Team Belonging: Integrating Teamwork and Diversity Training Through Emotions

Abstract

With the worldwide focus shifting toward important questions of what diversity means to society, organizations are attempting to keep up with employees’ needs to feel recognized and belong. Given that traditionally team and diversity trainings are provided separately, with different theoretical backgrounds and goals, they are often misaligned and ineffective. We review 339 empirical articles depicting a team, diversity, or emotional management training to extract themes and determine which methods are most effective. Although research has demonstrated the importance of belonging for providing positive workplace outcomes, we found that the traditional design of these trainings and lack of emotional management prevent a balance between team and diversity goals, preventing belonging. We propose an integrative training with emotional management to help teams foster optimal belonging, where members can unite together through their differences. Accordingly, our themes inform this training model that can inspire future research into more effective training.