Seeing the Value in Others

This is tool 9 of the Approach Toolkit – An exploration of cognitive diversity that encourages you to actively seek out people who think differently, creating stronger, more resilient outcomes through genuine difference of perspective.

What is it?

Most people like to describe themselves as a “team player” — someone who gets along well with others and works towards a common goal. People gravitate towards this description because it conforms with the socially accepted norm. In reality, though, many people feel the exact opposite at times, even if they would never say so out loud.

I personally find it extremely challenging to work alongside people where there is an unacknowledged competency gap. Where my own skills are falling short, I pride myself on being quick to say so — and on being able to receive that feedback gracefully when someone else spots it first. The challenge arises for me in the inverse scenario, when that same openness is not reciprocated.

Standing back from that frustration, though, I have learned to accept that if someone has a competency challenge, they are doing their best — and their best may simply not include the ability to recognise where they are falling short. That acceptance has saved a great deal of unnecessary frustration, and freed up energy that is better spent elsewhere.

There is a further tactic I have found valuable: learning to embrace cognitive diversity. Put simply, this means recognising and appreciating that people think and solve problems in fundamentally different ways. In this tool we will explore the benefits of that perspective, so that it becomes a genuine posture you can carry into any team environment — not just a concept you are aware of, but one you actively use.

How does it work?

Cognitive diversity refers to the differences in how people think — the varied perspectives, mental frameworks, and problem-solving approaches that people bring to the same challenge. It is distinct from demographic diversity, which focuses on visible characteristics like age, gender, or background. Two people can look very different on paper and think in almost identical ways. Two people can appear almost identical and see the world through entirely different lenses. It is the latter that this tool is concerned with.

The practical value of cognitive diversity is straightforward: problems look different depending on where you are standing. A team that only ever stands in one place will only ever see one version of the problem. The insights below are designed to help you widen that view — and to make working with people who think differently feel less like friction and more like an advantage.

Seek the Challenge, Not the Mirror

The instinct when building or working within a team is often to gravitate towards people who think the way you do. It feels easier, faster, and less likely to end in disagreement. The problem is that a team of mirrors does not challenge your thinking — it reflects it back at you, blind spots and all.

Instead, learn to actively seek out people whose instincts differ from yours. The person who slows down when you want to accelerate, or who questions the assumption you were about to take for granted, is not an obstacle. They are the check on the plan that you cannot provide for yourself. The goal is not agreement — it is a better outcome.

Name the Thinking Style, Not the Person

When someone approaches a problem differently to you, it is easy to interpret that difference as a deficiency — particularly when the pressure is on and pace feels important. The reframe that makes cognitive diversity actually usable is learning to name what is happening without making it personal.

Someone who wants to explore every option before deciding is not being indecisive — they are applying a divergent thinking style. Someone who jumps straight to a solution is not being reckless — they are pattern-matching from experience. When you can recognise these styles for what they are, you stop trying to change people and start working out how to use what they naturally bring.

Psychological Safety is the Prerequisite

Cognitive diversity only delivers its benefits if people actually share their thinking. A team can contain a wide range of perspectives and still converge on a single, unchallenged viewpoint — if the environment does not make it safe to dissent.

This connects directly to the No Bad Ideas principle in the Expand to Contract tool. Your job as a leader — or as a team member — is to make it genuinely safe to think out loud, to ask the uncomfortable question, and to push back on the prevailing view. Without that safety, diversity of thought stays private, and the team loses the very thing that makes it valuable.

Conflict is a Signal, Not a Problem

One of the most common objections to cognitive diversity is that it slows things down and creates more conflict. This is true — and it is a good thing.

Conflict that arises from genuinely different perspectives is the productive kind. It surfaces assumptions, tests logic, and forces the team to arrive at a position that has been stress-tested rather than simply agreed upon. The goal is not to eliminate this friction but to channel it. Set clear decision-making authority (as covered in Accountability is King), give the debate its time, and then move forward decisively. A conclusion reached through healthy conflict is one the whole team can stand behind.

Benefits and Practical Applications

Seeing the Value in Others is less a tool you apply at a single moment and more a lens you learn to keep on. Its value compounds quietly over time — in the meetings where you catch yourself dismissing a viewpoint and pause instead, in the moments where friction with a colleague becomes curiosity rather than frustration, and in the plans that are stronger because someone in the room thought differently to everyone else.

The most immediate practical benefit is resilience. A team that thinks in one way is fragile — it handles the problems it was built for and struggles with everything else. A cognitively diverse team bends rather than breaks, because when one approach hits a wall, someone else in the room is already looking at the problem from a different angle. That flexibility is not accidental. It is the direct result of having valued difference rather than merely tolerated it.

The longer-term benefit is trust — and specifically, the kind of trust that is hard to manufacture. When people feel that their way of thinking is genuinely valued rather than simply accommodated, they engage differently. They bring more. They flag the thing they would otherwise have kept to themselves. Over time, that openness becomes the team’s default mode rather than something that has to be coaxed out.

Like the other tools in this section, the real unlock comes when this thinking becomes shared. When your team understands the principles behind cognitive diversity — when seek the challenge, not the mirror becomes something people say to each other rather than something a leader says to the team — you have moved from a tool you are using to a culture you have built.

Start small. In your next team meeting, notice whose voice is missing from the conversation. In your next planning session, actively invite the challenge rather than waiting for it. And when the conflict comes — as it will — resist the instinct to smooth it over too quickly. Let it do its work. The discomfort of a well-managed disagreement is a small price to pay for a decision the whole team can genuinely stand behind.