Harnessing the power of emergent interdependence to promote diverse team collaboration

To reap the value in diverse teams, leaders may try to manipulate structural interdependence – through task design – to foster synergistic collaboration. However, ambiguity about the nature and appropriate intersections of members’ unique and valuable cognitive perspectives can make it difficult to fully anticipate collaborative activity in task design. Here, teams need emergent interdependence – members must develop the desire and expectation to work interdependently for the benefit of the work. We therefore present a model of how leaders can promote emergent interdependence for diverse team success, identifying key antecedents and discussing psychological safety as a condition which can enhance their efforts.