Article

Group & Organization Management

2022, Vol. 47(4) 779–797
A Diversity Mindset © The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/1059601121997229
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Daan van Knippenberg1,

and Wendy P. van Ginkel1

Abstract
Team diversity research has established that diversity has the potential to
stimulate synergetic performance outcomes through information integration
processes, but also has the potential to invite interpersonal tensions that
disrupt the very information integration process that can give more diverse
teams an advantage over more homogeneous teams. A focus on the role of
team leadership in stimulating information integration processes and pre-
empting interpersonal tensions is obvious and important, but surprisingly
underdeveloped conceptually and empirically. In this article, we integrate
insights from two complementary perspectives on leadership and diversity—
inclusive leadership and leadership for diversity mindsets—to advance a more
integrative perspective on how team leadership can stimulate both inclusion
and synergy from diversity.

Keywords
diversity, leadership, teams or teamwork

Over the years, work has become increasingly team-based (Mathieu,

Hollenbeck, van Knippenberg, & Ilgen, 2017). An important element in
this development has been the growing emphasis on knowledge work. As
compared with organizing around individual job assignments, the team-based

1
Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA
Corresponding Author:
Daan van Knippenberg, Department of Management, Drexel University, 3220 Market Street,
Philadelphia 19104, PA, USA.
Email: [email protected]
780 Group & Organization Management 47(4)

organization of work has the clear advantage of tapping into teams’ greater
potential for information processing both in terms of bringing more diverse
knowledge, expertise, and perspectives together and in achieving synergy
from the integration of these perspectives (De Dreu, Nijstad, & van
Knippenberg, 2008; Hinsz, Tindale, & Vollrath, 1997; van Knippenberg,
2017a). This team information processing perspective suggests that there is
value in team diversity as an informational resource—a source of diverse task-
relevant information and perspectives (van Knippenberg, De Dreu, & Homan,
2004). Accordingly, team diversity should be a core element in considering
the team-based organization of knowledge work.
Benefiting from team diversity in knowledge work requires more than
composing diverse teams, however. Whereas the team information processing
perspective identifies diversity as an asset, there is a counterpoint to this.
Theory and evidence indicate that as a result of stereotype-based biases, team
members may also respond negatively to dissimilar others. As a result, team
diversity can also disrupt team information elaboration (i.e., the exchange,
discussion, and integration of task-relevant information; van Knippenberg
et al., 2004) and thus stand in the way of knowledge work performance (i.e.,
including creativity and innovation and complex decision-making; van Dijk,
van Engen, & van Knippenberg, 2012). This puts a premium on identifying
the influences that shape teams’ engagement with their diversity such that the
synergistic benefits of diversity are realized. This is an issue that theory and
research addressed extensively (for reviews, see Guillaume, Dawson, Otaye-
Ebede, Woods, & West, 2017; van Knippenberg & Mell, 2016). Somewhat
surprisingly, however, these efforts have paid relatively little attention to what
arguably is the most proximal influence from a diversity management per-
spective: team leadership.
Achieving synergistic benefits from diversity requires that team processes
are shaped such that negative interpersonal tensions that can be sparked by
dissimilarity between team members are prevented and team information
elaboration is stimulated. There are a host of factors influencing these pro-
cesses, ranging from team member personality to more structural aspects of
the teamwork (e.g., Homan et al., 2008). As van Knippenberg, van Ginkel,
and Homan (2013a) argue, however, team leadership unites two qualities that
make it a particularly relevant focus from the perspective of actionable
knowledge. Team leadership is flexible in that it may be tailored to optimally
align with a specific team’s diversity, and team leadership more than many
other influences (e.g., member personality and the nature of the work) is under
managerial control. In view of these considerations, it is surprising that re-
search on team diversity and leadership is rare (cf. Randel et al., 2018).
van Knippenberg and van Ginkel 781

Moreover, most studies of team diversity and leadership adopt what van
Knippenberg (2017b) called a generic approach as opposed to a team-specific
approach. That is, they apply generic models of leadership that were not
developed with a specific focus on leading diverse teams in mind (i.e., as
opposed to a leadership approach anchoring on the team processes key to
benefiting from team diversity in knowledge work). There is for instance
research on the benefits for diverse teams of participative leadership (Somech,
2006), transformational leadership (Kearney & Gebert, 2009; Shin & Zhou,
2007), and high-quality leader–member exchange relationships (Nishii &
Mayer, 2009). These leadership perspectives were not developed with an eye
on the team processes involved in the synergistic benefits of team diversity,
however. Leadership theory specific to team diversity may more precisely
establish what would make leadership of diverse teams effective because it
would more directly speak to the core team processes team leadership should
stimulate (cf. van Knippenberg, 2017b). To our knowledge, such theory exists
in inclusive leadership (Randel et al., 2018) and in leadership for diversity
mindsets (van Knippenberg et al., 2013a) (a recent theory by Homan,
Gündemir, Buengeler, & van Kleef, 2020 is less helpful in that it concerns
reactive leadership to respond to information elaboration and interpersonal
tensions rather than proactive leadership to promote the former and prevent
the latter; team diversity research clearly indicates that the leadership chal-
lenge is to promote information elaboration and not to respond to it, and that
intergroup tensions need to be prevented to be able to stimulate information
elaboration; van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007). Inclusive leadership is
leader behavior aimed at creating a sense of inclusion (i.e., a sense of be-
longingness and uniqueness within the team; Randel et al., 2018). Leadership
for diversity mindsets is leader behavior to shape the team’s understanding of
its diversity (i.e., diversity mindset) such that it captures the notion of diversity
as a source of information, insights, and perspectives, and information
elaboration as the process to use that resource in knowledge work (van
Knippenberg et al., 2013a). Whereas both inclusive leadership and leadership
for diversity mindsets are diversity-specific perspectives on leadership, their
current status in the field of research is quite different. Inclusive leadership is
emerging as a research stream (Randel et al., 2018), whereas leadership for
diversity mindsets is currently limited to the theory in which the diversity
mindset concept was proposed (van Knippenberg et al., 2013a) and, em-
pirically, only received follow-up in a study of diversity mindsets not focusing
on leadership (van Knippenberg et al., 2019) and in a study of leader ex-
perience with cultural diversity informed by, but not including measurement
of, the concept of diversity mindsets (Raithel, van Knippenberg, & Stam,
in press). Importantly, however, as we outline in the following section,
782 Group & Organization Management 47(4)

leadership for diversity mindsets complements the current theory and research
in inclusive leadership and can extend and enrich the inclusive leadership
perspective with an explicit focus on engendering team information elabo-
ration, the core driver of the synergistic benefits of team diversity. We propose
that integrating the notion of leadership for diversity mindsets into inclusive
leadership theory results in a conceptualization of inclusive leadership that
more precisely captures how leadership may engender the team processes that
are core to achieving synergistic performance benefits from team diversity.
Importantly, we argue that such a focus on diversity as an integral part of how
the team performs its job is also a more effective way to create a sense of
inclusion than a focus on psychological inclusion as a goal in and of itself (cf.
Ely & Thomas, 2001)—which is not to deny that inclusion is a legitimate and
important objective in and of itself; our argument is about effectiveness in
achieving these objectives and not about the relatively importance of these
objectives.

Diversity-specific Team Leadership: Inclusive

Leadership and Diversity Mindsets
The state of the science in research on team diversity and performance
supports the conclusion that team diversity can be a positive influence on
knowledge work performance provided two conditions are met: disruptive
interpersonal tensions are prevented and members are motivated and able to
engage in team information elaboration (van Knippenberg et al., 2004).
Diversity research also indicates that these are not conditions that should be
considered in isolation from each other. Interpersonal tensions disrupt in-
formation elaboration (e.g., Kooij-de Bode, van Knippenberg, & van Ginkel,
2008), and stimulating information elaboration requires a situation in which
such interpersonal tensions are prevented (van Knippenberg et al., 2004).
Conversely, a focus on the performance outcomes that teams may achieve by
drawing on their diversity arguably is among the more effective ways to
reduce interpersonal tensions because it shifts attention from “the other” being
different to team diversity as a characteristic of the team as a whole, captures
diversity as a positive characteristic (rather than a potential source of prob-
lems), and shifts attention from preventing negative outcomes to promoting
positive outcomes (Ely & Thomas, 2001; van Knippenberg et al., 2013a;
cf. Dwertmann, Nishii, & van Knippenberg, 2016). Whereas research has
identified a range of factors that may influence these processes and thus
stimulate the synergistic benefits of diversity, our focus here is on team
leadership as one such factor of particular interest because of team leadership’s
potential to specifically and dynamically engage with the team and its unique
van Knippenberg and van Ginkel 783

composition (as per van Knippenberg et al., 2013a). A first observation in this
respect is that there is no generic model of leadership that even by implication
addresses these effects of team diversity. Thus, we turn our attention to in-
clusive leadership and leadership for diversity mindsets.

Inclusive Leadership
Inclusive leadership was proposed as leader behavior that would create a sense
of inclusion and psychological safety that would make it possible for all team
members to contribute their own perspective (Nembhard & Edmondson,
2006). Shore et al. (2011) proposed that inclusion—the core focus of inclusive
leadership—should be understood to involve the experience of belongingness
(i.e., being part of the group or organization) as well as the experience of
distinctiveness (i.e., being a unique individual within that group or organi-
zation). Randel et al. (2018) build on this understanding advocated by Shore
et al. They proposed that inclusive leadership should be understood as leader
behavior to create such a sense of belongingness and uniqueness (also see
Shore & Chung, 2021). These behaviors include on the one hand supporting
individuals as group members, ensuring fairness, and sharing decision-
making, and on the other hand encouraging diverse contributions and
helping group members to fully contribute. Such leadership would result in
effects on psychological states (inclusion, identification, and empowerment)
and behavior (creativity, performance, and turnover). Arguably, these in-
clusive leadership behaviors should not be seen as either contributing to
belongingness or to uniqueness but as contributing to inclusiveness as the
combined feeling of belongingness and uniqueness. People resist identifi-
cation with groups that they feel are associated with a denial of their
uniqueness (cf. Brewer, 1991; van Prooijen & van Knippenberg, 2000).
Accordingly, there is a clear case that one can only truly experience a sense of
belongingness when one also has the sense that one’s uniqueness is preserved.
Whereas there is a clear diversity focus in Randel et al.’s analysis, it is also
fair to say that the study of inclusive leadership as a domain of research is not
diversity-specific and does not have an explicit focus on the team interaction
processes that drive the synergetic benefits from diversity. Nembhard and
Edmondson’s (2006) original analysis did not explicitly concern team di-
versity. Indeed, the majority of inclusive leadership studies do not concern
team diversity as a variable (e.g., Hirak, Peng, Carmeli, & Schaubroeck, 2012;
Leroy, Buengeler, Veestraeten, Shemla, & Hoever, 2021) and some do not
concern the team level of analysis (e.g., Carmeli, Reiter-Palmon, & Ziv,
2010). Moreover, the consideration of mediating processes focuses on psy-
chological states rather than team interaction processes: psychological safety,
784 Group & Organization Management 47(4)

identification, empowerment, and perceived status differences (e.g., Carmeli

et al., 2010; Hirak et al., 2012; Mitchell et al., 2015; Randel et al., 2018).
That said, the notion of inclusive leadership as encompassing a focus on
valuing uniqueness and different perspectives fits well with the notion of
leadership to stimulate information elaboration in diverse teams. We are not
aware of a study showing that inclusive leadership moderates the effects of
diversity on information elaboration. Mitchell et al. (2015) do show that
professional diversity moderates the indirect (via perceived status differences)
effect of inclusive leadership on team performance, which at least establishes
a diversity-specific effect of inclusive leadership on team performance. The
state of the science in inclusive leadership research (as per Randel et al., 2018)
as we see it thus is that of a leadership perspective with clear implications for
how to stimulate the synergistic performance benefits of diversity. At the same
time, we see it as underdeveloped conceptually and empirically in not
speaking to the key information elaboration process driving such synergistic
performance benefits. This, we argue, is where leadership for diversity
mindsets comes in.

Leadership for Diversity Mindsets

In proposing the concept of diversity mindsets, van Knippenberg et al. (2013a)
started from the observation that the going understanding of what is a fa-
vorable diversity climate, a favorable attitude toward diversity, and good
diversity management put the emphasis on equal employment opportunity and
the absence of discrimination rather than on achieving synergy from diversity
(Davidson, 2011; Dwertmann et al., 2016; Ely & Thomas, 2001; Nishii,
Khattab, Shemla, & Paluch, 2018; van Knippenberg, Nishii, & Dwertmann,
2020; van Knippenberg, Homan, & van Ginkel, 2013b). Van Knippenberg
et al. (2013a) argued that preventing the negative effects of diversity (i.e.,
unfairness and discrimination) is a necessary but insufficient condition for
stimulating synergistic outcomes because absent the biases that stand in the
way of equal employment opportunity and effective teamwork, knowledge
work teams will only engage in information elaboration to the extent that they
are motivated and able to do so (van Knippenberg et al., 2004).
With this as a starting point, van Knippenberg et al. (2013a) proposed the
concept of diversity mindsets: team cognition reflecting team members’
understanding of their team’s diversity and how to engage with it (i.e., the
understanding is specific to the team and the team’s composition and not a
generic, one-size-fits-all understanding). Team cognition refers to members’
mental representation of their team and their teamwork. Team cognition is
important because, to the extent that the cognition is shared within the team
van Knippenberg and van Ginkel 785

(i.e., that there is similarity in members’ team cognition), team cognition

guides members’ collaborative efforts and makes teams with greater
sharedness of cognition more effective (Salas & Fiore, 2004). Drawing on
research by van Ginkel and van Knippenberg (2008, 2009, 2012) showing that
team members often are insufficiently aware of the importance of information
elaboration, van Knippenberg et al. argued that a focus on information
elaboration in diverse teams is not a given. Accordingly, the motivation for
information elaboration (cf. van Knippenberg et al., 2004) should also be
understood to include an understanding of the importance of information
elaboration for nonroutine, synergistic outcomes. They proposed that di-
versity mindsets conducive to the performance benefits of diversity would
emphasize team information elaboration as the means to achieve synergistic
outcomes such as greater learning, better decisions, better solutions to
nonroutine problems, and greater creativity and innovation.
Diversity mindset as team cognition is related to but not the same as team
diversity climate (i.e., the shared perception of how the team views and
approaches diversity; Kossek & Zonia, 1993; Mor Barak, Cherin, & Berkman,
1998; Nishi, 2013) in that team cognition concerns members’ own un-
derstanding and climate concerns members’ perception of the team’s or or-
ganization’s perspective. When diversity mindsets are shared, and team
members are aware of this sharedness (cf. van Ginkel & van Knippenberg,
2008), however, the distinction between team cognition and team climate
blurs and mainly resides in whether it at core is understood, and oper-
ationalized, as team members’ individual understanding (team cognition) or as
team members’ perception of their team’s understanding (climate). In that
sense, then, van Knippenberg et al.’s analysis of diversity mindsets can be
understood to be highly relevant to our understanding of diversity climate.
Should one be interested in leadership of diversity from a team climate
perspective, the notion of leadership for diversity mindsets could also be
reframed as leadership to build a team climate capturing the key elements that
would make such a climate conducive to the synergistic performance benefits
of diversity.
With these notions in place, van Knippenberg et al. (2013a) analyzed how
team leadership could stimulate the formation of shared diversity mindsets.
They proposed that leaders can stimulate the development of favorable di-
versity mindsets through the combination of three elements of leadership that
mutually reinforce each other and over time stimulate the emergence of shared
diversity mindsets in the team. The first element is leader advocacy of such
mindsets: an important element in shaping team cognition is advocating the
leader’s own understanding of the team and teamwork (i.e., it starts with the
leader’s own diversity mindset; cf. Davidson, 2021). Outside the diversity
786 Group & Organization Management 47(4)

domain, van Ginkel and van Knippenberg (2012) showed that this can help
build team members’ shared understanding of the importance of information
elaboration, and the same logic should hold for diversity mindsets. The second
element is leader stimulation of team information elaboration. The leader can
do this through such actions as inviting diverse input and encouraging the
discussion and integration of diverse perspectives (cf. Roberson & Perry,
2021). The logic here is that shared understanding emerges from shared
experience at least as much as from exposure to leader advocacy, in part
because experiencing something can clarify what talking about it in the
abstract may not. Guiding teams into such experience is also important in
preventing a potential gap between what is espoused and what is enacted (cf.
Mor Barak, Luria, & Brimhall, 2021; Nishii et al., 2018). Conversely, leader
advocacy is important in helping make sense of the experience and in allowing
the leader to guide the team into an information elaboration process. The third
element is to stimulate a process of team reflexivity to learn from these in-
formation elaboration experiences and develop the team’s transactive memory
(i.e., an understanding of the expertise and perspectives of different team
members, of “who knows what”; Wegner, 1987) that helps the team draw on
its diverse informational resources (Richter, Hirst, van Knippenberg, & Baer,
2012). Team reflexivity refers to the team discussing team process and
performance to develop a better understanding of what to aim for and how to
achieve this (West, 1996). Leaders can engage members in team reflexivity by
engendering a discussion of teamwork experiences and guide this discussion
to touch on such issues as what the team learned about different members’
expertise and perspectives (i.e., developing transactive memory) and what the
team gained in insights through information elaboration. Team reflexivity is
important because learning from experience does not occur automatically, and
a deliberate effort to learn helps in this process. This is for instance illustrated
by van Ginkel and van Knippenberg (2009), who showed that by reflecting on
what they knew about different team members’ expertise team members came
to a better understanding of the importance of information elaboration (i.e.,
realizing that different members know different things help see that in-
formation elaboration is the way to use this diversity of expertise). In a similar
vein, van Ginkel, Tindale, and van Knippenberg (2009) showed that re-
flexivity helped team members with different understandings of the task to
converge on a shared understanding of the importance of information elab-
oration. Conversely, reflexivity alone is less effective in developing diversity
mindsets without the leader advocacy and information elaboration experience
as input for team reflexivity.
The focus in this analysis is on developing a shared diversity mindset in the
team and on benefiting from the diversity of insights and perspectives of the
van Knippenberg and van Ginkel 787

team as a whole. This should be seen in the light of theory and evidence that in
diverse teams, members of historically marginalized groups—who also find
themselves in a numerical minority position in many teams—face greater
challenges in feeling included, seeing their expertise recognized, feeling
psychologically safe to voice their perspectives, and being able to engage the
team in a discussion of their perspectives when they do (Guillaume, Brodbeck, &
Riketta, 2012; Subasi, van Ginkel, & van Knippenberg, in press; Tröster & van
Knippenberg, 2012). Thus, shared diversity mindsets emphasizing informa-
tion elaboration to realize the synergistic benefits of team diversity are
especially important in including the perspectives of members of un-
derrepresented groups in the team information elaboration processes (van
Knippenberg et al., 2019). Accordingly, inclusive leadership for diversity
mindsets may affect the information elaboration and performance of the team
as a whole, but its effects will be strongest for the extent to which the per-
spectives of members from historically marginalized groups are included in
the elaboration process.
Van Knippenberg et al. (2013a) propose that leadership for diversity
mindsets is a dynamic process in which recurring advocacy, information
elaboration experience, and team reflexivity stimulate the emergence of
shared diversity mindsets that emphasize the elaboration of the team’s di-
versity of information and perspectives for synergistic outcomes (accordingly,
it would require more of such leadership early on to stimulate the emergence
of such diversity mindsets than later on when such mindsets have been es-
tablished). The emphasis here is different than in analyses of inclusive
leadership (e.g., Shore & Chung, 2021), and the inclusive leadership per-
spective and the leadership for diversity mindset perspective complement
each other. In the following, we consider how these perspectives can be
integrated and how this may enrich inclusive leadership theory with a stronger
focus on creating synergy from diversity—a focus that we argue would also
increase inclusive leadership’s effectiveness in fostering inclusion.

Inclusive Leadership for Diversity Mindsets

Inclusive leadership as originally conceptualized emphasized the creation of
psychological safety (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006). Psychological safety
is important as a precondition for the elaboration of diverse information and
perspectives, but this should not be equated to psychological safety as a
sufficient condition for information elaboration. Research by van Ginkel and
van Knippenberg (2008, 2009, 2012) shows that a core problem in the use of
informational diversity is that team members are often focused on determining
what they agree on more than on exchanging and integrating all task-relevant
788 Group & Organization Management 47(4)

information and perspectives. As a result, more distinct and unique per-

spectives may often not be exchanged and integrated because team members’
understanding of their work suggests that they should focus on reaching
agreement on the issues at hand rather than on achieving synergy from di-
versity. Inclusive leadership as originally conceived thus is important in
helping set the stage for information elaboration but in and of itself may fall
short of stimulating substantive levels of information elaboration in search of
synergistic outcomes. Randel et al. (2018) conceptualization of inclusive
leadership as not only helping individuals be part of the team but also en-
couraging individuals to contribute to teamwork from their own unique
perspective in that sense is an important step toward leadership for in-
formation elaboration and synergy. Integrating the van Knippenberg et al.
(2013a) insights regarding leadership for diversity mindsets adds value to the
study of inclusive leadership for two reasons, however.
First, information elaboration is more than information sharing. A key
reason for van Knippenberg et al. (2004) to focus on information elaboration
as the exchange, discussion, and integration of task-relevant information and
not just on information sharing (i.e., exchange) was the evidence that more
unique information and insights often get ignored in team discussions even
when they are shared (e.g., Winquist & Larson, 1998). That is, information
sharing does not automatically mean information elaboration and this holds
especially for the more unique insights associated with the synergistic benefits
of diversity. Supporting this argument, direct comparisons have shown that
information elaboration is more predictive of synergistic outcomes (decision
quality and creativity) than information sharing (Hoever, van Knippenberg,
van Ginkel, & Barkema, 2012; van Ginkel & van Knippenberg, 2008).
Arguably, it is therefore important that leadership does not just encourage
diverse contributions (i.e., sharing) but also encourages their discussion and
integration—information elaboration. This is, all the more important in view
of the evidence that especially the elaboration of the contributions of members
of historically marginalized groups may be at stake in diverse teams (Subasi
et al., in press).
Second, teams involved in knowledge work would ideally be substantially
self-leading, especially where it concerns the synergistic benefits of diversity.
The notion that members of diverse teams may have unique information and
perspectives implies that it may often not be realistic to assume that a leader is
aware of these unique insights and can specifically prompt the sharing of these
insights (i.e., often, “you do not know what you do not know”). Member
proactivity in sharing such insights therefore is key. This implies that optimal
elaboration of diverse information and perspective would be self-leading and
not leader prompted. This is where team cognition comes in. Shared cognition
van Knippenberg and van Ginkel 789

helps a team to effectively coordinate its collaborative efforts (Salas & Fiore,
2004). A shared diversity mindset emphasizing information elaboration thus
has the advantage that it motivates members to proactively share and integrate
their unique insights rather than leave the team dependent on leadership to
engender and guide the information elaboration process (van Knippenberg
et al., 2013a). Leadership for diversity mindsets thus arguably is preferable
over leadership that more directly guides team process.
With these considerations in place, we propose that it is valuable to in-
tegrate the notion of leadership for diversity mindsets with the current un-
derstanding of inclusive leadership. We also argue that this integration is quite
straightforward. Inclusive leadership as actions focused on creating a sense of
belongingness and uniqueness among group members and encouraging
members to act on that sense of inclusion (Randel et al., 2018; Shore & Chung,
2021) sets the stage for information elaboration by creating both engagement
with the team and psychological safety within the team. As we noted, this does
not prioritize some of the inclusive leadership behaviors over others; it is the
balance between belongingness and uniqueness that sets the stage for par-
ticipation in team information elaboration. Leadership to develop a shared
diversity mindset focused on the performance benefits of diversity is a natural
complement to such inclusive leadership. It captures behavior to add to the
inclusive leadership repertoire that should seamlessly fit with the behavior
identified by Randel et al. (2018). These two sets of behaviors complement
each other in that inclusive leadership as per Randel et al. creates more fertile
ground for leadership for diversity mindsets as per van Knippenberg et al.
Conversely, leadership for diversity mindsets to complement inclusive
leadership as per Randel et al. renders it more likely that the team achieves
synergistic benefits from diversity.
Importantly, van Knippenberg et al. (2013a) analysis implies that lead-
ership for diversity mindsets is not merely a performance-focused extension of
inclusive leadership. Leadership for diversity mindsets can be expected to
enhance the effectiveness of inclusive leadership in creating an inclusive team
climate. As van Knippenberg et al. outlined, for a couple of interrelated
reasons, a focus on the synergistic benefits of diversity is likely to lay more
fertile ground for inclusion than a focus on inclusion as valuable in and of
itself. A focus on synergistic benefits shifts the focus away from a problem—
lack of inclusion of members of underrepresented groups—to an opportunity—
the performance benefits of diversity. A focus on promoting positive outcomes
makes the team more resilient in the face of setbacks to achieving these
outcomes than a focus on preventing negative outcomes (cf. Ely & Thomas,
2001). The focus on team performance benefits also shifts the focus from “the
other,” members that do not feel included or members that carry some
790 Group & Organization Management 47(4)

responsibility for that lower sense of inclusion, to team diversity as a shared

characteristic of the team as a whole. This should reinforce the sense of
“teamness” rather than make divisions salient and thus speak to belong-
ingness. This team focus should be reinforced by the emphasis on the shared
team information elaboration processes, which, with its emphasis on the
integration of diverse perspectives, also reinforces the uniqueness aspect of
inclusion. This team focus is also important in shifting attention from a po-
tentially cynical reading of inclusion as only being in the service of some
members (cf. the evidence that diversity climates that are perceived partic-
ularly favorable by members of underrepresented groups may be perceived
more negatively by members of the dominant majority; van Knippenberg
et al., 2013b) to a focus on team performance as being in the service of the
team as a whole (again, this is not to argue against the value of inclusion in and
of itself but to address the question of what is the more effective way to
achieve such a valued outcome). Thus, the focus on developing a diversity
mindset that revolves around the pursuit of team benefits from diversity may
actually be more effective in achieving inclusion than a focus on inclusion as
valuable in and of itself. Put less boldly, inclusive leadership understood to
both encompass inclusive leadership as conceptualized by Randel et al. (2018)
and leadership for diversity mindsets as conceptualized by van Knippenberg
et al. (2013a) may be more effective in achieving both inclusion and syn-
ergistic diversity benefits than either of these elements of leadership alone.
Thus, we may conceptualize our proposed integration of inclusive leadership
and leadership for diversity mindsets as inclusive leadership for diversity
mindsets. We define such inclusive leadership for diversity mindsets as leader
behavior aimed at shaping the team’s understanding of the value of diverse
perspectives and of information elaboration as the process to realize that value.
Note that this emphatically does not mean that inclusive leadership is defined in
terms of its effects (cf. van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013). What “aimed at
shaping” captures here is that such leader behavior will be displayed with
intended effects in mind, but it is the behavior that defines the leadership, not the
intended (or realized) effect. As per the analysis advanced here, we propose that
this integrative understanding of inclusive leadership for diversity mindsets
should be more effective in achieving both inclusion and synergistic benefits
than either inclusive leadership more narrowly defined (Randel et al., 2018) or
leadership of diversity mindsets (van Knippenberg et al., 2013a) alone.

In Conclusion: Moving Forward

A key element in our analysis is the observation that inclusive leadership
research seems more focused on psychological inclusion than on synergistic
van Knippenberg and van Ginkel 791

performance outcomes in knowledge work (likewise, the more behavioral

inclusion focus seems more concerned with voicing per se—cf. information
sharing, which cannot be assumed to translate into synergistic outcomes—
than with synergistic outcomes). Our emphasis on synergistic benefits is not to
reduce the issue of inclusion to performance outcomes—we underscore the
value of inclusion in and of itself—but to recognize that employment is
framed around performance expectations (in the broad sense of the pursuit of
the organization’s purpose; Selznick, 1957; van Knippenberg, 2020) and that
a focus on the synergistic benefits of diversity may be a powerful way to
realize both inclusion and performance benefits.
There is a good case to understand inclusion to encompass a psychological
aspect (cf. Shore & Chung, 2021) as well as a behavioral aspect in terms
of a presence in decision-making and the pursuit of work objectives (cf.
Davidson, 2011; Mor Barak et al., 2021; Nishii, 2013). Our emphasis on
synergistic benefits is aligned with this understanding and makes more explicit
that the issue is not just that individuals should not experience barriers to
inclusion because of their background but that inclusion can result in syn-
ergistic benefits from diversity (cf. Dwertmann et al., 2016; van Knippenberg
et al., 2020). As we outlined in our analysis, we see a clear case to expect that
such an emphasis on synergistic outcomes is not only more effective in re-
alizing the performance benefits of diversity but also in realizing the psy-
chological and behavioral experience of inclusion. Putting this proposition to
the tests would seem an important direction for future research.
A second direction for research we highlight anchors on the observation
that inclusion is an issue more for members of historically marginalized
groups than for the historically dominant group (cf. Davidson, 2021). There is
evidence that members of historically marginalized groups have more neg-
ative perceptions of their organization’s diversity climate as well as that their
functioning is more influenced by the diversity climate (Avery, McKay,
Wilson, & Tonidandel, 2007; Ely, Padavic, & Thomas, 2012; Kossek &
Zonia, 1993; McKay, Avery, & Morris, 2008; Mor Barak et al., 1998). There
is also growing realization that team research often works from an overly
simplified reduction of reality in the implicit assumption that all members
partake equally in all team processes and that this assumption may be par-
ticularly unfounded in the study of team diversity (van Knippenberg & Mell,
2016). From the perspective of team diversity and synergy, the issue here is
that the participation and influence in the information elaboration process of
team members with an underrepresented background is under greater pressure
than the participation of members with a dominant majority background
(Subasi et al., in press). As we outlined in our analysis, even when inclusive
leadership would pursue shared diversity mindsets and shared team
792 Group & Organization Management 47(4)

information elaboration, ensuring psychological and behavioral inclusion of

team members from historically marginalized groups is a greater challenge
than ensuring the inclusion of members of the traditional majority groups.
Even when inclusive leadership is best seen as a form of team leadership, these
challenges imply asymmetries in that leadership will need to be more focused
on ensuring, recognizing, and processing of the contributions of members of
historically marginalized groups. The leadership behaviors we identified as
inclusive leadership for diversity mindsets should be key in this respect, but
should be deployed such that they target these asymmetries in inclusion, for
instance by being more concerned with majority members’ recognition of
minority members’ expertise than vice versa and by being more concerned
with seeing minority members’ contributions receive full consideration in
team information elaboration. This also implies that ideally it would be part of
team members’ diversity mindset that the inclusion challenge is different for
team members with different backgrounds. Pursuing the study of such
asymmetries, and the inclusive leadership to target these asymmetries, would
be an important direction for future research.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

ORCID iDs
Daan van Knippenberg  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0269-8102
Wendy P. van Ginkel  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9928-3850

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Associate Editor: Lisa Nishii

Submitted Date: June 29, 2020
Revised Submission Date: January 20, 2021
Acceptance Date: January 31, 2021

Author Biographies
Daan van Knippenberg is Joseph F. Rocereto Chair in Leadership at the LeBow
College of Business, Drexel University. Daan’s areas of expertise include leadership,
diversity, teams, creativity and innovation, and social identity.
Wendy P. van Ginkel is Associate Professor of Management at the LeBow College of
Business, Drexel University. Wendy’s areas of expertise include leadership, diversity,
teams, and group decision making.