Germany Archives - Page 33 of 62

“Whattya want from me?”

The 2014 Soccer World Championship. Prelims. Germany vs. Algeria. It’s a nerve wracking game, but in the end Germany wins 2:1. It was a tough game for the German team, but in the end they prevailed. Grounds to celebrate, one would think.

Boris Büchler, however, the ZDF television reporter who interviewed center back Per Mertesacker directly after the game, saw things differently. After a short “congratulations” he went straight to his criticisms: “What made the German players so sluggish and vulnerable?”

Mertesacker, already slightly annoyed, emphatically stated that the victory is all that matters: “I don’t give a ****. We’re in the final eight and that’s what counts.”

But Büchler won’t back down: “But this cannot possibly be the level of playing at which you expected to enter the quarter-final? I think the need for improvement must be clear to you as well.”

Mertesacker can no longer keep his cool: “What do you want from me? What do you want, right now, immediately after the game? I don’t understand.” But Büchler stays firm, and repeats his criticism: “Firstly, I congratulate you, and then I wanted to ask why the defensive plays and turnovers did not go as well as one would have liked. That’s all.”

Mertesacker: “Do you think think there is a carnival-troupe (meaning a bunch of clowns) amongst the final 16 teams or something? They made it really hard for us for 120 minutes, and we fought until the very end to prove ourselves. It was a real back-and forth Of course we allowed a lot from them. But in the end our victory was well deserved…”

Mertesacker once again emphasizes how the German team won, in spite of his concession that not everything went as one might have hoped.

But not even this was enough for Büchler: “An absolute show of strength. A high-power performance. Do you think that we will see the same sort of wow-effects again that we saw in the 2010 World Championship, so that the team’s game will improve?”

Mertesacker: “What do you want? Do you want a successful World Championship, or should we just step down and call it a game already? I just don’t understand all of these questions.”

Germany won 2:1. But there will always be something left to criticize. In this case: Just because you won does not mean that you played the game well.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMJJMpufE2g[/embedyt]

Diane Krueger

mobil. Magazine of the German Rail. December 2017. An interview with the actor Diane Krüger. Question: “Colleagues for your earlier years claim that you were extremely ambitious. Is it true?”

Krüger: “When I was a little girl my mother never said to me: ‘You’re the best, the greatest, the most beautiful’. Instead all she ever said was: ‘Work harder. You can do better.'”

Germans are critical of rankings

Germans prefer to measure performance less frequently, but when they do so then in detail and exact. The German media has taken to the trend of ranking, but most Germans criticize them for not being truly representative.

Several academic organizations have called for a boycott of university rankings. Ranking tv shows such as Simply the Best or The Top 10 are also criticized by the public for not being objective, for relying on viewer voting which is overly influenced by current events.

The ranking show Die ultimative Chartshow went on air in 2003, is based on reliable statistics and continues to command a loyal viewership. Das Politbarometer, The Political Barometer, broadcasts the results of its political polling each month and is watched carefully by citizens and political professionals alike.

Germans take ranking serious only if they are based on a serious methodology.

“We want negative feedback”

Statement made by a German working in the U.S.: “It bothers us Germans when our American bosses give is inflated feedback, meaning too positive. Negative feedback keeps us oriented on avoiding mistakes, and it sharpens our ability to remain self-critical.

How is someone supposed to remain clear-headed and self-critical if all they ever hear is great and super. Performance which is clearly suboptimal should not be sugar-coated. Management loses credibility that way.

And feedback loses its key purpose, which is to address primarily things that aren’t working well. At some point this will hurt us. The quality of our work will suffer.”

Fruits of the Labors

The Germans value being self-critical. Inflated, positive feedback threatens self-critique, threatens one‘s ability to identify and learn from mistakes and weaknesses. Germans prefer that their work results speak for themself. They value the quiet, focused worker who is not easily distracted by comments about their performance.

Studies, though, document that this ideal is not always in the best interest of employees and their companies. More than half of all German managers and subject-area experts feel that they deserve more praise. Only a quarter are satisfied with the current level of positive feedback. 14% responded that they receive no praise at all for their work. Only 3% stated that they need any additional praise.

„Not criticized is praise enough“

There is a logic to why Germans rarely give praise. They believe that being one‘s own most severe critic is the prerequisite for working independently, for self-management. Praise is given and expected sparingly. The following expression reveals the German logic: Nicht geschimpft, ist genug gelobt or Not criticized is praise enough.

Germans learn at an early age to expect more critique than praise, from parents, teachers, sports coaches. Young Germans are trained to be self-critical, to be wary of undeserved praise. Experts in education and child-rearing warn of the dangers of too much praise. It can quickly lead to oversized egos, to overrating one‘s abilities, to losing touch with reality.

If praise is given, then it should come from an external, neutral, critical source. German children learn from an early age on not to put their achievements on display, not to brag, but instead to be reserved and modest. Every German child has heard at least once that Eigenlob stinkt, that self-praise stinks.

Self-praise stinks

Eigenlob stink: self-praise stinks; it is dishonourable; those who praise themselves make themselves unpopular. Lobhudelei: tossing praise about; exaggerated praise, typically self-praise; for mediocre work. Etwas hochjubelen: to praise something or someone to the high heavens; overblown praise, undeserved, unwarranted.

The Ikarus myth. Ikarus is a figure of Greek mythololgy. His father, Daidalos, in order to escape from the labyrinth on the Greek island of Crete, built wings our of feathers and wax. Although Daidalos warned his son not to fly to close to the sun, Ikarus in his self-confidence did not heed his father‘s warning. The wax in his wings melted, he crashed to the sea and drowned. The lesson taught is that hubris – conceit, over self-estimation – leads to a fall.

Germans are very wary of over self-estimation.

Be wary. Be happy.

Germans strive to remain clear-headed, to avoid incrementally inflated euphoria, to avoid a step-by-step distancing from a sober assessment of reality. For Germans it’s not “Don’t worry. Be Happy.” But instead “Be wary. Be happy.”

Wary: marked by keen caution, cunning, and watchfulness, especially in detecting and escaping danger.

“Escaping danger.” Dangerous can be thinking too highly of oneself. Dangerous can be misreading a situation. Dangerous is unjustified happy, euphoric.

But, there is another reason to “be wary.” Neid, envy. The Germans themselves speak of their Neidgesellschaft, “society of envy”, of their Neider, the envious.

Public recognition can lead to envy within the team. Envy threatens cohesion. Germans are not comfortable with “stars” or “rainmakers” in their organizations. Neid is one reason. The other is purely rational.

In complex organizations, especially those which are highly matrixed, how can individuals or individual teams be cited as especially successful? As clearly better than others? How can that be measured?

More praise, please!

An international employee survey by the Geva-Institute of Munich from 2009 demonstrated the differences by country in the expectations of employees from their supervisors.

80% of German employees expected their boss to be good at making decisions and able to execute their plans.

Besides this, German employees prefer to take responsibility for their own work. Accordingly, three out of four people who were surveyed stated that a supervisor should provide enough freedom to their employees with regard to making their own decisions and taking action.

Nevertheless, the typical German office could use some more dolling out of praise: only half of German employees felt that their work is sufficiently appreciated.

“Teutonic Obsession“?

The British newspaper The Telegraph published an article by Jeremy Warner about the geopolitics of the European Central Bank and the Euro-Crisis. The fact that the bank had only now started the process of quantitative easing was in large part due to Germany’s previous efforts to resist this.

However, the German’s resistance against these measures taken by the ECB was not due to the German’s experiences with hyperinflation during the time of the Weimar Republic, but rather traces back to much profounder factors found deep within the German psyche: the ancient Teutonic obsession with legality and rules.

Could this also be the reason why the German response to proposals for money-saving measures, bail-outs, and troika made by the Greeks is a always the same resounding statement: “The Greeks must stick to the rules”?

But where do rules become necessary, in order to assure reliability, stability and continuity, and where must one deviate from them due to changes in circumstance? Does not every change in strategy incorporate breaking the rules of a time gone-by?

Is Jeremy Warner’s statement about a so-called ancient Teutonic obsession with legality and rules even historically accurate?