Do you believe in the power of diversity to deliver results?

Do you believe in a champion team, or a team of champions?

Do you pick the best person for the job, even if they are not the best person for the team?

In the 1990s, William Muir, an evolutionary biologist from Purdue University, did an experiment using chickens. He segregated the chickens into two groups - average egg laying chickens and ‘super’ chickens - those that laid a prolific amount of eggs. After two generations of being grouped together like this, what happened to the chickens? Did the super chickens inspire even more prolific egg laying in each other? Did a team of champions create a champion team? Er, not exactly.

Turns out, that putting super chickens in with other super chickens just makes them kill each other. Yep. Hyper competitiveness at it’s best. Only 3 super chickens survived. The average laying chickens however, were merrily making a continuous supply of eggs... without killing each other.

You can learn more about the super chickens in Margaret Heffernan’s iconic TED talk, "Why it's time to forget the pecking order at work." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyn_xLrtZaY

It makes me wonder how many of us are lured by the promise of the super chicken, er, I mean star performer, over a team of solid chickens, er, I mean performers. :)

This topic comes up a lot in regard to diversity hires, and in particular gender diversity.

“Should I pick someone from the minority group, if they are not technically the best candidate or the most qualified for the job?

And I always ask in return,

“What’s your definition of qualified?”

Sometimes, we need to reassess what our definition of qualified is to encompass a broader set of different, yet equally valuable (and often overlooked) skills required to do the job.

For example:

Does the candidate excel in their own work? AND, do they support their teams to excel in theirs?
Do they have enough years of experience in the job? AND, are they able to coach, mentor and develop others as well?
Do they have great ideas? AND, do they create psychological safety in their teams, to encourage and elicit the great ideas of others.

Obviously, the difference between the first line of questioning and the second, is the difference between a star performer who delivers excellent results, and a solid performer who amplifies the potential excellence of others around them to produce excellent results. (They can of course be star performers in their own right, but I want to challenge you to consider what skills are most valuable).

So, would you be willing to change your definition of the best person for the job, to appoint someone with auxiliary skills you hadn’t originally included in your job description, if you knew it would amplify the outcomes of the whole team, not just one person?

After all, maybe ‘best person’ for the job, isn’t the best person for the team. And maybe that's an equally important measurement.

Perhaps we need to broaden our definition of best person for the job, to account for the actual impacts we have on one another – it's how we work together; how we deliver results together; it's how we are made better together that will get real results.

Next time you are faced with equally good candidates, or are considering a ‘diversity’ hire and don't want to be ‘filling a quota’, ask yourself, does this person:

Bring out the genius of others?

Do they create psychological safety?
Do they create space for / and support others to grow and develop?

Because if they do, then you can feel confident that you have not simply ‘filled a quota’ but truly hired the best person for the full job, which includes the one with the most positive impact on the team.

Food for thought…