Early in my career when I was a new manager I had a young employee who was of Middle Eastern descent, he himself was born in Houston, TX but his Mother and Father were from Pakistan. He was a decent employee, not necessarily the best of the bunch and not the worst. On my team was another older man that was from Egypt who had immigrated to America as a young man in the early 1970’s. We had a very culturally diverse team ranging from Indians to Africans & Middle Easterners to New Jersey natives. I called our team the melting pot and we often discussed cultural aspects of one another’s backgrounds to learn how to work better together.
One of the employees was a young man from Pakistan who was a devote Muslim who followed the “Pillars of Belief” (Moran, Harris & Moran, 2011). He was very loving of his father who was sick with Alzheimer’s and often left early on Friday’s from our office in Dallas to care for him and his mother in Houston. When I first met this young man he was reserved but boastful about accomplishments but not to the point where he was arrogant or hubris. He enjoyed movies and the arts. His wife (who was a Dallas girl that he met in college) was a young girl of Christian descent that stayed at home and took care of their newborn. I’d often find that he was tardy to the office and because we were a 24 x 7 operations and performance team, it tended to slightly disrupt the synergy of the team as there were runway and preflight checks (these were our terms for checking the alarms and performance of the network). Although, it wasn’t optimal for the team, I typically let it slide as I knew he had a sick Dad and a young newborn and I remembered the balance of life and work that my manager had given to me when I was in the same situation. His life was highly influenced by his Islamic religion and philosophies and we spoke about it often so I could learn more about him.
The older gentleman from Egypt was a Coptic Christian and was also very devoted to his church and his religion. His family was his life and he was often taking time off to spend it with his wife or children on vacation days to help at church outings. He enjoyed studying and teaching (he taught math at the local community college). He was very proud and extremely focused on how well he was perceived by me, the team and strangers as well. He typically operated better as an individual than a team player. Again, like the younger employee he was often tardy and overall had a very laissez faire attitude about deliverables.
Both of these employees I inherited from another manager during an organizational change and were based in Dallas, TX and sat close by in cubicles and because they supported a specific geographic of the network they had to work closely to support different initiatives and were required to back each other up on all runway and pre-flight activities. This in itself created a manager’s worst nightmare team dynamic; both employees who back each other up are tardy!
During the first summer that I had the team I noticed that there appeared to be conflict between the two. I immediately called the old manager and asked him if he ever witnessed this and if it was ever an issue and if so why didn’t he disclose it. His answer was exactly how I thought it would go, something like, “Oh Yeah, those two….ha ha….Good Luck with them, they’re like two old ladies bickering constantly.” I thanked him for being so forthright when the team was transferred to me. Quite honestly he was a terrible leader and I was given his team as part of his demotion so it wasn’t a surprise at all. He gave no me no background on what fueled their contempt for each other but my gut told me to dig in with the two guys and get it squashed before it got out of hand.
I flew to TX in August of that year and met with each one of them and asked them to bring me up to speed with their workload and how they were generally doing. We of course did this during weekly team meetings but this was more to see if I could get to the bottom of their strife. Both one of them spoke poorly of each other and although they both had the same overall level of responsibility and about the same level of output, both told me that they thought that they had exceeded the other in performance and results. Neither one of them mentioned any issues about their own performance except for the older gentleman who told me that he thought he probably could create a less stressful environment by not letting things aggravate him so much. Well, the alarms were going off in my head and I knew that there was certainly something going on at a much deeper level than what they had told me.
Next I brought them into the room together and asked them if they could both present the current state of their geographic area. It was probably the coldest, non-synergistic exchange of information that I had ever seen. When they were done, I asked them to sit down and express to me how they thought the presentation went. The young man went first and he spoke very highly of the older man and showed him a lot of respect and conversely the old man showed the young man the same level of appreciation and kindness towards his presentation and work. Next I asked them to tell me about their interaction on a day to day basis and if there was anything I could do to help them. Not a word was spoken and then I asked if they minded if I spoke to them openly and candidly behind shut doors. They obliged and I proceeded to discuss what I perceived to be some sort of conflict between them and it was obvious to me and to other members of the team. They warmed up to the conversation when I engaged them further by stating that it’s become so evident that I think it’s beginning to affect the team results. I kept it high level and didn’t accuse anyone or embarrass anyone as this is typically not effective in managing resources. I backed it up by encouraging constructive dissent and getting things out in the open was good for the soul and typically solved issues.
The flood gates didn’t exactly open but it seemed to create a safe place for both of them to remove their embedded cultural limitations and to start having helpful dialogue about what was bugging them.
The young man told me he often felt pressured to fix issues that were the older gentleman’s responsibility when he was out and that he was always late. I almost choked but kept my thoughts to myself. The older gentleman angrily responded that the younger man was always taking time off and that he didn’t have an appreciation for urgency and, “who the heck is going to do all the work when (name redacted) goes to Hajj!”.
Again I had to keep my face straight to make sure I wasn’t influencing the conversation but for me that was the point. They both went back and forth on some other things and I asked them if there was any resolution that they could recommend. I reflected on what they said and asked them if they had any other comments or suggestions before we finished.
After a few minutes I saw a smile appear on the young man’s face. He said, “You know, I’m late sometimes and I could be more urgent at times.” I still didn’t say anything. The older man’s face relaxed from the stress of the conversation and he said, “We’ll I guess I could be more punctual as well and I’m sure that I can cover you when you make your pilgrimage”. It was the ‘ah-hah’ moment. I looked at both of them and without batting an eye said, “My work here is done!”
Six Months Later…
The two men created a system by which they worked a process whenever they knew that each other had a holiday or personal time off and made sure that if they were both scheduled to be out that I was made aware of the need for further coverage by my other teams. The rest of the team noticed an overall improvement in their day to day interactions with both of them and although their individual output or their method of approach didn’t change much they improved as a team and consequently brought more success to the overall team and me as a manager. Interestingly, Moran 2011 citing R.D. Lewis on page 257 reminds us that the Muslim religion expresses open tolerance for other faiths and enrichment of coexistence is the rule rather than the exception. I still can’t wrap my hands around whether there was a cultural issue, personality issue or some buried availability heuristics, but in the end it didn’t really matter because the overall course was corrected. The dynamics between the two were good and the dialogue was open and healthy and made them closer.
References
Pennsylvania State University. (2014). OLEAD 497B: Lesson 7: The Middle East: Focus on Saudi Arabia. pg. 2 Retrieved at: https://cms.psu.edu
Moran, R. T., Harris, P. R., Moran, S.V. (2011) Managing Cultural Differences Leadership Skills and Strategies for Working in a Global World. Oxford:Routledge. pg. 257
Hana Abdullah says
Hey!
I’m glad you were successful in resolving the differences between your two workers. You mentioned that you had a quite a diverse team of people ranging from Indians, Pakistanis to Middle easterners. Not to stereotype but I believe that majority of these cultures are collectivistic cultures having lived in Pakistan majority of the while and having relatives and visiting India and Egypt. Individualism describes a culture in which people are not integrated into the group, but rather are more responsible for their own actions (Hofstede, 2001; Hofstede & Hofstede, n.d.). Collectivism, on the other hand, exists when people are well integrated into the group and the group is more responsible for the outcomes of behavior (Hofstede, 2001; Hofstede & Hofstede, n.d.). Collectivistic cultures tend to be Eastern cultures, in which group harmony is important. Thus I think that in your case, your team members were suppressing their emotions and hence their emotions kept on building as a result their harboring resentment kept increasing and increasing hindering team performance. You sitting them down and giving them a safe outlet to air out their grievances cleared up any misunderstandings and gave them a chance to see the world from some one else’s perspective. If you would have just reprimanded them for fighting like a normal boss would have done then this tension would have continued.
References
Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Pennsylvania State University. (2014). OLEAD 497B: Lesson 2: Introduction to Culture Retrieved at: https://cms.psu.edu