Contradicting your boss across cultures - Part 1

“It is impossible!! I cannot do it…- said the senior project manager, feeling completely overwhelmed. 

“But you must!!”- Answered the unit manager- “you must contradict me!!”

This happened during one of our intercultural workshops. The client had called us in to help with a German-Spanish team that was having significant problems with the quality of their deliverables.

What would you have done in this situation?

 Perhaps…

·         try reducing scope,
·         extending deadlines,
·         scheduling more meetings,
·         adding extra testing resources?

None of this had worked so far in our client’s project. We and our intercultural coaching were their last attempt.

Cultural differences

During our preparation meetings, the Spanish sub-team had worked with our Spanish senior coach and the German sub-team with our German senior coach. Now we were all together with senior management in a kick off workshop. Once we started working on quality issues of the deliverables, we quickly realised what the problem was:

The German management team was producing requirements that the Spanish team was not able to deliver, despite their incredibly long working hours.

Two natural reactions from both sides highlight the different perspectives and frustrations:

“Why is the Spanish team not telling us that our requirements cannot be delivered?”- Was wondering the German management.

“Why is our management not appreciating the efforts we are making to deliver the next best thing to these clearly unachievable deliverables and very tight deadlines?”- was wondering the Spanish team.

It sounds like an insurmountable mismatch, doesn’t it? The impact we saw was the German management getting frustrated and could not understand the lack of quality. The Spanish team was getting frustrated at having their enormous efforts go unnoticed and their technical expertise questioned.

This was yet another clear example of how different cultures and their different value systems play a vital role in the functioning of a team. We know it is best to address them as soon as possible to ensure a successful delivery.

Find out in our next week´s post what the root cause of the problem was and how we helped the project team solve it.

Teresa Ramos, BWC Senior Executive & Intercultural Coach. Our expert for intercultural coaching.