I have been sitting at the table with teams for almost thirty years, and one pattern keeps coming back. On paper, everything looks right: different disciplines, different backgrounds, different generations around the same table. It is exactly what we want as organisations. Yet in many teams I see that this mix does not deliver what was expected of it. It produces not more insight, but more friction.
My explanation: the diversity that matters cannot be read off an organisation chart. It is cognitive diversity: how people process information, how they deal with change and how they arrive at a decision. If that stays unspoken, difference becomes friction instead of strength. One colleague seems “too slow”, another “too impatient”, and nobody sees that they are simply taking a different path to the same solution.
Does it matter whether you know that difference? I hear that question often, usually with a slightly sceptical undertone, and rightly so. Fortunately, there is an experiment that tests exactly that. The answer is more interesting than a simple yes, because it also tells us what does not matter.
First: what do I mean by cognitive diversity?
I am not talking about personality. A personality test tells you who you are. A problem-solving style describes how you prefer to approach a problem once it lands on the table. VIEW, the instrument I use to map this, measures three dimensions. No types, no colours, no letters: three continuous scales.
Orientation to Change (Explorer ↔ Developer). Some people prefer to start with a blank sheet and break open the frame. Others improve what is already there, step by step. An Explorer who reopens a closed decision is not being resistant. They are doing exactly what their preference predicts as soon as they see a better way in.
Manner of Processing (External ↔ Internal). Some people think out loud, in the middle of the conversation. Others need silence to think things through before they speak. A meeting that flows for the first group feels like a stream the second group can never step into.
Way of Deciding (Person ↔ Task). One half of a team mainly weighs the impact on people. The other half looks first at the impact on the work. Many change projects get stuck because they ignore one of the two.
None of the six poles is better than another. There is no “right” place on a scale. It only becomes interesting next to the profiles of the others in the same team. Where personality tests answer who you are, VIEW answers how you approach a problem.
What happens when the pressure rises
A team that works together smoothly in calm weather can look very different a few weeks later. The deadline moves forward. The client changes the scope. A complex challenge appears that nobody has a playbook for. Right now there is no time left for a conversation about how you work together, and right now the differences are at their sharpest.
You may recognise it. The Explorer wants to break open the frame, because “we will never make it like this”. The Developer wants to hold on to what already works. The external processor says immediately what they think, while the internal processor is still thinking when the direction has already been chosen. One wants to know first what this means for people, the other wants to get the task done first. Each is right from their own style. Together it looks as if the team is falling apart. I often see this in teams that function very well on an ordinary day.
The research points in the same direction. Kelly and Karau (1999) had groups choose which drug to bring to market. Members’ initial preferences predicted the final decision more strongly than the quality of the available information, and under time pressure that effect became sharper. Whoever takes a position first pulls the group along, even when someone who thinks longer has the better argument. Gersick (1988) followed project teams and saw that in the first half of their time they made little visible progress, before abruptly changing course at the midpoint. What triggered that turnaround was the realisation that time was running out. If the deadline also shifts along the way, that moment becomes unpredictable and arrives at a different time for each colleague.
That is exactly when you want the differences to have been named already, before everyone switches to survival mode. But that is an argument, and I am by nature suspicious of arguments. Is there also evidence?
The experiment
There is. Main, Delcourt and Treffinger investigated it in a controlled design with two kinds of teams:
- One group received feedback on their VIEW profile before the task.
- The other group, the control group, did not receive that feedback.
Both groups then received the same task, the same time and the same assessment criteria. The only difference was whether participants knew how they and their teammates approach problems.
The teams with feedback scored significantly better on creative problem solving. Not “they felt better” and not “it was an inspiring session”. They demonstrably performed better, on a measure defined in advance. The study appeared in 2019 in The Journal of Creative Behavior and is summarised in a review article on twenty years of VIEW research (Isaksen & Hoßbach, 2024).
I attach extra value to this because I know the instrument closely. I took part in the validation of the Dutch version in 2010, together with Scott Isaksen and Jonas Onkelinx. So I am not selling this because it is a product. I helped build it, and that is why I want to know for myself whether it holds up in practice.
What really makes the difference
You could conclude that the knowing itself produces the gain. I think that is an underestimation. The difference lies in what a team does with that insight before it starts the task.
Someone who knows that one person wants to see the whole picture first and another prefers to try a first version straight away no longer has to stumble over it. Such a team does not argue about the order, it plans for it. The internal processor gets the silence they need, the external processor a place to think out loud. The Explorer breaks open the frame, the Developer sharpens it afterwards.
A comparison: two crews are given the same removal job. In the first, everyone knows who likes to draw the floor plan and who would rather carry the first box straight away. In the second, nobody knows. Both crews are equally strong and equally motivated. The first simply loses no time searching and rubbing against each other. No magic, just friction loss that you take away.
More difference is not automatically better
There is a nuance here that is often missing from stories about diversity. “The more different thinkers, the better” is not true. Aggarwal, Woolley, Chabris and Malone (2019) found an inverted-U relationship between the diversity of cognitive styles in a team and that team’s collective intelligence and ability to learn. A moderate degree of diversity worked best. Too little difference creates blind spots, too much makes collaboration stall.
So the gain does not come from collecting as many different styles as possible. It comes from understanding which mix you have and handling it consciously. That requires insight into the profile of your own team, not a general call for more diversity.
What you can do with it tomorrow
1. Make differences discussable before the task begins. Not after the first conflict and not in the evaluation. In the experiment, the teams received the feedback beforehand. Timing is not a detail.
2. Read behaviour as style, not as character. Someone who reopens a decision is not automatically “against change”. Someone who stays silent in the meeting does not automatically have “no opinion”. The same behaviours take on a milder and more useful meaning once you know the style behind them.
3. Design the process around the styles that are present. A team with many Internal processors benefits more from quiet thinking time than from yet another brainstorming round. A team that leans strongly towards Task may be missing someone who names the impact on people. So also look at who is absent, not only at who is there.
4. Agree how you handle pressure before the pressure is there. Who decides when the deadline shifts? Does the internal processor get time to think before a direction is chosen? And when do you deliberately schedule a moment to check your course, instead of waiting for the alarm to go off by itself? An agreement made in calm weather holds when things get tense.
An honest caveat
One experiment is not a universal law. It shows that, in the design studied, insight into problem-solving style led to a better result. It does not say that every team in every context will see the same gain, nor that a profile alone is enough. What a team does with the insights remains decisive. That is why a good guide is so important.
That guide does not have to be the line manager. It can be a coach, facilitator, project leader or internal trainer, someone who translates the profile into concrete agreements. Who receives the questions in advance before an important decision, so that Internal processors can think before the meeting starts? Who deliberately plays the Developer who sharpens the Explorer’s ideas instead of shooting them down? And who makes sure that the impact on people and on the work are both on the table before a decision is made? Such agreements cost nothing, but they only come about if someone dares to open the conversation.
From evidence to practice
That is why the VIEW certification that I run does not stop at learning to read a profile. You learn to apply it: to yourself, to the teams you guide and in the conversations where the next decision is still open. You get access to the instrument, guidance to use it in a real assignment and a cohort of a maximum of six participants, so that there is room to practise.
Would you like to feel first how such a conversation changes? Sign up for a free VIEW sampler workshop. You complete VIEW yourself and receive your own feedback. Prefer to talk first? Schedule a twenty-minute introductory call with me. Ask me about the next certification date as well.
Would you like to receive the source text of the study? Let me know and I will send it to you.
Luc De Schryver
Founder, O₂C² Consulting
References
- Aggarwal, I., Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., & Malone, T. W. (2019). Frontiers in Psychology. Study of the inverted-U relationship between cognitive-style diversity and team collective intelligence.
- Gersick, C. J. G. (1988). Time and transition in work teams: Toward a new model of group development. Academy of Management Journal, 31(1), 9–41.
- Isaksen, S. G., De Schryver, L., & Onkelinx, J. (2010). A Cross Cultural Examination of Creative Problem Solving Style: The Dutch Translation of VIEW. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 44(1), 19–28.
- Isaksen, S. G., & Hoßbach, C. (2024). VIEW: An Assessment of Problem-Solving Style — 20 Years of Progress. Psychological Reports, 129(2), 904–926.
- Kelly, J. R., & Karau, S. J. (1999). Group decision making: The effects of initial preferences and time pressure. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(11), 1342–1354.
- Main, L. F., Delcourt, M. A., & Treffinger, D. J. (2019). Effects of Group Training in Problem-Solving Style on Future Problem-Solving Performance. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 53(3), 274–285.
- Selby, E. C., Treffinger, D. J., Isaksen, S. G., & Lauer, K. J. (2004). Defining and Assessing Problem-Solving Style. Journal of Creative Behavior.