Define "Diversity"

This afternoon I had an interview for the Duke EMBA program. The questions were fairly standard: why do I want to do this, what are my career aspirations, how will this particular program help me, etc. But there was one question that stood out to me. The interviewer asked me to define diversity. I was stumped, at first. But I talked my way through it and I ended up feeling fairly comfortable with my answer (although it's still up for debate). I decided to focus on how an individual can be diverse in a group or team environment. I defined individual diversity as having three elements:

• Cultural Diversity: What your upbringing and background gives to you. Are you from a farm or a city? Hong Kong or or Montreal? Are you from a "upper", "working" or "lower" class family?
• Emotional/Personality diversity: How your personality and nature makes you diverse. Are you introverted or extroverted, aggressive or passive, creative or analytical?
• Experience Diversity: How have the choices you've made in your life led to your current state? Have you traveled very much? Decided to follow a career in finance, philosophy, medicine or movie production? How do your hobbies add to your experiences?

Obviously, two of these are a bit more out of your control and the other one you have quite a bit of control over. When I think through putting together a professional working team, I would want to ensure you have diversity in all three of the above areas. Then I run the greatest chance of having an effective team- under the right leadership, of course. But that's a whole other area of conversation... for another day.