The Hindu Business Line : Angry young managers

I hope you realise that I spent about an hour going through your mail yesterday giving my feedback for improvement. What a waste of time, since I find it’s been completely ignored. Consequently, I am going to ignore the contents of your mail. If people are going to completely ignore the advice that is given to them, then why should I bother?

… Never mind, I shall take it all with a smiling face, thanking the team for the excellent job it has done to achieve this.

That’s how a recent, rather long e-mail trail began. It left hurt and resentment in its wake.

The mail was from an expatriate, let’s call her Justine, working with Indian colleagues on a tough, time-driven project which had the whole team burning the candle at both ends. Needless to say, nerves were frayed and tempers short.

There was more in the same tone in this e-mail addressed to a second-rung team leader. Senior managers at the organisation were shocked and the recipient, we’ll name him Raghav for now, was utterly upset.

It seemed, at first glance, to be a gross over-reaction on Justine’s part to what many Indians would have taken in their stride.

But once the emotion was cut from the picture, the seniors settled down to analyse cause and reaction. They found a situation where on the one hand, Justine’s expectations were not met because they were a little unrealistic, and on the other, Raghav’s performance didn’t deliver on his promises.

It’s a familiar story. I’m sure as new managers in India many of us have come across such situations, May be, on occasion, we have ourselves let fly.

Every now and again, my team and I at Global Adjustments are called upon to soothe an expatriate who’s hopping with anger at something we Indians wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep over. Or, to calm down an Indian who’s offended at a Westerner’s reaction to something which she considers perfectly understandable.

I find more people hitting the roof more often. At the heart of the matter is the stress of grappling with new and unfamiliar patterns of working and a lack of inter-cultural competence.

It is time to stand back and count to ten.

As we do business with Westerners, we Indians need to remember that work styles differ from region to region. In global business relationships, instructions are meant to be followed to the letter. An Indian manager, from experience, does not expect all his recommendations to be carried out — he may be satisfied if 80 per cent is done. But if you’re working for a Westerner, overlooking even a single instruction would be taken for negligence.

The concept of time is another sore point with India’s working relationship with other countries. Almost no other nation sees time as elastic. We’ve been taught by collective wisdom that there’s always a tomorrow. To a Westerner, this is plain inefficiency. Not good for his temper. On the other hand, an Indian would find a Westerner’s insistence that time schedules be kept, no excuse accepted, too hard to live with.

Just two issues that light the fuse. There are more. It’s not a problem that’s going to disappear overnight, so let’s see how best we can handle it.

Know your own culture and that of others

The surest way would be to step into the other person’s shoes for a minute. But for Raghav and Justine to see the situation through each other’s eyes they’d need to know something about each other’s cultures. Justine would have to understand that Raghav is a typical Indian — he will not tell her outright that he’s being rushed off his feet, he’s had to prioritise, and he’s put someone else’s project before hers,

Raghav would need to realise that as an efficient professional from the West, Justine expected an acknowledgement for the feedback she’d provided, at least a ‘Got it, will revert ASAP’ type of message. If he was running late for some reason, she would have expected to be informed. Because she didn’t get any such message, she automatically assumed Raghav had bypassed her advice.

If they’d each known a bit about how culture conditioned the other’s behaviour, the whole issue could have been handled differently, without anger or hurt.

Least said, soonest mended

Then comes the tone of the e-mail. Sure, Justine was upset, and with reason. But words once said or typed can’t be called back. That’s where counting to ten helps.

I’ve always found it good policy too to point out flaws indirectly, or soften the blow in some way. Also, if you add a pinch of praise, it sweetens the criticism.

Justine could have said something like this: “Raghav, I spent about an hour yesterday going through the project and giving my feedback. I was hoping to see my suggestions implemented by 10 am today. When may I expect it to be done?

I do appreciate all the hard work you’ve put into it so far.”

“Raghav, I find my suggestions have not been implemented. I spent a lot of time making those recommendations, and I expected you to say that they would be carried out by end of day yesterday. Perhaps there was something that you couldn’t understand? If you need me to be clearer, please let me know.”

This way, she’s being proactive about the issue, which is good technique too.

The e-mail trail that I quoted from in the beginning left Raghav feeling miserable. He offered to put in his papers. Fortunately, his seniors took the ‘this too shall pass’ view.

As a postscript, I’m happy to report that Justine soon figured out she had overstepped the line by a big margin, and apologised very nicely, both to Raghav, through a direct e-mail, and to his superiors.

Raghav, on his part, tried to explain the delay (better late than never) while accepting Justine’s apology.

We’ve all got a lot to learn from the Raghavs and Justines in the global business scenario.

What you know is important but what you do with what you know is far more important.

(The writer is CEO of Global Adjustments, a relocation and cross-cultural services company, and is also the author of Doing Business in India for Dummies. Contact: info@globaladjustments.com)