vision, and to drive innovation, organizations need to bring together people who process and respond to information in very different ways, but who can still work together to understand each other and make choices together.

What do we mean when we say 'cognitive and emotional diversity'?

The Approaches to Cognitive Style

Let's ask a few questions to help you think about your own approach. To get at your cognitive style, you could begin by asking you yourself the following:

1. When learning a new subject, do you prefer to start with the abstract or conceptual framework or do you prefer to begin with concrete examples and work up to the concepts?

2. When presented with a new hypothesis, do you begin by trying to prove it to yourself, or by looking for the counter examples?

3. When trying to understand a new concept, do you want to begin with its origins and see how it has evolved (including exploring the paths not taken) or do you like to understand the current state of the art and look at where things have come from?

There are a number of online tools to help you understand cognitive style. None of these are perfect, and you may want to invest some time in developing your own approach (Am I signaling part of my own cognitive style here?). One that I find useful is from Brian Uzzi at the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University. The Cognitive Style Instrument.

What about emotional style?

Cognitive style does not tell the whole story though. There is also the emotional dimension to consider. There are many approaches to this, two that I have found the most valuable are from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Healthy Minds and David Kantor's work in structural dynamics.

Accepting that people have different emotional styles can be even more difficult than accepting the differences in cognitive style. Emotions are so much more private and many of us are not comfortable discussing our emotions, especially in a work setting. But emotional diversity is critical to resilience. David Kantor's work is especially useful for leadership teams as he helps us understand how we make decisions changes under high stakes situations. Day to day, I make decisions in meaning, I spend a lot of time working with people to understand how they see things, gathering perspectives and thinking through the alternatives. In high stakes situations, I move to power, so that if I feel a decision needs to be made I go ahead and make it. One of my close colleagues generally makes decisions from a position of power, providing direction and moving things forward, butin high stakes this person moves to relationships, and thinks hard about how to maintain relationships and protect people. Once we understood these default behaviors, we became more effective partners.

How do you develop diversity in your team?

Start by a simple survey of cognitive and emotional diversity of your current team. The starting point is to acknowledge differences. Using Ibbaka Talent, compare the different Foundational skills on the team and the various Social skills.

Consider using a survey instrument.

The critical thing is to acknowledge that cognitive and emotional differences are real, should be respected, and are in fact desired. Then work to understand how to leverage the diversity that already exists.If there is in fact a lack of diversity, a frequent problem in many technology and consulting companies, where people tend to hire people that will 'fit the culture' and that 'they would like to share a long plane flight with' (in other words, any place where people tend to 'hire people like me'), then hiring practices need to be reviewed and a way to bring in people with diverse skills designed. This will only happen if ...

• Cognitive and emotional diversity is an explicit goal

• There is a way to measure this diversity

• There are routines in place to help people work through the stresses and miscommunication that can occur when people with different profiles work together

The role of skill management in building effective diverse teams

for more around the skill management concept see what is skill management

There are two types of skills that are very important to building diverse teams: complementary skills and connecting skills.

Complementary Skills

Complementary skills are those skills that frequently used together but not generally found in the same person. Top leadership teams generally have a good balance of complementary skills. In the tech sector, the Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer team are a classic example. At Apple, Steve Jobs marketing genius was complemented by John Ives ability to lead design teams.

Of course a two-legged stool is not stable, so it is a good idea to find at least three people with complementary skills!

Connecting Skills

Connecting Skills are less well understood than Complementary Skills, but they are no less important. At Ibbaka Talent we became aware of the importance of these skills when David Botta was researching skill clustering. Basically, he invited people to group their skills (he developed a simple software program to do this) and saw that there were some skills that people would place in between two skill clusters. When asked about them, they said that these were the skills that they used to connect two different skill groups, hence the name 'Connecting Skills.'

Take a look at David's skill profile. Note the social skill of Empathy, the foundational skills of Research and Active Listening, the technical skill of Skill Cluster Analysis and design skill of Visual Communication. This unique combination of skills was required for his discovery of Connecting Skills.

What David discovered were Internal Connecting Skills, the skills internal to one person. There are also External Connecting Skills. These are the skills that two people, often with very different skill sets, use to work together. In the case of Steve Jobs and John Ives, there was a shared knowledge of design and design aesthetics that they used to frame their conversations.

Take some time this week to work with two people close to you (the three of you should work together) and answer the following questions.

1. What are our complementary skills?

2. What are our connecting skills?

3. Do we have connecting skills that connect our complementary skills?