A Diversity Mindset Perspective on Inclusive Leadership

A Diversity Mindset Perspective on Inclusive Leadership

Research has shown that diversity within a team gives the potential to:

• Gain synergistic advantages (resulting from, among other things, diversity of knowledge, insights and perspectives among team members) over more homogeneous teams by encouraging information integration processes.
• At the same time, diverse teams have the potential to provoke interpersonal tensions that disrupt the very process of information integration. When information integration processes are disrupted, the potential benefit that more diverse teams can realize can be disrupted.

A focus on the role of team leadership in stimulating information integration processes and preempting interpersonal tensions is obvious and important, but surprisingly underdeveloped conceptually and empirically.

In this article, the authors integrate insights from two complementary perspectives on leadership and diversity—inclusive leadership and leadership for diversity mindsets—to advance a more integrative perspective on how team leadership can stimulate both inclusion and synergy from diversity.