The Diversity We Still Don’t Talk About

Diversity has become a crucial priority of modern associations and organizations. We have learned to pay closer attention to who is in the room, based on gender, ethnicity, age, disability, nationality, sexuality, socioeconomic background and lived experience. These forms of diversity shape opportunity, access, representation and justice.

But there is another kind of diversity that is easier to miss and harder to measure: the diversity of how people think. Cognitive diversity is the range of perspectives, mental models, problem-solving styles and decision-making habits people bring to a team. It is not just about what people look like or where they come from. It is about how they notice patterns, challenge assumptions, frame problems and make sense of complexity.

The uncomfortable truth is that a team can look diverse on the surface and still think in remarkably similar ways. People may come from different backgrounds, but if they attended the same universities, trained in the same disciplines and were rewarded for the same behaviours, they may use the same language, trust the same data and reach the same "obvious" conclusions.

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