Teamwork Archives - Page 9 of 14

Leave Is for Rest

Under the Federal Leave Act, leave must as a rule be granted in one block. If it is split, and the employee is entitled to more than twelve days, one part must cover at least twelve working days in a row. During leave, the employee may not do paid work that goes against the purpose of the leave. An employee who falls ill during leave does not lose those days. With a doctor’s certificate, they are not counted as leave.

Leave must also be taken. In 2018, the European Court of Justice decided the case of Tetsuji Shimizu, who had worked for the Max Planck Society and claimed pay for 51 days of leave he had not taken. On 19 February 2019, the Federal Labor Court decided the case on that basis. Statutory leave now lapses at the end of the year only if the employer has asked the employee to take it and has warned clearly and in time that it will otherwise be lost.

The Assistant Becomes National Coach

Helmut Schön became assistant to the national football coach Sepp Herberger in 1956. After eight years as assistant, he succeeded him in 1964. Jupp Derwall was assistant coach of the national team from 1970 and national coach from 1978 to 1984. Joachim Löw joined the leadership of the national team under Jürgen Klinsmann in 2004 and became national coach in 2006. Hansi Flick was Löw’s assistant from 2006 to 2014 and became national coach in 2021.

The Pause Before the First Cut

Germany’s Patient Safety Alliance recommends a Team-Time-Out before every operation or other invasive procedure. It takes place immediately before the skin incision. A designated moderator leads the whole team through a checklist. The surgeon names the procedure and the site and side of the body. The cut may be made only when every point on the checklist has been completed. All members of the team count as equals, and each is called on to speak up as soon as he or she notices an error.

The Electric Chair

From 1947 to 1967, the writer Hans Werner Richter invited authors to the meetings of the Gruppe 47. Authors read unpublished texts aloud, and the others criticized them on the spot. The reader sat on the free chair next to Richter, which was jokingly called the elektrischer Stuhl, the electric chair. Zur wichtigen Maxime wurde, dass der Vortragende sich nicht verteidigen durfte, sowie dass die Kritik der konkreten Texte im Mittelpunkt stand. It became an important rule that the reader was not allowed to defend himself, and that the criticism focused on the actual texts. In 1958 Günter Grass read the first chapter of his still unpublished novel Die Blechtrommel at a meeting in the Allgäu and won the group’s prize.

The Critic Who Left

From 1988 to 2001, ZDF’s Das Literarische Quartett showed critics arguing about new books, dominated by Marcel Reich-Ranicki and known for his devastating verdicts. In June 2000 the critics discussed Haruki Murakami’s novel Gefährliche Geliebte. Reich-Ranicki accused the critic Sigrid Löffler of always complaining about novels about love, and said she regarded love as something anstößig Unanständiges, offensively indecent. On air, Löffler rejected this as a persönliche Unterstellung, a personal insinuation. After the episode she announced that she would leave the program.

Who Chooses the Operating Method

In 2024 the Deutsches Ärzteblatt, the journal of the German medical profession, published a legal article on who may instruct whom among hospital doctors. The chief physician may give detailed instructions to junior doctors in training. That right shrinks as they gain expertise. “The more qualified the subordinate doctors are, the smaller the room” for instructions. If a senior physician masters an operating method that meets the medical standard, the chief may not require her to use the method the chief prefers. The author, a lawyer, describes this as the legal position. It is an interpretation, not a statute.

Experts No Boss Can Instruct

The professional code of German doctors says that doctors may not accept instructions from non-doctors on medical decisions. The Occupational Safety Act makes company doctors and safety specialists weisungsfrei, free of instructions, when they apply their expert knowledge. Company doctors are “subject only to their medical conscience.” A company’s data protection officer may receive no instructions on how to carry out the task. The Bundeswehr has a similar rule. A superior should not intervene in the medical or other specialist service of subordinates. The Federal Administrative Court explained in 2004 that the word “should” here means such intervention is forbidden in principle.

The Captain Who Graded His Coaches

In August 2011 Philipp Lahm, captain of the German national team, published a book, Der feine Unterschied (The Fine Difference). In it he judged Jürgen Klinsmann’s season as coach of Bayern Munich. Under Klinsmann, he wrote, the team did essentially only fitness training, with very little tactical discussion. The players had to meet before games to discuss how they wanted to play at all. After about eight weeks, all the players knew it would not work. National coach Joachim Löw objected that a player was publicly judging coaches who had long been successful. The German Football Association reprimanded Lahm.

Words for Two Kinds of Authority

In German workplaces, one employee can have two superiors.

der disziplinarische Vorgesetzte — the line manager, responsible for pay, leave and appraisals

der fachliche Vorgesetzte — the professional superior, who checks and judges the content of the work

die Sachautorität — authority that comes from knowing the subject

die Amtsautorität — authority that comes from the position

die Koryphäe — a leading authority in a field

Ahnung haben — to know what one is talking about

Settled in Cabinet

Article 65 of the Basic Law: Über Meinungsverschiedenheiten zwischen den Bundesministern entscheidet die Bundesregierung. The federal government decides disagreements between federal ministers. Under its rules of procedure, the cabinet decides by majority. On 27 November 2017 Germany voted in Brussels for renewing the approval of the weedkiller glyphosate, on the decision of the agriculture minister, Christian Schmidt. The environment minister, Barbara Hendricks, opposed it. Under the government’s rules of procedure, Germany should have abstained. Chancellor Angela Merkel said the vote did not match the instructions the federal government had worked out.