The team should be a “motley crew” when it comes to backgrounds, training, and thinking styles. In one study, for example, three types of teams were compared in terms of the accuracy of their decisions and the speed of their decisions. One team was composed of “locomotors”—people who were primed to get things done and emphasize speed. A second team was composed of “assessors”—people who were primed to think things through, collect a lot of data, and mull over things. Finally, a third team was a hybrid group, composed of both locomotors and assessors. The results? The locomotor team was the fastest, but the least accurate. The assessor team was the most accurate, but the slowest. Obviously, there was a trade-off: accuracy often comes at the cost of speed. But the hybrid team was both accurate and fast—it effectively capitalized on the diverse strengths of its participants. In this sense, a synergistic gain resulted from combining both tortoises (slow, thoughtful, accurate people) and hares (fast, quick, get-it-done) people.

A near-ideal combination for maximizing creativity is a team diverse in terms of background, but similar in terms of thought categories. In other words, for group diversity to be maximally effective, the distances between the kinds of ideas that members bring to the table should not be too great because people need some basis for mutual understanding of ideas. For example, in one investigation, Asako Miura and his collaborator composed groups that were either high or low on diversity—as defined by the range of different ideas that individual members brought to the task—and high or low in terms of similarity—as defined in terms of the amount of duplication of ideas they generated in an independent task. The results indicated that groups who were diverse in their range of ideas but similar in the kinds of ideas they generated were the most creative.

There are hundreds of ways to diversify. What’s the best? Get to the inside of the onion. I often tell my students to think of diversity like an onion, meaning that there are several layers. On the outside of the onion are superficial characteristics, such as dress and appearance; the next layer is composed of characteristics such as race or ethnicity; deeper inside are education and values; and even deeper inside are fundamental personality characteristics and individual traits. It is more impactful to diversify at deeper levels. However, even superficial diversity (e.g., demographic and ethnic background) may improve creativity. One investigation compared all-white groups with groups composed of white, African American, Asian American, and Hispanic American participants. In this study, the ideas produced by ethnically diverse groups were more effective, more feasible, and of higher quality than those produced by the homogenous groups. In another study, European Americans were more creative immediately after being exposed to American and Chinese cultures, and the effect lasted for seven days. However, other investigations have not found appreciable differences. So this type of diversity may be less reliable than deeper differences in instigating creative performance.

One problem with building diverse teams is that people tend to be attracted to homogeneous groups. A compounding problem is that even when people know they should be focusing on diversity—the inside of the onion is hard to see. Ideally, we should compose teams that have deep-level diversity, but that is hard to do because sometimes those underlying skills, values, and orientations are just not obvious. What’s more important than combining superficially homogeneous groups is maximizing the deep-level diversity (the inside of the onion) based on education, training, and experience. Teams with greater educational specialization heterogeneity working under transformational leaders are more creative than more homogeneous teams. In a landmark study of creativity in biotechnology laboratories in the United States and the United Kingdom, Kevin Dunbar studied teams of microbiologists and their laboratories. Some of the labs followed homogeneous hiring practices; some were heterogeneous. To be sure, the heterogeneous labs had more reported conflict, but they also produced significantly more patents!

Diversity has a number of benefits, in addition to increasing creative idea generation. For example, diversity can also provide a buffer when groups grow too large. In one study, six different numerical group sizes were studied, ranging from five to ten members. Whereas the average contributions per group member diminished with increasing group size for homogeneous groups, heterogeneous groups improved their performance.

According to Keith Murnighan, when some teams diversify, they create a dangerous fault line that calls negative attention to the team, which sets the team up for an earthquake. A fault line occurs in a team when there is a big divide along two or more dimensions among members. For example, suppose in a group of six people there are three men and three women. Suppose also the men are engineers and the women are human resource managers. This is an example of a fault line because two demographics—gender and functional background—divide the group. Among all the fault lines that can threaten groups, gender is one that is particularly problematic. For example, studies of teams working on creativity tasks indicate that gender fault lines negatively affect the number of ideas and overall creativity of ideas.

There is a pervasive tendency for leaders to unconsciously choose people in their own image—part of the egocentrism effect. This “just like me” effect is so strong that people even tend to prefer those who have similar letters in their names; indeed people are more likely to marry a person whose name includes a high number of similar alphabet letters! Implicit egoism is the term for the way we are unconsciously attracted to people, things, and ideas that … well, remind us of our wonderful selves. But such choices lead to many problems and a boring team.

Situationists are people who reject imposed rules and instead, advocate individual analysis of each act in each situation. They are relativists, rather than absolutists. For example, if someone used a gun to kill someone in self-defense, but lived in a city in which gun ownership was illegal, the absolutist would look primarily at the law. In contrast, the situationist would look at the extenuating factors. In this sense, situationists see possibility in every context. Conversely, absolutists or universalists tend to see black and white; they believe that the best possible outcome can always be achieved by following universal moral rules. Creative people are less likely than noncreative people to follow universal rules and truths. However, creative people are not less caring about others. In fact, creative people are high in idealism, highly caring, and have a pragmatic but moral decision-making style.

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it helped the creative team. Most humans are born with an innate need to understand our world. This is epistemic motivation—the intense need to understand the world and how it works. For example, when someone experiences a rewarding outcome, such as getting someone to say yes to a request, they often analyze what they did and try to make it happen again. Creative people often display this thirst for understanding. People low in curiosity or epistemic motivation are largely uninterested in understanding the how and why of cause and effect in their world. Teams produce more ideas when members are high rather than low in epistemic motivation. What’s more, people who are high in epistemic motivation don’t appear to get defensive in the face of critical feedback. One investigation illustrates this: people received feedback from an “evaluator” (really a trained actor) via video. The feedback was either delivered in an angry way or a neutral way. The people high in epistemic motivation showed more creativity in terms of the quantity, variety, and originality of their ideas after receiving “angry” feedback, while those with low epistemic motivation were less creative. This suggests that curious people are also curious about themselves. When curious people are surprised or experience change, they seek to understand it.

People who are high in epistemic motivation are more likely to agree to statements like: “It upsets me to go into a situation without knowing what I can expect from it”; and “I enjoy having a clear and structured mode of life”; and “I find that a consistent routine enables me to enjoy life more.” In contrast, people who are low in epistemic motivation are more likely to say, “I enjoy being spontaneous”; “A life well-ordered with regular hours makes life tedious”; and “I enjoy the exhilaration of being in unpredictable situations.” It may seem paradoxical that curious people would prefer consistency. But this is highly consistent with the creative conspiracy principle that rules benefit the creative team process. The key is that curious people don’t like it when things are unpredictable or not understood.

The idealistic person has a genuine concern for others. Idealists display an ethic of caring and often insist that one must always avoid harming others. In fact, any creative idea or solution that may harm others will likely be unacceptable to an idealist. For this reason, it would appear that creative people would not be idealistic. Idealists are people who agree to statements such as: “One should never psychologically or physically harm another person” and “Risks to another should never be tolerated, irrespective of how small the risks might be.” Paul Bierly and his colleagues measured the complex relationship between creativity and idealism. Creativity was measured by three indicators: having original ideas, solving tasks in unique ways, and being stimulating. Participants were also asked how much they agreed with statements such as “People should make certain that their actions never intentionally harm another even to a small degree.” The researchers initially expected a reverse relationship between idealism and creativity; that is, the more idealistic people are, the less creative they were expected to be. The results surprised them: idealistic people were in fact more creative than less idealistic people! The question is, why? It may very well be that for people to work creatively, they need a supportive environment, and that caring about the welfare of others in that environment is critical for long-term success. A caring environment may promote passion about work and spur greater drive and motivation.

In another study, people were measured for openness to experience, unconventionality, ambition, and autonomy at age twenty-one and followed through their middle age. The most creative achievers in middle age were those who had been the most open, unconventional, ambitious, and autonomous at age twenty-one. What was particularly noteworthy was that the most creative people in middle age had made a behavioral commitment early in life.

Extroverts are people who seek out the presence of others. There is decent evidence that extroverts make good team members. Teams composed primarily of people with personality characteristics conducive to team creativity (high extroversion, high openness to experience, and low conscientiousness) show synergistic increases in creativity when their team confidence level is high. Most people know if they are introverts or extroverts, but sometimes it is hard to guess what others are. Extroverts are more likely to agree with the following: “I am: talkative, full of energy, assertive in personality, outgoing, and sociable.” In contrast, introverts are more likely to agree with the following: “I am: reserved, quiet, shy, and inhibited.”

People who are highly socially anxious are inhibited. They self-censor and fall into uncomfortable silence around others. Not surprisingly, people high in dispositional anxiousness are less creative than people low in dispositional anxiousness. Moreover, when non-anxious people are in the presence of anxious people, they start to feel anxious! Simply stated, non-anxious individuals lower their performance on creative tasks in the direction of highly anxious people. As with extroverts, most people probably know if they themselves are the anxious type, but anxiety is sometimes hard to quickly discern in others. What are the key giveaways? Anxious people feel nervous and tense when they are in social situations, job interviews, parties, on the phone, speaking with leaders, and talking with people who are different from themselves. Strangers, people of the opposite sex, authority figures, and audiences generally bring out anxiety. One way of overcoming anxiety is to create trust within the team.

The high-need-for-closure person likes to reach conclusions and resolve matters quickly and neatly. In contrast, the low-need-for-closure person can live with (and even thrive on) ambiguity, uncertainty, and lack of clarity. In one study, teams attempted to create advertising slogans for a product. Some of the teams were composed of people low in need for closure; others were high in need for closure. The low-need-for-closure teams showed more ideational fluency, elaboration of ideas, and creativity as rated by independent judges. Unlike anxiety and extraversion, need for closure is something that people often don’t have as much self-awareness about. Consider the following pairs of phrases: “Having clear rules and order at work is essential for success” versus “Even after I have made up my mind about something, I am always eager to consider a different opinion”; “I do not usually consult many different opinions before forming my own view” versus “I prefer interacting with people whose opinions are very different from my own”; “I’d rather know bad news than stay in a state of uncertainty” versus “I tend to put off making important decisions until the last possible moment”; and “I’d like to know what people are thinking about most of the time” versus “When considering a conflict, I can usually see how both sides could be right.” If you tended to resonate with the first statement in each pair, you have a high need for closure. If you resonated with the second statement in each pair, you are lower in need for closure.

Openness to experience is a personality construct that includes willingness to try new things, be uncomfortable, and step away from routine. This type of mind-set focuses on big-picture thinking rather than narrow thinking. This is the mind-set that looks at the forest rather than focusing on a single tree. In a provocative study of employees from a large global firm, those who scored high on openness as well as had networks characterized by high diversity, were the most creative. Moreover, teams whose members have different levels of openness to experience have the highest levels of team creativity, as long as they have some team members who are low on openness and others who have a moderate level of openness to experience. What are the telltale signs that people are high in openness to experience? They are more likely to vote for liberal political candidates, say that they believe in the importance of art, listen to new ideas, have a vivid imagination, and in general carry conversations to a higher level. People who are low in openness to experience are more likely to vote for conservative political candidates, have no liking for art or art museums, and avoid philosophical discussions and abstract ideas. Groups that have open-mindedness norms as well as a norm of decision comprehensiveness are more likely to have open, rigorous discussions.