Here is a simple equation: We are able to change, to predict risks, to accept a multitude of options, to be creative and innovative and thus to attain economic success, only when we adopt diverse approaches! Those who know this and understand its importance have a particularly good chance of mastering current challenges such as demographic change, the race for talent, and globalization.

So the more diverse a team is, the greater the chances are that it will be equipped to face these local and global challenges. But you have to allow that to happen first! Both in managing the company, and in dealing with your closest colleagues directly. If you help a team think, feel and work as a team, then you are doing what team sports have always been practiced: Putting the right skills in the right place and collectively understanding that success is only possible through their interplay. In the long term, this requires not only respect and willingness, but also a great deal of tolerance for “being different,” especially at the beginning.

But it is not enough to simply mix women and men, older and younger, different nationalities, career changers and colleagues with different private plans for their future. A colorful team obviously brings together a certain amount of diversity. But diversity is not an end in itself! It’s not just about being colorful, but about being better, more efficient. And yet, to actually make diversity usable, a certain step is necessary: inclusion. This means actively involving the entire team in an environment that embraces recognizes, promotes and rewards diversity. Only this enables the team to actually exploit the potential of its diversity: by being able to choose between more than one possible solution and thus being more flexible, more willing to change, more creative, more innovative and more risk-aware than the more homogeneous teams of the past.