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Hemogeneous Teams or Heterogeneous Teams?

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Having a homogeneous leadership team of people is appealing, it’s completely logical. We tend to gravitate towards people that share our experiences; It’s easier to communicate and share ideas, which is the backbone of small startups. Of course, businesses take financial backing, but without a group that can both understand and actualize that vision the startup will fail.

There are disadvantages to building a heterogeneous team. Everyone comes from different backgrounds, cultures, age groups, and so on. Sometimes the differences between members are mutually exclusive. This can be a source of contention between members; however, it can also be a source of positive things for the company.

Since everyone in a purely heterogeneous team has differing experiences, it can be a source for Financial and Human capital. The Founder’s Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman brings this point out in chapter 4 page 93, where it states:

“…To find the broad range of hard skills needed in the startup, founders have to fight their homophilic tendencies by taking a structured approach to defining the startup’s needs for human, social, and financial capital…” [1, p. 93]

My stance, as I try to take with most things in life, is a more balanced approach. I believe that when it comes to selecting a team, communication and trust are paramount and must be present, otherwise, there will be no company and all the sacrifice that you and the founder’s made to get the business moving will be for nothing. If a team has communication, respect, and trust I believe that a team can work.

When I find myself in the position to select my founding team, I will select those who have similarities to myself, particularly with communication. If expertise is needed outside of my founding team and they are different they must at least share those same values in communication.

Its not an easy task and requires a well trained gut and solid interview questions, but what do you think? Should we stay with people that are just like us or should we take a risk and expand our horizons?

References:

[1] N. Wasserman, The Founder’s Dilemmas, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.

Responses

  1. Danielle Gualtieri Avatar
    Danielle Gualtieri

    I liked your balanced approach to choosing a founding team and agree that communication and trust are foundational. If you can’t communicate with someone or trust them, having the perfect mix of expertise isn’t going to save things. I also thought your point about communication styles was interesting. It made me wonder how much similarity we actually need to work well with someone. Shared values around communication and respect seem really important, but I wonder if there can also be value in having people who communicate or approach problems differently.

    The importance of impeccable communication has been something I’ve thought about in my life. On one hand, don Miguel Ruiz makes a great point on why being impeccable is beneficial in his book The Four Agreements. But when I met my now very best friend, I had a hard time understanding her. She used different vocabulary, structure, and cadence than I did. At first I thought her word choices were simply wrong, but I learned that she was communicating ideas in larger, more abstract ways than I had been trained to think in. Eventually I noticed that our difference in communication, which relied heavily on on concepts, context, non-verbal communication, had reshaped the way I approached problems, like she had helped me take a step back and see the world from an entirely new angle.

    I began to believe that if we are too structured in communication, we lose the site of the forest by obsessing over the trees.

    But where is that line?
    If I’m a founder and I think, “This person just gets me,” that probably feels like a really good sign. But I wonder if sometimes it could also mean we’re just very similar. And I wonder if there are times when someone who is a little harder to work with at first could end up bringing something the team really needs. You want people you can work with, but you also need people who bring something you don’t have.

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  2. theresacandow Avatar
    theresacandow

    I agree with your balanced approach to building a team. I do not think we necessarily have to choose between surrounding ourselves with people who are just like us or completely taking a risk on people who are different. I think the better approach is finding people who share important values, such as communication, trust, and work ethic, while still bringing different experiences and perspectives to the business.

    From my own experience, having people around me who were similar to me was extremely helpful in the beginning because there was already an established level of trust and communication. However, I have also learned that being comfortable with the people around you does not always mean you are getting the different ideas that could help the business grow. If everyone approaches a problem in the same way, there may not be anyone there to question whether there is a better solution.

    I especially liked your point about communication being something you would look for even when bringing in someone who is different from your founding team. I think that is where the balance comes in. I would rather have someone who brings a completely different perspective but shares the same expectations for communication and respect than someone who thinks exactly like me simply because they are easier to work with.

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