I understood the theory to not be about performance but about creativity and flexibility. So a team will be more creative but less coherent with more diversity.

I understood the theory to not be about performance but about creativity and flexibility. So a team will be more creative but less coherent with more diversity. Literally it means that a more diverse team is going to be less similar between itself. Coherence and stability is opposed to creativity and diversity. Also teams that are most similar to each other and are not flexible and who change little tend to be happier and stable. It does explain some pushback against diversity because it will cause at least some change and increase working instability at least a little bit within a team. Managers of teams should be able to manage change effectively because people generally do not like change. But the change isn't for performance. It's changing for change.