A new acronym for www in West Palm Beach

Marie Gervais, Director, Global Leadership Associates

Willy Mieles drives a sedan for Wolf Limo in Palm Beach County Florida. He used to drive a taxi in New York but he disliked the hype, stress and high cost of living there and moved a few years ago to calm and beautiful West Palm Beach. There he joined a group of drivers who offer super clean and quality limos of various sizes for the many visitors to West Palm Beach.

I actually found Willy by accident while attending a conference for Manufacturing at the lovely but very expensive Breakers hotel. Although I did find a cheaper hotel, it required a cab ride each day to get to the conference. For the first few days I had all manner of taxi experiences in West Palm beach, most of them not pleasant. When you go to a conference in West Palm Beach, cab drivers think you must be a millionaire and so they charge you outrageous prices and drive you all over the city taking every possible “scenic route”.

There was one unexpectedly sweet experience with a Haitian driver who had his six year old daughter working with him that day. She told me all about her six year old life and fear of being eaten by sharks and said that some day she would go to Haiti to visit her daddy’s relatives. There was just one problem; she needed to learn some Creole first. I told her I could help her out with that and we practiced the one Creole proverb I know until she could say it perfectly. I think her dad was a bit embarrassed that he hadn’t taught his own daughter any Creole and here was this strange white woman taking over the job(!) But other than that conversation with the six year old sweetheart in the back seat of her daddy’s cab, as I said earlier, the taxi rides were mostly frustrating.

One day waiting at the hotel entrance for the next cab to arrive, I was directed by the hotel staff to Willy Mieles’ sedan. I took one look at his fancy car and thought to myself that this was going to be a hard negotiation. Much to my surprise he quoted a price that was lower than what any of the cabbies had previously charged, rushed to open the door for me and was pleasant, gracious and conversational during the ride. I discovered that the company he worked with was small and acted as a cooperative supporting all the drivers, that he paid a monthly fee for unlimited car washes and vacuumed his sedan at least once a day.  Over the next couple of days I asked Willy to bring me back and forth between my budget hotel and the luxury conference hotel and then finally to the airport. He was professional, attentive and gracious. We got to know each other a bit better and I found out about his interests, his family, grandchildren and his concerns about his aging mother in Ecuador. I now know more about Ecuadorian special dishes, places to see in Ecuador and what to avoid when visiting New York. By the end of the conference I was truly sad to say goodbye to my new friend and promised him that I would put in a good word for future customers.

So if you are in West Palm Beach to enjoy the sun, attend an event, conference or play golf on their famous courses, don’t get hot under the collar with those “other” drivers. Make sure you ask for wonderful Willy Mieles of the Wolf Limo Company. You can remember him by using my “new” acronym for www: WWW is for Willy, ­Wolf Limo and West Palm Beach. And tell him you came on Marie’s recommendation!

561.891.2985 www.1wolflimos.com.

Rhythms of life- anyone?

Marie Gervais, www.global-leadership.ca

rhythm of life

When my Dad was growing up in Germany in a small farming village, he used to love listening to the blacksmith hammering as he forged horseshoes. Each village blacksmith had his own rhythms and they could hear each other from a distance as they worked, melding the pounding of their hammers into a multi-village drum ensemble.

He told me this story many years later when I explained my experience in Haiti getting lost in the fog on top of a mountain. There were three of us and we were hopelessly lost. Just as we started to panic, in the distance we heard the sound of farm workers tending their crops, singing. One person would call out and a group from somewhere else would sing a response, everyone using their farm tools in time. Within minutes we found the road by following the “surround sound” that lead us out of the fog. We felt – and my Dad felt as he explained his story – connected to life, to humanity, to creation in those moments of repetitive beats and tones. It was a feeling of welcome, belonging, healthy interactions and purposeful work.

I remembered these stories as I was driving to Brooks tonight listening to Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s collection of Zulu farm songs in the company of my intern from France. Here we both were from two different continents driving through Southern Alberta, listening to the roots of rhythm from South Africa. It makes me wonder what there is, in this modern day and age, to provide a sense of rhythm to life. In our urban experience, with many different cultural experiences but no common rhythms joining our lives, how do our bodies find a common movement, and our hearts and minds join with others in some unifying community song? How can we find a sense of belonging and connectedness surrounded by noise instead of music? (My husband listened to a blues singer who talked about a time “before the noise came to the south and drowned out all the music”)

Don’t get me wrong, I love my iphone, laptop and all the technology that makes my life so much easier to connect and work in. I am after all, working on creating a virtual game for industry managerial soft skill learning. It involves working with multiple experts in several cities, a team of IT gurus and regular communications through the internet. I talk to my grandson and children’s class through Skype and share documents with Dropbox, retweet interesting articles on Twitter and post photos and comments on Facebook. That would not be happening if I lived in the woods somewhere off a power grid spending all my time hauling water. And the farmers in Haiti are barely keeping from starving on their subsistence mountain farms with depleted soil and no modern farm implements or methods. It may be unifying to sing and plant together but I have no romantic misconceptions about the effects of grinding poverty on communities.

I have some questions though. Where are the daily rhythms to connect us in this technological world? How can we find our community “groove”? And how do we belong without it? I don’t know any of the answers to these questions, but somehow I think it is important to our survival to find out. Listening to Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s songs driving in the car made me feel like a part of the universe, part of the rhythm of life even though the music is light years away from my own cultural experience. Do we still have one? A rhythm, I mean. Or do we create a new one, based on the combined experiences of us all? Any ideas?

The power of one to effect collective change

Marie Gervais, PhD. Global Leadership Associates www.global-leadership.ca

The power of one

In honor of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to focus my comments today on the power of one to effect change for many, the power of one to undo the crippling effects of injustice. Two current Canadian examples of this principle are Craig and Marc Keigburger, who have worked from the time they were 12 to eliminate child slavery, bring education to places that have none, and draw thousands of youth around the world to meaningful action for change through the “Me to We” foundation. Their efforts have enlisted millions of supporters and they are in high demand as international speakers. Here are some of the tag lines from their website:

• From Me to We
• Together we can change the world
• Better choices for a better world

Spoken by anyone else, these would be nothing but “nice” things to say. But in the mouths of Craig and Marc Kielberger, the words on their website are the result of incalculable of hours of action for justice. Because these words come from real experience and sincere learning, they have influence. They call others to justice, meaningful action and positive collective change because that is the place of example that Craig and Marc are living and that living example has power. So how does one develop this kind of power to effect change? And what can individuals do effect change in the face of prejudice, intolerance and violence, whether they are targeted by it or are caught up in it? Here are the three principles I use to identify the power of one to influence collective good.

1. Develop increased sensitivity to injustice. This means I suffer when others suffer and I simply cannot stand to see this suffering continue. I can only develop sensitivity to injustice by being active in the world and meeting and getting to know other people who are not like me. It is an internal process requiring being organic with the world; both as an influencer and as one who is willing to be influenced.

Story: the Bangladeshi visitor and the Canadian host

Devesh, a friend of mine from Bangladesh told me about his first visit to Canada on business. He was walking down a street in Toronto with his host, a Canadian woman, when someone rolled down a car window and started screaming racist comments telling Devesh to “get out of my country”. His host immediately sprung to action saying to the offensive driver that her friend from Bangladesh was worth ten of him and that the country would be better off with more Bangladeshis like Devesh and lest racist Canadians like him. My friend said that at that moment he felt as tall as a giant and very much welcomed into the country. Devesh works with the children of prostitutes in Bangladesh and has set up train station schools for these children who usually spend their days begging at the trains. He has developed lesson plans that can be taught in 7 minute intervals, timed to fit the train schedule. In Bangladesh he received much criticism for his work with these children, but he cannot bear to see these young lives be wasted and has been very successful with getting entire families out of poverty through his train station basic education followed by trades training program. In both people’s lives, the Bangladeshi man and the Canadian host, their sensitivity to injustice galvanized them to action.

Practice moral courage and kindness: Focus rage at injustice into becoming an example for justice, no matter what the outcomes might be for me. This is the position of sacrifice that all the Prophets have taken. If I am not willing to suffer for others, I have little influence to effect collective change. Words alone are meaningless; influence for justice comes from purity of motive, kindness and sacrifice for others. Sacrifice stems from love and love informs justice.

Story: Roshan at the bus depot.

When my son Roshan was in high school he was waiting at a large bus depot transfer station when he saw a group of boys chasing a small boy, obviously with the intent to hurt him. Without thinking about it, Roshan put himself in the way of the bullies and said, “I won’t allow you to hurt him.” They replied with taunts and menaces. Suddenly they all turned around and ran away. Roshan was surprised, but when he looked around, he saw that all the people at the bus depot who had observed his action were standing behind him. When the bullies saw that the entire crowd stood between them and their victim, they fled. Roshan’s willingness to put himself at risk for the sake of the boy galvanized the moral courage in those around him who were wondering what to do. His sacrificial action provided them all with a course of action.

The other kind of influence is kindness. According to one study (whose reference I have lost), when someone does a kind act for another person, the endorphin levels in their brains rise higher than the endorphin levels in the brains of the person who was the recipient of the kind action. Even more interestingly, the brains of people watching the kind act have endorphin levels that are just as high. Here is a story illustrating the collective power within one kind act.

Story: The tall black stranger and the Mexican musicians

When I was in New York in a subway train, three Mexican musicians came onto the car and started playing and singing the most amazing music, not missing a beat or losing their footing in that jerky car. I was very impressed with them and after the song, searched my wallet for some change to give as they passed around a hat. When I opened my wallet I only had a $100 bill and was very disappointed. A very tall black man standing next to me observed my dilemma and immediately pulled a $5 bill from his wallet saying, “This is for the little lady over here. She really wants to give you something but she doesn’t have any change.” I was completely overcome with appreciation and thanked him with tears in my eyes. When I looked up the entire car was clapping for this kind act my unexpected benefactor had done and everyone started giving money to the musicians. That group of musicians made more money from the single kind action of one person than they would have from the random donations of other cars. The power of kindness had galvanized a group of strangers into action.

Principle #3:

Use wisdom and increase my repertoire to deal effectively with injustice. This requires building a repertoire of responses ranging from using deflection and humour, to rallying for collective support, to gradual building of trust between opposing factions and being of service to others no matter what their race, ethnicity, language, social class or other difference. In the following two historical examples context is key. Without wisdom and variety of response, the individual actions may have caused more harm than help.

Story: Early 1900s the Maxwell family in Montreal versus Louis Gregory and Louisa Matthew in Washington

The Maxwell family was an established and well-to-do presence in Montreal and they worked hard to establish race unity throughout their lives. One of their preferred methods was to take evening strolls down the streets of their white neighborhood while enjoying the company and conversation of their visible minority friends. At that time, seeing people of mixed race together in public was unusual and their example helped “normalize” the idea. They also had both French and English friends and held gatherings in their home where people from both groups could meet and get to know each other across difference. Conversely at the same time but further south, a mixed race couple – Louisa Matthew and Louis Gregory were living in New York also working for race unity. At the time, it was illegal in many States for the races to marry and had Louisa and Louis been seen together in public, it would have likely have incited racial violence. Their influence was confined to the small gatherings in homes of trusted friends where they could be seen together without danger. Both the city and country contexts required thoughtful and appropriate action for change in antagonistic social contexts. And both needed a long-term gradual example that the surrounding society could absorb over time.

Here in summary, are the three principles of the power of one to effect collective change: 1) sensitivity to injustice, 2) the practice of both kindness and moral courage and 3) wisdom and repertoire to apply the appropriate action for change at the appropriate time within a social context.

My instructions are so clear: Why don’t they just do it?

Marie Gervais, PhD. Global Leadership Associates Inc. www.global-leadership.ca

Managerial frustration, what to do?

In my work helping managers understand cultural adaptation to the workplace, I frequently hear frustrated comments about both newcomer and young workers looking like ‘deer in the headlights’ for simple instructions, even when English language proficiency seems adequate.  Managers can also be baffled as to why workers so frequently do exactly the opposite of what they have been instructed to do. And why do so many workers seem incapable of performing simple tasks? 

Here are three examples I have heard on multiple occasions:

Example 1: “One clue, one switch. What went wrong?”

“I told them that in the middle of the process, at a specific point they were to change the directional flow by flipping the switch. One clue, one switch. It’s not rocket science. When I came back 30 minutes later the whole department was in chaos because they flipped the switch too late and everything jammed.”

Example 2: “Total opposite of what I asked for.”

“So we had this team meeting and I explained what had to happen and in what order. I asked them if they understood and everyone said yes, although I have to admit they did look a bit blank. When I came by to check in on them, everything had been done in exactly the opposite way from what I had explained. Step five they did first and step one they did last. So we reset the entire floor and I went through the same explanation with the next group. The next day when I came to work, they had made exactly the same mistake as the first group. I just don’t get it.”

Example 3: “Don’t they learn anything in school?”

“I said to her, file these folders in alphabetical order, then put these payroll files in numerical order.” She spent the entire morning on it and did the whole thing wrong. Apparently she doesn’t understand basic filing principles. It took three days to reset the filing system after that fiasco. Don’t they teach them anything in school these days?”

So what can you do to improve the receptivity of your workforce and have them perform their duties with less mistakes and less frustration for you as supervisor?

a) Don’t assume they know the basics.

Everything you know is something you learned how to do either by observing, directly being taught or through trial and error. Your employees have to go through the same process to learn any new task at work, some will pick it up at different speeds than others and some will be fine at first and then make mistakes. Some may have no cultural context upon which to anchor this new instruction. Others may be used to people doing things for them or taking over when they make mistakes. To avoid misunderstandings supervisors have to learn to see all the learning steps in each task and check for understanding and performance right in the beginning. In the last example, the supervisor found that it was a common problem to have office assistants who had never organized anything and did not know how to categorize. She learned to check if they understood alphabetical and numerical order by giving new hires 10 files to put in order before assigning them to the entire filing system. You may resent having to teach people things they should have learned in grade three, but if that is where they are at, it is better to find out sooner rather than later.

b) Have them practice recognizing the clues

Your instructions may be crystal clear but the people receiving them require something more in order for you to ensure that they can do the job correctly. In the first example, the manager did not have the workers practice recognizing the clue. If they have never watched for something in the past, they may not see it now unless they have had some practice. Even if the clue seems dead easy to see in your mind, you have to put yourself in the position of a worker who has never done it before, can’t deal with any variations yet and likely doesn’t understand why he/she is watching for this clue in the first place. Which leads me to the next tip.

c) Explain why and where the specific actions fit into the process.

In many workplaces people only know the specific confines of their immediate jobs. They don’t know where things come from or where they go after their responsibility ends. Because of this lack of systemic understanding, they have not learned to think contextually. Explain the process, and where their task fits. Have them imagine what the consequences will be if they do a, b, c, or d. Then have them go through the motions of running through the process.  This is why the manager in example #2 had problems. He did not contextualize the task and the workers did what was easiest for them at the time instead of what would avoid problems in the next set of tasks. Which leads to the next tip.

c) Close the feedback loop.

If someone can’t either explain back or show you what the process is, they don’t know what to do. Have the worker ‘walk you through’ the process verbally. Have the worker ‘walk you through’ the process physically. Or have several people explain and walk through the process to a partner while you watch. Stop them in places where they missed a step. Throwing a ball to the team and walking away will not ensure that they will catch it. To make sure they are playing the game, practice getting the ball back and watch how they pass it to others. Then make adjustments. This should help with all three of the above supervisory issues.

d) Post visual reminders.

A picture is worth a thousand words. And written instructions are almost as good as a picture. So just to be safe, have the process visually up somewhere obvious and have the instructions written and posted somewhere. Maybe you have a station ipad with instructions on it where people can check in if they forget a process. Whether you draw a stick man and arrows poster with a felt pen, put all your work processes in a centrally located binder or purchase the latest station technology to show your necessary work processes, the only thing that matters is that they are visual. Visual reminders are particularly important with people for whom English is not a first language and for workers who are new to the job or new to the company. Even if they have done the job before somewhere else, each place has variations and company cultural differences so to allow for that, make sure as many processes as possible are made visual and keep them up to date.

e) Take the question “Do you understand?” out of your vocabulary forever

There is only one answer to the question, “Do you understand?” and it is “yes”. It is as automatic as saying “Fine” when you are asked, “How are you?”.  The only way to ensure true understanding is to watch the task performed and/or listen to the person performing the task explain it –  and then make adjustments as required.

f) Practice either makes perfect or it makes brain-dead

Practicing a task correctly will ensure that it is learned. Apparently it takes 67 repetitions for an adult to master any new task. After mastery comes boredom. And boredom means mistakes. So if people are performing a task well and then not so well you can: rotate their jobs, change the environment periodically (even warm to cool lighting and then back again can improve job performance), make the task more complex by adding on variations or contextual considerations, increase social interaction (when people feel happy to be part of a team they perform better), change the team composition (new work partners keep people awake) or set production, efficiency or waste reduction goals with the team to keep them focused and on task.

Giving and following instructions are skill sets that have to vary depending on the people involved and involve learning on both sides. It takes a while for new people to get used to their supervisor instruction styles in the beginning just as it takes a while for the supervisor to get used to the worker learning and performance styles. I sometimes need to go to the next room and scream into a pillow before I can backtrack to what the learning missing learning process is, but that’s always the key to minimizing frustration. I hope you found these tips helpful and I look forward to hearing about yours!

Integrating foreign workers to the workplace

Marie Gervais, PhD. Director, Global Leadership Associates Inc. www.global-leadership.ca

Integrating newcomers into the workplace

Imagine you have just landed in a country where you will be working and living for the first time. Everything is new and strange. People don’t respond the way you expect them to and the environment, food and even the smells around you are completely unfamiliar. When you come to the workplace for the first time, if you already speak English, you don’t understand the accents of your co-workers. If English is new to you, add the confusion and culture shock of having to learn a language before doing your job.

When you come to a new country, in both your daily life and your workplace, tasks you are used to performing back home without even thinking about them, now take huge effort. You don’t know how to greet your colleagues because when you provide your usual greeting people look at you strangely, so you stop greeting them at all. You aren’t sure where to put your stuff, the bathrooms are unfamiliar, and you don’t understand the coffee break and lunch norms. Not wanting to look to green, you just smile and nod as much as possible. When your boss asks you if you understand you say “yes”, even though you don’t know what he actually wants you to do. (Note to self: never ask “do you understand?” because the answer, whether it is true or not is always “yes”.)

Consider what Manuel shared with me regarding his experience with getting to work at his new job at a hotel in Edmonton. For the longest time he walked the three-kilometer distance to his workplace instead of taking the bus because he was afraid of “looking like a foreigner” when he didn’t know how to use the fare machine. His fear of losing face in his new country was so strong that for two months he left an hour early for work and walked there and back in the cold rather than face the embarrassment of asking the bus driver for help and admitting that he did not know what to do.

What makes it even harder for newcomers is that workplace protocols, formalities, communication styles and conflict resolution methods are different from what they expect. The confusion can result in some embarrassing situations. For example in one food processing plant, a lead hand whose wife was working in another part of the plant heard others saying that there had been some discipline issues on his wife’s team. On his break, the lead hand decided to go to his wife’s line and yell at her while she worked to make sure she knew that she should not cause any problems. He was very surprised when his wife’s lead hand told him it was not his place to discipline his wife at work. He was even more surprised when he received a written warning from the HR department. In El Salvador at his past workplace, his behavior would have been considered perfectly appropriate. Here, he and his wife became the butt of a number of jokes after this incident and the loss of face was significant.

French immigrant Jean-Louis explained to me that in France there is a much sharper  and more clearly defined hierarchy than in Canada. He was suspicious when his boss asked him how his family was doing and if his wife was adjusting well to Canada. He had never experienced this kind of informal interest from any of his bosses in France. Getting compliments from his boss was equally surprising, even unnerving. Thinking back on it now, he thinks that his managers probably thought he was stuck up and unfriendly. Now he is used to the familiarity of Canadian workplaces, but it took him a couple of years before it felt comfortable.

Helping both foreign workers and immigrant workers adjust to their new work environment can be easier if you imagine yourself performing a job in their country. What would you need to know to be able to do your job well? How would you want to have things explained, when and by whom?

Even between different cultural groups who have been born in Canada, managers may need to spell out their intent and the meaning of their behavior in order to get to the results they seek. For example, a Métis teacher once told me that she had learned to explain to her class each year how to know when she was displeased or angry. Since she never yelled and was very gentle in her approach, many of the students couldn’t interpret her face and mannerisms. She demonstrated to them what to look for in her face and voice, so they knew what to look for. She then explained the consequences for for both good behavior and behavior infractions. Once she realized how successful it was to approach classroom management in this manner, she started explaining other aspects of her culture to students so they could understand her values and reasons for her organizational structure. For example she told them that in her culture the youngest and least experienced always let the older and more experienced speak first out of respect, then she asked if students in the room had similar expectations in their cultures. She also told them that silence after a comment was a sign that she was taking their comment very seriously and thinking about it. She began promoting the use of a minute of silence when there was a conflict, so that her well-developed skill of reflection on potential consequences before jumping to action, could be cultivated by her students.

Managers of teams, lines, sections and companies can do the same thing for their employees. A little self-reflection is required and it takes some thinking to be able to articulately explain “how we do things around here” but you may be surprised at how much the entire team appreciates the clarification. Your newcomer workers will feel more secure in their new positions because your capacity to trouble-shoot potential issues as well as the skill of resolving intercultural conflicts will serve everyone.
Download our Immigrant and Foreign Worker brochure(pdf)

Hey, where did my job go? Employee terminations in a brave new world

Marie Gervais, Global Leadership Associates www.global-leadership.ca

What happened to my job?

It has become standard practice in industry and most organizations, regardless of the size, to layoff or terminate employees as quickly as possible. An engineer friend of mine was worrying out loud about job security the other day. She works at a large construction company with a team of 15 engineers on at site that will be active for the next three years. Two weeks ago eight of their team were called into a meeting and given 20 minutes to clear out their workspaces and leave the building escorted by security guards. Last week the same thing happened to five of the remaining team members. There are now only two engineers left from the original team and she has been spending her evenings redoing her resume and looking for her next gig.

Most news-worthy manufacturing stories in Canada over the past two years have involved employees arriving at work to a lock out and being handed termination letters at the door. Six months ago, an HR manager I know was given no notice about a plant closure and came to work one morning to deal with 300 employees who were told they could transfer to another part of the province or lose their jobs, and 500 who were simply met at the door with termination notes. She told me that for the first half hour she feared for her life, and if it were not for the fact that the employees held her in high esteem, she might not have left that situation in the same health as when she had arrived that morning.

A couple of people I know who work in health care administration experienced the same fate when someone they did not know met them at the office with a termination note and supervised them packing up their offices. Computers had all been confiscated and phones disconnected the night before. Same story for a couple more people I know who worked for small not for profit organizations.

I asked a few of the people who told me these stories why this “instant termination without notice” procedure seems to have become standard. The answer was, “Companies need to be protected from angry employees who sabotage, sue and vandalize when they are terminated.” I can understand that.

But somewhere in another universe there is a host of leadership and managerial best selling material that tells managers to give people as much notice as possible for change, to engage employees in decision making regarding team needs and to motivate workers with the knowledge that their jobs will be protected because the company has their best interests in mind. I have a nephew with a disability who works with a window manufacturing company. Last week the HR department called his work team into a meeting to tell them that there was bad news and good news.  The company was losing profit but they had a plan. Employees would sign up for and qualify for one day of unemployment insurance a week, they would work four days and have a three-day weekend but receive most of their original salary. The change involved losing 25% of their wages for one day a week, and getting a day off with pay versus having several employees lose their jobs entirely. HR told them this was considered a temporary measure that would change if the company profits rose but that they should be realistic and understand that if the market got worse, things might go in another direction.  Even though the news brought a sense of foreboding, my nephew was relieved about this arrangement and told me that he thinks he is working for a “great” company. He asked if we need any window work done that he could set up for us because he really wanted the company to make a profit.

I’m confused about all these conflicting messages. Is the situation really such that employees need to be treated as disposable? This instant dismissal with (or without) security guards seems devastating and heartless to me. How do we reconcile this so-called standard practice with all the leadership literature recommendations for a democratic and humane work environment? Can somebody explain this to me?

Culturally “Awesome” Reflections #1: New York

Marie Gervais, PhD. Director www.global-leadership.ca

Business People Walking on Sidewalk, New York City

In reflecting on the past year’s work, some very wonderful intercultural experiences that have happened over the years came unbidden to my mind. I thought they might inspire others as much as they have me, so I decided to share them in a few posts. Here is the first one about cross-cultural exchanges in New York.

Not so long ago I was in New York for a conference at Columbia University and regularly took the subway to get back and forth. Almost every day I was touched by the kindness of New Yorkers who went out of their way to be helpful to others. One day in particular stands out in my mind. It started with me buying tickets for the subway in the early morning. One man bought his tickets and then turned to a homeless man who was sitting on the curb near the ticket dispenser and handed him a day pass for the train. “You might like to have some mobility today brother, here you go”, said the man as he casually handed over the ticket, smiled and kept on walking towards his destination. It struck me that New York had really changed since 9/11 and that perhaps disaster has some positive after effects.

In the afternoon when I was coming back from the conference events, a group of three Mexican musicians with guitars got on and began playing a most engaging song as the train lurched to a start. I was not only impressed with their playing, singing, outfits and initiative, I couldn’t believe they never once lost a beat or their footing with all the jerking of the train.  I was so entranced by these musicians that when they passed around a hat for a silver collection, I immediately looked into my wallet to see what I had to give in thanks for this mini-concert. Alas I had no change and there was only one bill left of my conference money – $100 – a bit too big for a three-minute concert! A large black man who was standing next to me and saw my dismay immediately pulled out a five dollar bill from his own wallet, and put it into the hat, patting my shoulder with his other hand as he did. His comment to the musicians was, “This is for the little lady over here. She really likes your songs but she doesn’t have anything small at the moment.” I was so touched and thanked this generous man profusely telling him how impressed I was with New Yorker kindness. When I looked back towards the car, everyone was filling the musician’s hat, smiling and enjoying this exchange as they watched us.

Then that night I was with a cousin from Germany who was attending a different conference in New York at the same time as I was. We decided to take the train to visit my Haitian daughter-in-law’s father who lived in the Jamaica section of the city. The relationship is a bit complex because he is her biological father who didn’t know my daughter-in-law existed until a little while ago, but he and his other daughter were very happy to see us. He suggested we head to a local mall to pick up some food since we had not yet eaten. Once inside the mall, he hitched himself between my German cousin Stephie and me, and told his other daughter to hold on to one of us as well so we could be “matched”. As we walked through the mall, my daughter-in-law’s father seemed to know everyone there. He spoke to them in Creole and told them that his “international family” had come to visit because of his “surprise daughter”. Not my usual “mall” experience!

Later on when my cousin and I took the train back to the YMCA where we were staying, a group of laughing Hispanic and Black male youth sitting across from us began conversing – entirely in sign language – and telling each other jokes, but without a single sound. We realized they were deaf and watched them in wonder as they touched each other’s shoulders and motioned to get attention. Each youth told jokes with hands flying expressively through the air at lightning speed, and the whole group was reeling with laughter at each new punch line. A few stops later when they got off, my cousin looked at me and we both said at the same time, “I wish they could have stayed longer!” Later Stephie said to me when we got to our stop, “ In Germany we would never see this, I feel so fortunate to be here.” Hats off to New Yorkers for showing the world how to better live together!

Kijiji cultural adventures

Marie Gervais, PhD. www.global-leadership.ca

Buying and selling on Kijiji can be a cross cultural adventure!

If you are interested in meeting people from a variety of cultures and don’t want to leave the comfort of your home, I have a solution for you: Kijiji. Sell anything on the online free web service and a variety of interesting people with very interesting stories about why they want to buy your stuff will contribute to your intercultural education. Let me tell you how I got started on this adventure myself.

My sister was closing her spa in Fort McMurray and figured she would have a better chance selling all her equipment if I sold it for her in Edmonton. I agreed even though I had no idea what most of the spa equipment was and was unlikely to be able to answer anyone’s questions about it. People started to email, text and phone about the spa equipment and within a day or so I met a Filipina woman who had a spa with three friends and they came looking for waxing pots. We had a great chat about their business, their families, the people they had already met in their Kijiji adventures while looking for low cost spa equipment and their relatives back home.

Next came an East Indian family with two brothers, an aunt, a grandmother and a young lady recently arrived in Canada as a new bride and who was the latest addition to a spa run by the extended family. I learned about the wedding and what traditional wedding customs they observed and did not and from what regions of India. And I learned about the way an Indian family business was run as well as a couple of Indian aesthetics practices that have been used for centuries. This group bought all the boxes of scented wax.

Then a very touching story when an instructor in an aesthetics school wanted to help one of her students; a single immigrant mother who was just starting her own spa business. The instructor was quietly colleting a few things this student would need and intended to surprise her with them the day of her graduation, but very discretely. She came back a couple of times to look at the spa chair and finally decided it would do the trick since it fit into the color scheme her student had already described. This generous instructor described the quiet way she would present the items to her student at her home. I practically wept when the woman gave me the cash for the chair.

Then I met a most endearing woman from Columbia who was an architect back home and was rebuilding her career here as a spa owner. After a couple of “getting to know you” conversations, we have become good friends and I go to her spa as a customer.

Once the spa equipment was gone, I decided to try my luck at selling a desk. The Russian couple that came to buy it told me that just a couple of neighborhoods away from me was what they called “the Russian district” and that they had their son on the waiting list of a Russian daycare close to my home. The mother told me the daycare waiting list was two years long and another daycare and a Russian immersion kindergarten in the area were in the works. I had heard lots of people speaking Russian while grocery shopping, but did not know there was such a demand for Russian language programs for children.

I have never seen Kijiji advertised for anything but buy and sell online, but the amazing thing is that I discovered the people in my neighborhood, and area, cultural groups living here, buying patterns of different cultures, and the ways people think of business from several cultural perspectives…while making a little cash on the side. I don’t think I will ever get rich from my Kijiji sales; people are looking for cheap or free after all – but I am certainly richer in understanding, and I even have a couple of new friends from my Kijiji adventures!

Checking the cultural pulse: is it healthy?
Marie Gervais, PhD., Global Leadership Associates Inc. www.global-leadership.ca mgervais@global-leadership.ca

Checking the cultural pulse

Last week I was conducting a workshop on (surprise) the topic of intercultural competency. I used a vignette I have used several times previously with the intention of bringing out the link between values and cultural context. Here is the vignette:
Imagine that you and a friend are driving in a car together and your friend is going too fast. At one point he stops suddenly, causing an accident. As the police are on their way to the car your friend asks you to say that the car was not driving too fast because he does not want to be in trouble with the law. What would you do?
My intent was to point out that if this situation were happening in a country where it is known that the police torture anyone they arrest, the cultural context may trump the value of honesty and respect for authority. The second point was to be that culture of a necessity creates values and norms, and that cultural values and moral values are linked. Third, cultures have been “normed” to show a preference in moral decision-making that tends to be more strongly relational or more strongly principle-based. This is also true of the moral decision-making differences between women and men. Women tend to make their decisions based on the strength of the relationship and the desire to keep things harmonious, whereas men tend to make moral decisions based on principles, rules and regulations. The caveat of course is that we, as infinitely complex human beings, are not summed up in the constraints of either our culture or our gender and that balanced, mature adults tend to weigh both principle and relationship in their moral decision-making.
But this is what happened instead. One participant after another said that he or she would lie for the friend, no questions asked. Only a couple of people raised a concern about whether lying was the right thing to do or not. One asked if the friend was really a true friend if he was so quick to lie to try to save his own skin. When pressed further, those who so readily said they would lie for the friend no questions asked, agreed that if someone had died, then maybe they would reconsider. Even so they did not seem particularly troubled by the idea of possible damage, injury or death as a result of the friend’s actions.
Here’s another story: one of my sons is a teacher in a junior high school. A student who was disgruntled with another teacher in the school vandalized my son’s car, thinking it belonged to the teacher he wanted to “get back at”. When the student found out he had vandalized the “wrong” car, he and his father tried to argue that they should not pay for the damage done to the car because the student had intended to target another teacher’s car, so it was a mistake. After much frustrating dialogue between the school and the parents, the father finally consented to paying $400 of the $1,200 worth of damage to the car – no consequences to the kid who did the damage.
Cultural norms do shift both negatively and positively. At this point in time, a shift in one place can drastically shift the entire world. It has been heartening to note that for example human slavery is now considered morally reprehensible on an international scale. According to trafficking expert Kevin Bates, this means that it is much easier to find and stop slavers because the public opinion on slavery is that it is wrong and must be stopped. The same moral shift has happened with regard to protecting the environment and taking a stance of stewartship rather than exploitation of the earth’s resources. And it also has appeared to be affecting whether or not a people accepts to be oppressed by a dictator. This does not mean there won’t be infractions or that we have solved either problem, but it does mean we are more likely to come to some kinds of agreement because we have a common moral stance that has become locally, nationally and internationally normed and which is more likely to motivate us to act justly.
This is why there is not much point in having a human rights commission to administer penalties to organizations if there is no grass roots support for human rights. The ground swell of support for human rights in the workplace allows the laws and policies intended to deal with infractions to be effective. When that public support is absent, no amount of law making will deal with the problem.
On the other hand, the very existence of the law reminds people that there is a standard that is higher than our individual wants and needs and to which we must strive. The principle urges individuals to act in the best interests of the common good and the cultural support of that principle gives the group safety. Once the group is upholding a norm that is unsafe, we are in trouble. What kind of a world are we moving towards if everyone lies, takes no consequences for their actions and has no respect for the institutions that are there to protect and uphold the laws? Every action each of us takes contributes to the pool of cultural norming. The more individuals shrug off their moral responsibilities and turn away from facing the consequences of their actions, the more unsafe the society becomes for everyone.
Studies by sociologist Zyg Bauman show that if the group believes an individual action will have the desired benefit for the group, that individual is more likely to make the choice that is in the best interests of the group and to delay or sacrifice his/her own needs in support of that greater good from which everyone will benefit. For example in countries where the majority of people believe that their taxes are used for roads, schools and hospitals, the majority of people will pay their taxes and are more likely to be honest in their tax filing. In places where people believe that their tax dollars simply serve to line the pockets of government officials, they resist, avoid, lie about or simply do not pay their taxes. This is the delicate balance between individual actions and the group, and between the group and society.
But in my workshop example we have a case where a majority of the individuals in a group are making a decision to support a friends’ misdeed, even when there is no likely danger to the friend, and “the devil take” the consequences. When enough people adhere to this “who cares” moral stance, we are all in serious danger. I hit you with my car, so what? You break into my house, who cares? Your colleague steals from her boss, what’s the point? There are traffic lights, so who follows them? It means we are in a dog eat dog world with no standards to protect any of us.
I recently read a study about ethical behavior in not-for-profit sector by the USA Ethics Resource Centre (2007). You may be surprised to know that unethical behavior in not-for-profit is higher than both the public and private sector statistics. You may not be so surprised to know that unethical behavior is on the rise generally in all organizations and that when confronted, individuals shrug and say it was a gamble to see if they would be caught or not.
We have to think this one through, because the effects will be hard to undo. Benjamin Franklin apparently said, “Just because an idea is popular, doesn’t make it right.” Maybe we should be quoting Benjamin Franklin more often before the cultural shift in moral values takes us farther down the slope towards societal chaos.