anecdote

Words. We use them to communicate. They are all that we have. When working across cultures we use English. American English. British English. And so on. But also the English spoken by non-native English speakers. In fact, that English is spoken by more people than those who speak native English.

1998. Federal elections in Germany. Chancellor Kohl recommended to a young Member of the Bundestag in his party to invite Father Kelly (name changed) to Bonn in order to talk about educational reform in the American university system.

Chancellor Kohl and Father Kelly had become acquaintances. Kelly, President of a major American and Catholic university located in Washington D.C., had done his Ph.D. in Theology in Germany. He was fluent in German. The Chancellor, also a Catholic, was very well-versed in both church history and theology. He was also quite well-connected with Rome.

University reform had become an important issue in German domestic politics. Federal elections were just around the corner. Father Kelly’s office gets a phone call. “Would the university president be willing to participate in a hearing in the Bundestag?”

The Bundestag is the German Parliament. And Parliament is analogous to Congress. Father Kelly’s chief of staff made the connection: a hearing in the Bundestag is like a hearing in the House or in the Senate. The Chancellor is inviting via the parliamentary group? “Yes, certainly. Father Kelly would be honored.”

Documents are sent back and forth per email. In English. It all seems to match up, but with a few question marks. A week before his scheduled flight to Bonn, it begins to occur to Father Kelly that the “hearing” he has been invited to as a very high-level subject area expert does not quite sound like one he would participate in across town in a Senate office building.

Words aren’t words

A phone call is made from Father Kelly’s office to the Bundestag seeking clarification without success. Father Kelly makes the flight from Washington to Bonn. The “hearing” in the Bundestag turns out to be a half-day meeting with a handful of young members of the Chancellor’s party who are focused on the issue and seeking expert input from across the Atlantic.

The “hearing” did not take place in the Bundestag. There was no large committee room. No panel of Bundestag Members from the various parties asking Father Kelly well-researched questions about how American universities approach the educational challenges of the future.

Nor did Kohl’s party schedule any other meetings for Father Kelly, neither with the press, nor with the presidents of nearby universities such as Bonn and Cologne, nor with German Secretary of Education or at least with his Undersecretary. Nothing.

Father Kelly flew from Washington to Bonn to speak with very junior members of the Bundestag for no more than half a day, then flew back to Washington. A terrible waste of time, and money, for Father Kelly and the university he is the president of.

Hearing isn’t hearing. Words aren’t words.

It occurred within my very first year working in the Bundestag for the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group. There were some serious differences of opinion between me and my team lead, my boss. Apparently people at the highest level became aware of it. Within a few weeks I was simply informed – in a respectful, competent and intelligent way – that I would be moved into another team.

It had surprised me. At no time in the weeks leading up to the organizational change had anyone, not one person, spoken to me. Neither was I asked to describe the situation from my point of view, nor to suggest a possible resolution, nor was there any kind of meeting with my boss in order to talk things out.

In my years of consulting German companies I have come across many internal conflict situations which my clients need to resolve quickly, but prudently. I observe over and over again how they go about it in an almost stealthy way. Quiet, careful, in the background, unobserved. The German approach certainly works. Their society is extraordinarily peaceful, safe, predictable. The Germans know how to resolve conflicts effectively.

In case law every case is unique

A few months back I discussed this with a senior-level American who works very closely with Germany and who has Germans in her organization, including direct reports. We discussed the differences in approaches to conflict resolution.

„John, it‘s true that Germans, when resolving a conflict, will try to do it for all time, to create a kind of best practice out of it. I understand that.“ But it takes too long, Karen went on to say. „And besides, documenting a best practice doesn‘t help anyway.“ I asked why. „Because every conflict is different. People, details, circumstances.“

I agreed with Karen. We went on to speculate about the nature of case law in the Anglo-American legal tradition. Neither of us have any training in the law, but any educated American knows that a legal system based on case law, indeed, sees every case as unique. The system draws not only on the law, but also on precendence (how previous courts resolved the conflict), as well as on the actual details of the case.

„Developing a best practice is not worth the effort. Future conflicts, even if the same in nature, will differ in the details. And true justice has to address those details.“

Frage, question. Stellung from the verb stellen, to put or place. Fragestellung.

It was 1990. I was a graduated student at the Freie Universität in Berlin, then West Berlin. The Wall still existed. As did West and East Germany, the Soviet Union, and many other places, people and things which have since gone.

The course was on international relations. Cold War. No mid-term or final exam, instead a paper, Hausarbeit, typically 25-30 pages in length, requiring some fairly solid research. By mid-semester each of us had our topic. 

Every third or fourth meeting the professor’s assistant – a brilliant Ph.D. candidate who then went on to receive his own professorship – addressed each of us one by one about the progress we were making.

„What is your Fragestellung?“

I recall very vividly the intensity of the meeting. He would ask time and again – politely, but relentlessly – “Wie lautet Ihre Fragestellung?”, what question we were putting, placing, asking, addressing. Again and again. Fragestellung.

It seemed as if we spent more time discussing our Fragestellung than getting into the topic. It fascinated more than bothered me. His intensity was true, honest, determined, most importantly well-meaning. He was pushing us to get clear, to be clear-minded.

It was many years ago. In New Jersey. I met with a close friend – Michael – who I know from our days as students at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. We don‘t see each other often, but when we do, we catch up very quickly. Michael went on to law school at Georgetown, then into the healthcare field. He is successful, has a solid marriage and four well-rounded daughters.

After our undergraduate degree I moved to Germany for a year, Michael along with eight other close friends went to Nicaragua in order to do development work organized by the Jesuits. They all took a summer-long crash course in Spanish, then moved in with Nicaraguan families in different villages.

When we met in New Jersey we discussed my work. Michael was very curious, but at the same time skeptical that cultural differences existed, or at least significant ones. I was quite surprised by his skepticism, since he had lived in a culture which was clearly different than the American. “I don‘t believe there are real differences, John. People are people.”

I threw a couple of examples out between Germans and Americans. He remained unconvinced. Perhaps the examples were too simple. We ate our sandwiches, sipped from our milkshakes, then it occurred to me that Michael is a trained attorney. I said: “Ok, let‘s take the law. Do you think that how conflicts are fundamentally resolved are the same in Germany and in the U.S.?” He was sure about the answer to that question. The law is the law, right?

Testing his patience, I went into some detail focusing on hearings. “Do you think when a team lead in a company resolves a conflict between team members that the German and the American team lead respectively will take the same approach?” A no-brainer for Michael: “Certainly.”

I went on to explain that Germans have a very strong tendancy to avoid an open hearing with the two conflict parties. Argument vs. counter-argument in front of next level management would only heighten the tension, making a resolution that much more complicated. Instead, the conflict resolver in the German cultural context is far more likely to interview each party separately and on a one-on-one basis.

“Americans, on the other hand”, I continued, “expect a fair hearing. The conflict resolution actually starts off when the conflict parties, in the presence of each other, make their case before the team lead, who, in the American business context, sees her-/himself as the judge.” Self-defense is only possible, if one knows what they are being accused of.

Michael had listened very carefully, raised his eyebrows, didn‘t respond at first, instead looked at me and reflected. Then he said: “I didn‘t know that about the Germans.” No, how could he? He had spent his entire life, with the exception of one year in Nicaragua, in the U.S. And he had studied law in the U.S.

Michael is a close friend. An intelligent, self-critical, reflective person. I‘ve known him for more than thirty years. And he had lived in a culture much different than the American. How could his operating assumption be that there are few, if any, significant cultural differences between Germany and the the U.S.? I encounter this time and again, and it always surprises me.

“But wait, if it is true that German decision making processes strive to save resources – time, budgets, material, manpower – why do the Germans have compared to us (Americans) far more employees for the same work?”

This is a question often posed. Takeovers, mergers, joint ventures, cross-Atlantic projects. So many questions to be clarified. So many details. Germans and Americans. Who does what, how, when, why and with which resources?

An especially sensitive question is “who?”, who will do what work. Will jobs be reduced or increased? Or transferred from one side of the Atlantic to other? Skepticism, mistrust, wariness can spread through organizations. Interestingly, the Germans often ask the same question about the Americans: “Why do they need so many people to do the work we do with far fewer?”

Growth, job opportunities, wealth creation

Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, once referred to the German multinational company Siemens as an overblown employment agency. Perhaps that statement had some truth to it. Then, but not today. Siemens is trim, fit, focused and profitable.

Welch’s negative statement asks a deeper, more fundamental question: What is the purpose of an enterprise, of a company? For some it is to increase shareholder value. For others it is to serve its customers as effectively as possible. For others it is to take care of its employees, their families, their communities. Perhaps the correct answer is a combination of each.

It would be too simple to state that continental European companies are more socially conscious than companies in the Anglo-American economies. Growth, job opportunities, wealth creation also serve the needs of families and communities.

Maybe the difference is that Germans seldom refer to employees as resources. The term ‘Human Resources’ in German is Personal, analogous to Personnel, a term still used in many American companies. Personnel. Personal. From Latin personale, English personal.

Time. Budgets. Material. Those are resources. From the German perspective people are persons and not resources.

It was in the summer. A three-day seminar in Gelsenkirchen. A German multinational company. Design engineers. Germans and Americans. Capable people. Willing people. But working in an atmosphere of collaboration and competition.

I had never been to Gelsenkirchen. I wasn’t very familiar with the Ruhr Area at all. What a historically important area of Germany! Its industrialization, its modernity, is unimaginable without Ruhr coal and steel. Americans learn about the Ruhr Area in documentary films about the Second World War, about how the Western Allies moved across the Rhine to encircle the Ruhr, “the industrial heartland of Germany.”

If you’re an American from a large city you can imagine. If you’re from Pittsburgh or from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania or from a coal and steel region in Ohio you can imagine the Ruhr Area even better. The Ruhr areas of the U.S., with countless immigrant families working in the mines and factories. Families from Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia and other European and Eastern European countries. The same kinds of families reside in Germany’s Ruhr.

Until today I’m not sure which I enjoyed more, the seminar or the tour we did at the end of its first day. Summer days in Germany are long, much longer than on the East Coast of the U.S. where I grew up. Day one of the seminar. 6 p.m. we were finished. It had been a long day.

I push and pull the participants along as firmly or softly as need be. I am demanding. Think, reflect, discuss, debate, and decide. These seminars are not intellectual exercises. They’re concrete, specific, work-relevant. Decisions are made, rules of engagement hammered out. Except for during the breaks, there is not a moment to daydream or get distracted. At the end of each day everyone, including me, is exhausted.

Take care of and honor their history.

The tour was exhilarating. NRW (Northrheine Westphalia, the state Gelsenkirchen is located in), Germany as a country, and the Germans as a people take care of and honor their history. Most of the coal mines have been closed. Coal is not NRW’s future. They know that. But they keep their history alive. We hopped on rented bicycles. Eighteen of us. Rode a little over half an hour through fields, wooded areas, over a stream.

The air had begun to cool. We rode to one of the coal mines which had been transformed into a museum. We hopped off our bikes, listened to a short, but fascinating talk given by our tour guide, then stepped into the time machine. On the one side I am right in the thick of things, in the relations between my people (Americans) and the people whose language, history, culture and way of life I am living and studying.

I mean literally the relations, those things which are very personal. How Americans and Germans make and follow through on agreements, how they set up and manage organizations, how they lead and wish to be led, how they try to get out of their own skin in order to get into the skin of their colleagues from the other side of the Atlantic.

Our history. Not past. Not over.

Cooperation means to understand the other perspective as clearly as possible, to stand in the other person‘s shoes. We all know how difficult that is. And how disconcerting it can be, especially if and when we realize that the other perspective is clearer, more true, than our own. For that realization can have real consequences, and not always positive for one’s own self.

It can be difficult, hard, painful. My job is to show them the way and to accompany them. Not as if I had all the answers. I don’t. Not as if I was somehow disconnected, not involved. I sense and live the intensity and complexity just as much as my clients do. I show the way and accompany because I’ve been living the challenges and complexities for many years, and am convinced that Germans and Americans can achieve more together, not only as engineers (back then in Gelsenkirchen), but as human beings.

So, on the one side I am right in the thick of things in the relations. On the other side, our tour, the time machine, which takes us back in time, helps us to understand who we are and how we’ve come to be who we are. This is our past, our history. And it is not past. It is not over.

Where Americans go into duck and cover mode, Germans see themselves in a spirited debate, perhaps an open argument or dispute, but most likely necessary in order to get clarity on an important matter.

Stuttgart. They meet once a quarter. The leadership team. Each reports on the state of their business. The others have the opportunity (obligation) to comment, ask questions, make suggestions.

German company. German logic. Weak business units are supported to a certain degree by stronger ones. “Your weakness impacts me. Therefore, I have a say in the matter. In your matters.”

One of the business unit heads is American. Barbara. New. Her numbers are solid. There are few comments. Not so for other colleagues. One in particular is cross-examined as if in court charged for a serious crime.

Observing this Barbara feels very uncomfortable. “What value does this have? How can this group ever function as a team?” She senses nothing but negativism. And the head of the organization doesn’t intervene!

The colleague under fire responds calmly. The criticisms are not entirely unjustified. Perhaps overstated, perhaps somewhat mean spirited, but legitimate. Several suggestions from a more experienced business unit head are quite helpful. They agree to meet that evening to discuss.

Their American colleague, though, senses only small mindedness and harshness. She is determined not to subject herself to this every quarter. The next two meetings Barbara is absent. Her reasons are plausible, but not totally excusable.

Among themselves, her manager and colleagues begin to question Barbara’s loyalty to the team. She appears to them to be a lone-wolf of the self-centered kind. Perhaps her business unit should be folded into one of the other ones as a way to integrate her into the team.

It was many years ago. I was visiting my uncle who is a Jesuit priest and professor of Theology at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., where I attended. It was a brilliant day, sunny, warm, with a light breeze. Walking across Healy Circle, located at the front of campus, a smallish, skinny black man aged about twenty-five with a heavy backpack weighing him down approached me with a smile. I returned the smile, we greeted each other, he put down his load.

He was from a West African country, from which one I cannot remember. He spoke of the civil war there, the persecution of his tribe, family and of him, and of the good fortune he had in escaping it. How he made it to the U.S. I cannot recall either. He made a sincere and serious impression on me. I listened carefully to his story and felt empathy. The signals then became clear that he would ask me for some kind of help.

Roughly the same age, having recently gone into business for myself in Philadelphia, I was hardly in a position to do anything for him. We continued to talk. He then asked for help. Apologizing for not being able to, I gave him my business card and said: “Well, if you‘re ever in Philadelphia, let’s get together”, hoping it would be a friendly but clear way to remove myself from the conversation, and that he would understand that I cannot help him out of his difficult situation.

“A strange black man waiting at your door”

He studied the card carefully, then with a smile, he said “Thank you, John. Thank you very much”, in an English formal, polite, right out of the textbook he must have learned from many years before, and like so many well-educated Africans. We shook hands. I departed quickly so that he could not continue the conversation. I went on with my activities in the nation’s capital over the next day without ever thinking again about that West African.

Until I returned to Philadelphia, that is. At Ninth and Spruce Streets in Center City, as the Philadelphians call their downtown, is where I lived, in the third floor apartment under the roof of an old townhouse. One of my cousins, Helen, lived with her former college roommate in the apartment just below me. As I walked up the stairs, she opened the door ever so slightly, I suspect after having heard me open the front door. With wide and alarmed eyes Helen whispered: “John, there is a strange black man upstairs waiting for you in front of your apartment.”

A strange black man? I don’t know any strange black men. In fact, I don’t know too many black men at all. Well, I did after about ten more steps. “Oh, no”, I thought, my business card, damn. What do I do now? I put on a happy face, smiled, greeted him heartily and said something like “Great to see you, again. Come on in!” The stairs up to my loft apartment were very steep and narrow. He trudged up schlepping his heavy bag. What was I supposed to do with this guy?

Say “yes, mean no”

Many of the details I no longer remember. But I do recall that I took him out for dinner, gave him a brief walking tour of Center City including the historical sights, allowed him to sleep in my bed while I made do with the couch. The next day, after some breakfast, I drove him over to 30th Street Station and put him on an Amtrak train up to Boston, where he said he had some contacts from West Africa. I was happy to be rid of him.

His story was certainly bigger than mine. A refugee from civil war in a faraway land, seeking a safe and secure life in America. Hoping for help. From anyone. And my story? A safe and secure white American male with a solid education and the kinds of advantages and opportunities a “strange black man” from Africa could only dream of. Looking back, shameful of me.

But for us, as Americans and Germans collaborating across the Atlantic, this little story is about agreements, about how Americans will communicate a “yes” which is not meant as such. Since we seldom feel comfortable saying “no” to someone – a family member, friend, neighbor, colleague, certainly not to our boss or to a customer, or to a stranger – we find ways to say “yes” in a way which communicates “no.”

These were rather clear signals.

Why would this guy from West Africa suddenly show up at my door in Philadelphia, a three-hour train ride from Washington, DC? We don’t even know each other. We have nothing in common. We‘re strangers. In our conversation of a few days before I had given no indication that I was in a position to help him. On the contrary, my response to his request was crystal clear. It was short, polite, I gave him my card and got on my way, and rather hastily.

But wait! That’s American thinking. I did give him my card, and did show sincere interest in his situation, then did say to him: “Well, if you‘re ever in Philadelphia, let’s get together.” These were rather clear signals. But from whom and to whom? For any American witnessing the interaction the message was very straightforward: “I am sorry to hear about your plight, but I cannot help you. Good luck.”

But for a person from another culture? From his? Or from Germany? Why should my behavior and statements not be taken literally, sincerely, at face value? Or how about this question: Why would I not simply state what I was thinking – honestly, transparently, from the heart – by saying: “I am sorry to hear about your plight, but I cannot help you. Good luck.”

Well, I did, in fact, say that. In my way. In an American way.

We were sitting in his office in the U.S. A very special customer of mine. Intelligent, active mind, great sense of humor, but also a serious human being. A German, who had lived in the United States for at least five years up to that point. Some of his direct reports came and went as we talked on a warm summer end-of-week afternoon.

With a smile on his face he said: “I really still cannot understand why every time I come into the office and several people greet me at least one person says ‘Good morning, Dieter. How are you doing?’ Then I stop, say ‘hello’ back, and begin to tell him or her how I’m doing, only to notice after a few seconds that they‘re not the least bit interested in how I am doing. It’s unbelievable!”

I smile back at him and respond: “Dieter, they’re just saying ‘hello’ in another way. It’s not meant literally. Who wants to always use the same greeting?” There aren’t that many options, frankly. Hi. Hello. Good morning. “Besides, depending on the context it could be meant sincerely.” Dieter wanted to know more.

Not just in day-to-day interactions

“What if you and a colleague arrive for a meeting early. Just the two of you are sitting there. She knows that you‘re not doing well. Perhaps you’re overworked, not feeling well health-wise, problems at home, or simply you look down. 

If she were to greet you in the meeting room with ‘Hello Dieter. How are you?’ and you are fairly close as colleagues, well then, you would know that she means it sincerely. You then have the option to either respond to her concern by letting her know how you are or you could give a brief answer indicating that you prefer not to, ‘Oh, not so bad, how are you?'”

The context was clear to both Dieter and his colleague that a “How are you?” is meant sincerely: two of you in the room, no one else present, you have a fairly close relationship, you’re not doing so well and folks close to you notice it. 

Whereas the context of the morning greeting is equally clear: at the beginning of the day, when everyone is anxious to get started with work, passing each other in the hall or going up the stairs, or it’s someone with whom you have a working relationship but not a particularly close personal one.

“Right, I get that, John” he says. “But, in general how do I know when Americans mean what they say? And I mean in serious business situations, not just in day-to-day interactions.” I continued:

Different degrees of commitment

In the American culture, therefore American business culture, a “yes” can have varying levels of reliability, from 98% to 68, to 38, 18, 8 and even to -8, -18, -38% and so on. These numbers are arbitrary. The message, though, is that it depends.

“Depends on what?” On whether the person making the promise is known for being reliable or not reliable. Some colleagues take on more than they can get done. Others are much more conservative when making commitments. 

On whether the substance of the promise – the agreement – is such that you know that he or she is likely or unlikely to deliver. In other words, on the degree of difficulty or complexity of it. And especially it depends on the signals given by that person about whether she or he both wants to deliver and can deliver.

About that last point Dieter wanted to know more. I went on. If the person says “Yes, I can get that done for you”, but also says it was a while ago since he worked on the project, that he was not a member of the core team, that he isn’t sure on which server the data which Dieter requested was stored, and that his boss had just loaded him up with two or three new tasks, and finally that his daughter has an important volleyball game on the weekend.

Then those are obvious signals that he would very much like to help Dieter, but there are factors and circumstances over which he has little control and which might, or most probably will, prevent him from delivering.

Direct, but not definite

In other words, his “yes” is conditional. And depending on the amount and nature of the conditions Dieter needs to judge how reliable that “yes” is. Most likely closer to 38%, or even 18% than to 68%.

Dieter then asked: “Why don‘t Americans just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’? How hard can that be?” My response was that in principle Americans always want to help a friend, neighbor, relative, colleague at work, and definitely their boss, and very definitely a customer. It is considered to be poor form, uncooperative, even selfish to ever respond instinctively with a ‘no’ in the American context. The immediate American response is almost always ‘yes.’ Immediate, but not definitive.

Also, Americans tend towards over-promising. They prefer to say ‘yes’ and then try their best to deliver. The context signals which accompany their ‘yes’ are meant to indicate to the other party their own sense of delivery probability, in the sense of: 

“I want to deliver, Dieter. I want to help you. And I’ll do my best. However, be warned, I have a lot going on. And I may not be the best person to ask for this information. Other colleagues were more involved in the project than I was. So, you might want to ask the others on the project, too. Besides, my priority is to deliver for my boss, who just gave me additional tasks. It‘s your choice.”

Things began to click in Dieter’s mind. I could see it in his eyes. Then he asked: “But wait. What if the other person does not offer that context information, those conditions? How can I then judge the degree of delivery probability of the ‘yes’?” A very good question.

I replied, “You need to ask the famous w-questions.” Who, when, where, why. And, how. It goes like this: “Hi Sam. How things going? Hey, did you work on that XYZ Project a few months back? I need some of the data the team produced. How involved in the project were you? Can you get it for me? Do you know where it is stored? Do you even have any time for this? I don’t want to burden you, but it would be very helpful to get that data within a few days. Can you manage that or should I contact another person who was on that project?”

In other words, Dieter needs to qualify the ‘yes’ himself by asking context- or reliability-defining questions. Doing so is seldom a sign of mistrust in the American business culture. Quite the opposite. It gives the other person an opportunity to give reasons why they may not be able to deliver or to deliver reliably. It also obligates them. If their responses are all affirmative, then they are committing themselves to following through on their ‘yes.’

This is not a trick or a way of manipulating another person. It is how Americans get a read on, how they gauge or anticipate the degree of reliability of an agreement. The context is always critical. The situation can change. Americans prefer to commit conditionally rather than to not commit at all.