DEV Community

Discussion on: Healthy teams, unhealthy teams: in your experience, what makes them so?

Collapse
 
the_power_coder profile image
John Dorlus

One thing that I noticed contributes to an unhealthy team is having too many of the same type of person/personality. Lack of perspective. This usually generates an instant clique where there is an us vs. them mentality.

There is a richness that is present when your team is diverse and your product can flourish because of it. Having a lack of diversity is a bug, not s feature.

Collapse
 
gergelyorosz profile image
Gergely Orosz • Edited

While I both agree that diverse teams are usually higher performing than non-diverse teams and research also supports this, I'm not sure it's fair to say that teams that are homogenous cannot be healthy. In many cases, you can change how people behave, but you can never change their background and past experiences.

The behaviour you described as "us-versus them" and having cliques is definitely something that contributes to an unhealthy team - thanks for sharing! Have you observed other behaviours or characteristics have you for healthy or unhealthy teams?