The 11 Participants:

Larry from London, Francois from Paris, Som from Thailand, Jean Marie from Montreal, KT from Bangalore, Paresh from Singapore, Mark from Vladivostok, Inbal from Israel, Oya from Tokyo, Corazon from Manila;  Gordon from Dublin manages the team.

Background:

The team develops and deploys real time software products for financial services. The team has business analysts, architects, software developers, sales and pre sales folks. The team has severe trust issues, unclear roles and responsibilities, infighting and their communication vacillates from guarded to flaming.

Team leader Gordon got budget for a 2 day offsite in Singapore to “straighten things up”. The team has not yet met face to face because until now, HR/Training had been deploying short webinars on team work, which had had no effect whatsoever.

Suggested content of the first meeting:

• 25% relationship building

Relationship building is critical in a team in which cultural differences and geography drives such a wedge between the ability to cooperate. Relationship building is done by longer meals together, lots of time socializing with loosely and semi structured activity to encourage people to get to know one another.

• 25% focus on  understanding how cultural differences impacts the specific tasks at hand

For example…Such a group much gets their hands around how they share risks instead of blame one another. Risk taking is deeply  impacted by culture. All folks must understand how each culture views risk taking and how people guard themselves against shame of failure.

• 25% identifying a shared list of problem definitions

While Sales may define the issue as “lack of transparency” as to when the product is to be ready, development may define the problem as “too much wasted on reporting as opposed to working”. The shared problem definition of   “we need to improve how we plan” is a shared version which moves the group one step forward.

• 25% building a set of ground rules relating to trust and communication

Examples: we call one another and discuss hard to solve issues instead of creating an email chain; we assume good intent before we react, we talk one on one before embarrassing one another…all may serve as a useful platform.

What to avoid during the meeting?

• Struggling with defining roles and responsibilities makes so sense since that changes all the time.
• Solving problems  that need to be managed and not solved.
• Too much open debate which makes things worse in such a group

Worst mistakes a facilitator can make in such a meeting:

• Too much or  too little  task focus
• Lack of one on one preparation
• Lack of understanding of cultural restraints and capabilities leading to poor design,
• Poor control of meeting.
• Too much feigned civility and niceness
• Too much unstructured and personalized conflict

Critical facilitation decisions:

• When to ask for input and when to present input,
• Balance between expert and facilitator
• Balancing the need between discretion and openness.

The western values which support open discussions and authenticity to manage and resolve conflicts in a win win manner are not globally scalable. There is just too much variance in how cultures perceive conflict.

Many cultures strive to solve conflicts and/or manage conflicts; many cultures view conflict as a learning and developmental experience; others view conflicts as very negative and destructive.

• Vered from Jerusalem told me that if someone does not get emotional about an issue, “they don’t not care, so I do not trust them”.
• Rose from Boston told me that some things are worth getting emotional about, but for most work related issues, “it is best to be expedient, and not make a  mountain out of a molehill”.
• Corazon from Manila told me that her entire education was about controlling and subduing her emotions in situations of conflict.
• Garth from London who has lived in Thailand for 40 years, told me that looking the other way makes the conflict go away.
• Hank from Holland told me that in a conflict, “if you need to be very direct and even raise your voice, you do it”.
• Olive from Germany told me that “conflict is all about getting the facts right”.
• Tom from Philadelphia told me that “you can attack issues, not people”. (Zhou Wang from China told me he has no idea what Tom means)
• Igor told me that the work place is a battleground between weak and strong people.

Imposition of western values on conflict management makes no sense.

Certainly in most global very diverse organizations, it is best to avoid large group sessions where many cultures meet; when a conflict is on the table and there are no shared values, everything can fall apart.

3 rules of thumb guide my work:

1) “first do no harm”-ie it is very possible that the western solution for some conflicts is worse than the disease.

2) Lots of one on one preparation is needed before each meeting.

3) Accept each culture as is, and mediate, don’t preach openness, transparency, or win win.

• Due to a software bug, there was a three hour user outage in 2 central cities in Japan.

Engineers in Ottawa and Tel Aviv worked all night and day, for three days to get things right. Yet the situation was still not under control.

Japan Country Manager Hiroyasu Ito called the Head of R&D, James McDougal, and asked him to apologize to the customer. Ito sent a long email to James explaining how to apologize. James, ever the pragmatist, did not read the “wordy” email.

Ito called James after the apology and told him that the customer thinks that James is arrogant and that doing business with James’ company will be reconsidered.

James called in an OD consultant with global experience. He reviewed James apology which gave detail about what went wrong and the action which was be taken to rectify the problem, followed by a sincerely apology.

The consultant told James that there is no show of remorse, no humility, no humbleness. Just explanations and “I’m sorry”. This is seen as very arrogant and the way you apologize shows why your product is so shabby, in the eyes of the Japanese. The customer wants to be sure that you are awed by the failure, that you feel deep shame, and that you are committed.

“What the hell do you mean?”, asked James. “I worked with my communication coach for an hour on this apology”.