Diverse teams get admirable results but often at a price to the team members. They may struggle to get good results because they’re experiencing a steep learning curve paved with  frustrations dealing with new people who are different from them.

Based on my experiences with diverse teams, I now try to follow these 7 actions, grounded in science, to help diverse teams work better together. You can read my suggestions in this Forbes Coaches Council article, Boost the power of diverse teams: 7 tips for stronger connections from November 22, 2023.

As I explain in the article, my recent experiences with diverse teams remind me of the first sentence of Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, in which he compares happy and unhappy families. My version is: “Functional diverse teams work in similar ways; every dysfunctional diverse team is dysfunctional in its own way.”