As more women rise higher in the workforce¹ and evidence grows of the value of diverse teams, an odd and important management paradox² is arising: mixed teams can be hell to manage.

随着越来越多的女性担任较高级职位，同时有更多证据表明多样化团队的价值，一个奇怪但重要的管理悖论开始浮现：混合型团队可能很难管理。

It is perhaps more elegantly summarised by Rich Karlgaard and Michael Malone, who examined the research for their book Team Genius: The most successful teams exhibit diversity in their ranks, but [diverse] teams face serious structural³ challenges regarding motivation, integration⁴, and co-ordination.

里奇.卡尔加德(Rich Karlgaard)和迈克尔.马隆(Michael Malone)所作的总结或许更为精辟，俩人为撰写《团队天才》(Team Genius)一书开展了相关研究，他们认为：最成功的团队表现出成员多样性，但（多样化）团队面临着与积极性、融合和协调相关的重大结构性挑战。

The process of assembling, running and developing a team is difficult enough without the additional obstacles thrown up by diversity.

即便没有多样性带来的额外障碍，组建、管理和发展一个团队就已经很困难了。

The temptation for team leaders is always to look for ways to reduce any friction⁵ that might hamper⁶ progress towards a collective goal.

团队领导者总想设法减少任何可能阻碍团队实现共同目标的摩擦。

So how should managers strike the balance?

那么，管理者如何找到一个平衡呢？

The first step is to understand when a diverse team works better than a more homogeneous group.

第一步是了解多样化团队在什么情况下表现会好于同质化的团队。

Unsurprisingly, a diverse team will be better placed to devise and sell products to a similarly diverse group of customers.

毫不令人意外的是，多样化团队更适合面向同样多样化的客户群体设计并销售产品。

A survey for the New York-based Center for Talent Innovation looked at public companies that had two-dimensional diversity — that is, by race, gender⁷, sexuality or other inherent traits on the one hand and acquired diversity, such as language skills or a global mindset on the other.

一项为总部位于纽约的人才创新中心(Center for Talent Innovation)所做的调查着眼于具备二维多样性的上市公司，这类公司的职员不仅在种族、性别或其他遗传特点方面存在多样性，而且还具备后天多样性，例如语言技能或国际化思维等方面。

The survey found employees at 2D companies were 70 per cent more likely to report capturing a new market in the past year than those at less diverse companies.

调查发现，与多样性较弱的公司相比，在二维多样性公司工作的员工报告过去一年成功开辟新市场的可能性要高出70%。

More broadly, diverse teams can outperform even star performers from similar backgrounds because of the power of collective intelligence,

从更广泛的意义来说，由于集体智慧的力量，多样化团队的表现甚至可以超过由背景相似的优秀成员组成的团队。

identified by researcher Anita Williams Woolley at Carnegie Mellon University and others.

卡内基梅隆大学(Carnegie Mellon University)研究员阿妮塔.威廉姆斯.伍利(Anita Williams Woolley)和其他研究员发现了这点。

Collective intelligence turns out to trump⁸ the average intelligence of individual team members and is enhanced by the presence of more women in a group, whose social sensitivity helps the team cohere⁹.

事实证明，集体智慧会超过团队成员个人智慧的平均值，如果一个团队中有较多女性成员的话会更有裨益，因为女性成员的社会敏感性有助于增强团队凝聚力。

On the other hand, teams from similar backgrounds or of the same gender perform better at tasks that involve implementing¹⁰ existing solutions.

另一方面，成员背景相似或性别相同的团队在执行有现成解决方案的任务方面表现更为出色。

In her new book What Works, Iris¹¹ Bohnet, the author and behavioural economist¹², includes a cheat sheet — based on classroom discussion on how to form effective groups — that starts with the insight that if a task involves co-ordination, say the provision of a public good like clean water or better healthcare, homogeneous groups can be helpful.

行为经济学家艾里斯.博内特(Iris Bohnet)新书《What Works》中加了一条备忘录（基于就如何组建高效率团队的课堂讨论），其开头就提出一条观点：如果一项任务需要协调，例如提供洁净水或更好医疗服务之类的公共品，同质化团体可能很管用。

If the team is solving individual problems, she advises, take account of the influence of different groups.

如果团队解决的是个体问题，她建议应考虑不同群体的影响力。

So, for instance, boys benefit if they are in a class with an over-representation of girls, who are more likely to apply themselves and less likely to disrupt the lesson.

例如，如果班内女孩数量过多，男孩就会受益，他们更有可能专心学习，不大可能扰乱课堂。

Conversely, collective problem-solving can require a heterogenous group, Ms Bohnet writes, with women often providing vital listening and bridge-building skills.

反过来，博内特写道，集体解决问题可能需要一个异质化团队，女性通常提供关键的倾听和搭建桥梁的技能。

Her caveat¹³: mixed teams work only when a critical mass of the minority is present — perhaps making up at least a third of the group.

她告诫说：只有当少数成员达到一定比例时，或许至少要占到三分之一，混合型团队才能发挥应有作用。

If you start out with a population of, say, 20 per cent men and 80 per cent women and then want to create work teams, do not allocate¹⁴ people proportionally, she writes.

她写道：假如你手下员工20%为男性，80%为女性，你想组建几个工作团队，那么不要按男女比例分配人手。

Instead, form a few balanced teams and assign the rest of the women to all-female groups.

组建几个男女搭配平衡的团队，然后将剩下的女员工组建为纯女性团队。

Such design problems are hard to correct in large organisations.

在大公司，这种设计问题很难修正。

The CTI research on 2D diversity and innovation found that even when diverse teams came up with innovative¹⁶ ideas and products, they were often stifled¹⁷ by more homogeneous groups that persisted higher up in the organisation¹⁵.

上述人才创新中心对二维多样性和创新的研究发现，即便多样化团队提出有创意的构想和产品，也经常会被更同质化的上级团队压制着。

If this were not complicated enough, emerging research suggests that even these established studies of diverse teams may have been skewed by our inability to assess diversity accurately¹⁸.

如果这还不够复杂的话，最新研究显示，即便是这些有关多样性团队的成熟研究成果也可能因为我们无法准确评估多样性而有失公允。

Participants in an experiment run by Stanford researchers judged their team was more gender-diverse if its members were wearing different coloured T-shirts.

在斯坦福大学(Stanford)研究人员展开的一项实验中，如果团队成员穿着不同颜色的T恤，实验参与者就会判断他们的团队性别多样性程度较高。

The catch was that all the teams had the same male-female mix.

问题是所有团队的男女比例都是一致的。

This matters, because a manager who thinks for the wrong reasons that his or her team has differing skills, attitudes and backgrounds, may assign it a collective or creative task that it is ill-equipped to carry out.

这很重要，因为如果管理者出于错误的原因认为团队成员拥有不同的技能、态度和背景，他可能会派这个团队执行某项他们其实并不擅长的集体或创造性任务。

Even those who advocate a more gender-balanced workforce suggest that team formation will involve a trade-off between tension among members and improved performance.

甚至连那些支持职场性别均衡的人士也认为，组建团队需要考虑成员间的紧张关系和如何提升绩效，对这两个问题进行权衡。

Mr Karlgaard and Mr Malone refer to the cost-benefit analysis team leaders need to make as they try to enhance teams while avoiding the risk of friction.

卡尔加德和马隆指出，如果想提高团队绩效同时避免成员间发生摩擦，领导者需要进行成本效益分析。

In the same vein¹⁹, Ms Bohnet writes that for gender diversity to increase group performance, you need team members whose different perspectives add value while keeping the cost of co-ordination as low as possible.

博内特写道，要通过性别多样性增强团队绩效，你需要能够从不同视角看问题、从而提升团队价值的成员，同时你也要尽可能地降低协调的成本。

What seems clear is that as teams become more diverse, and more willing therefore to express their sometimes conflicting views, organisations will need to develop better, more active, more sensitive managers to run them.

有一点看来是明确的，当团队变得更富于多样性、也因此更乐意表达有时候相互矛盾的见解，组织必须培养更优秀、更积极主动也更能体察下属的领导者来管理团队。