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Part II: Speed
Article2
Senior Managers Won’t Always Get Along
[Time 2]
It’s virtually impossible to like everyone you meet. It’s even more unlikely that you will get along with everyone at work. People have different personalities, biases, values, ambitions, and interests, all of which affectthe chemistry of their relationships. And if you throw in the pressures of the workplace, it’s hardly surprising that tensions arise between colleagues and co-workers. But when members of a senior management team don’t get along, the negative impacts can cascade through an organization. Those conflicts have the potential to reduce productivity and morale for dozens or hundreds of people. Let’s look at a two (disguised, but real) examples: In a manufacturing organization, three members of the senior team were told that they were on the short-list to become the next CEO. The ensuing competition exacerbated already strained relationships between them, such that they barely talked with each other outside of formal meetings. Taking cues from their bosses, the people that worked for them began to form “camps” and reduced their levels of cross-functional discussion and collaboration as well. In a financial services firm with a history of fairly autonomous business units, one senior manager was charged with creating a common approach to product development. After several of the business leaders pushed back on the standardized approach, she wrote them off and thereafter only worked with friendly and receptive areas. It would be easy to say in both of these cases that the CEO should have intervened and forced people to work together more effectively. The reality is that in many organizations the CEO is either unaware of these dynamics, doesn’t know what to do, or chooses to ignore them, thinking that senior managers should be able to work these things out on their own. In other cases, like the first example here, the CEO might even foster the competition, almost like a lab experiment to see what happens. [327 words]
[Time 3]
So what can you do if you are part of a “frosty” management team, either as a direct contributor to the tension, or an observer of the dysfunction? Here are two suggestions: First, get the issues out from under the rocks and into the light of day. Few things cripple a management team more than having elephants in the room — and in the organization — that no one acknowledges. Get beyond the conspiracy of silence by talking to the key parties, either individually, in small groups, or as a team, about what’s going on. This needs to be done delicately and sensitively, without blaming anyone or pointing fingers (which could make things worse), but the conversations need to get started with a goal of making the business better. In the case of the competing executives cited above, for example, one of the managers initiated a lunch meeting for the three of them — and explicitly talked about the awkwardness of the situation and how it was affecting other people on their team and in the company. All three then agreed that, while the situation was not optimal, they should do everything possible to do what’s best for the company and not just their own ambitions — and they conveyed this to their teams. Although this didn’t end the tensions, it certainly made it easier to keep doing business until a new CEO was selected. The second way to deal with situations like these is to gently force the contending people to work together on projects or issues that are important to the company. In other words, when senior managers need to put on “bigger hats,” it helps them to transcend the interpersonal rivalries and dislikes in order to achieve the broader objective. For example, in the financial services company mentioned earlier, the HR executive, concerned about the deteriorating relationships, quietly influenced the CEO to tackle a key strategic issue by setting up a few small cross-functional teams — and made sure that the executives who were not getting along were paired up.
There is nothing that says that members of a leadership team need to like each other. They do need to realize however that when they don’t “get along” their dysfunctional relationships can reverberate throughout the organization. Preventing this from happening is a responsibility of the whole team. [404 words]
Source :HBR
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/03/when-senior-managers-dont-get-along-everyone-suffers/
Article3
How To Say “This Is Crap” In Different Cultures
[Time 4]
I had been holed up for six hours in a dark conference room with 12 managers. It was a group-coaching day and each executive had 30 minutes to describe in detail a cross-cultural challenge she was experiencing at work and to get feedback and suggestions from the others at the table.
It was Willem’s turn, one of the Dutch participants, who recounted an uncomfortable snafu when working with Asian clients. “How can I fix this relationship?” Willem asked his group of international peers. Maarten, the other Dutch participant who knew Willem well, jumped in with his perspective. “You are inflexible and can be socially ill-at-ease. That makes it difficult for you to communicate with your team,” he asserted. As Willem listened, I could see his ears turning red (with embarrassment or anger? I wasn’t sure) but that didn’t seem to bother Maarten, who calmly continued to assess Willem’s weaknesses in front of the entire group. Meanwhile, the other participants — all Americans, British and Asians — awkwardly stared at their feet. That evening, we had a group dinner at a cozy restaurant. Entering a little after the others, I was startled to see Willem and Maarten sitting together, eating peanuts, drinking champagne, and laughing like old friends. They waved me over, and it seemed appropriate to comment, “I’m glad to see you together. I was afraid you might not be speaking to each other after the feedback session this afternoon.” Willem, with a look of surprise, reflected, “Of course, I didn’t enjoy hearing those things about myself. It doesn’t feel good to hear what I have done poorly. But I so much appreciated that Maarten would be transparent enough to give me that feedback honestly. Feedback like that is a gift. Thanks for that, Maarten” he added with an appreciative smile. I thought to myself, “This Dutch culture is . . . well . . . different from my own.” Managers in different parts of the world are conditioned to give feedback in drastically different ways. The Chinese manager learns never to criticize a colleague openly or in front of others, while the Dutch manager learns always to be honest and to give the message straight. Americans are trained to wrap positive messages around negative ones, while the French are trained to criticize passionately and provide positive feedback sparingly. [413 words]
[Time 5]
One way to begin gauging how a culture handles negative feedback is by listening to the types of words people use. More direct cultures tend to use what linguists call upgraders, words preceding or following negative feedback that make it feel stronger, such as absolutely, totally, or strongly: “This is absolutely inappropriate,” or “This is totally unprofessional.” By contrast, more indirect cultures use more downgraders, words that soften the criticism, such askind of, sort of, a little, a bit, maybe, and slightly. Another type of downgrader is a deliberate understatement, such as “We are not quite there yet” when you really mean “This is nowhere close to complete.” The British are masters at it. The “Anglo-Dutch Translation Guide”, which has been circulating in various versions on the Internet, illustrates the miscommunication that can result.
Germans are rather like the Dutch in respect of directness and interpret British understatement very similarly. Marcus Klopfer, a German client, described to me how a misunderstanding with his British boss almost cost him his job: In Germany, we typically use strong words when complaining or criticizing in order to make sure the message registers clearly and honestly. Of course, we assume others will do the same. My British boss during a one-on-one “suggested that I think about” doing something differently. So I took his suggestion: I thought about it, and decided not to do it. Little did I know that his phrase was supposed to be interpreted as “change your behavior right away or else.” And I can tell you I was pretty surprised when my boss called me into his office to chew me out for insubordination! [288 words]
[Time 6]
I learned to ignore all of the soft words surrounding the message when listening to my British teammates. Of course, the other lesson was to consider how my British staff might interpret my messages, which I had been delivering as “purely” as possible with no softeners whatsoever. I realize now that when I give feedback in my German way, I may actually use words that make the message sound as strong as possible without thinking much about it. I’ve been surrounded by this “pure” negative feedback since I was a child. All this can be interesting, surprising, and sometimes downright painful, when you are leading a global team: as you Skype with your employees in different cultures, your words will be magnified or minimized significantly based on your listener’s cultural context So you have to work to understand how your own way of giving feedback is viewed in other cultures. As Klopfer reported: Now that I better understand these cultural tendencies, I … soften the message when working with cultures less direct than my own. I start by sprinkling the ground with a few light positive comments and words of appreciation. Then I ease into the feedback with “a few small suggestions.” As I’m giving the feed- back, I add words like “minor” or “possibly.” Then I wrap up by stating that “This is just my opinion, for whatever it is worth,” and “You can take it or leave it.” The elaborate dance is quite humorous from a German’s point of view … but it certainly gets [the] desired results! What about you? Where do you think your own culture falls in this regard? If I need to tell you your work is total crap, how would you like me to deliver the message? [316 words]
Source : HBR
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/02/how-to-say-this-is-crap-in-different-cultures/
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发表于 2014-4-9 23:09:51
， 是时候增长international exposure啦。
。
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ne is that several managers are competeting for the incoming promotion, another is that a staff has not presented a satisfactory work for several times. Both of the two examples showed how interrelationship in working environment could be tensed. Then, the article described the position of the CEO. In some cases, the leader in the organization may unware of the situations or choose not to deal with it. In other cases, it is the willing of the CEO to foster the intensive environment as an experiment.