Leading a multi-ethnic work environment

It often happens that your workforce is anything but homogeneous. I spent several years in contact with 12 different ethnic groups at the same time. This situation of heterogeneity can cause concern but at the same time offer excellent advantages. The important thing is to be clever to identify the cons, attenuating them, and the pros, amplifying them. That day, when I began to count how many languages were spoken in the factory, I almost had a headache: English, Spanish, Iraqi, Iranian, Indian, Nepalese, Bhutanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Burmese, Laotian, Filipino. Surely a general knowledge of those countries helps to start a conversation and puts the interlocutor at ease. Foreigners really like to talk about their land, especially when they live far away, and they become attached to all those who find even just 10 minutes to listen to them. It seems small, but it is already a lot on an empathic level. It is clear that, to establish a relationship of empathic closeness, one cannot be racist: just declaring yourself as not racist is not enough if you feel to be that way on the inside. A fundamental factor for me to create an environment of cordiality and respect is the ability to close the "distance" between the manager and the collaborators. The further you move away from the top of the organizational chart, the more people tend to escape from the proximity, not only dialectical, but also physical, with managers. It is only the skill of the managers to appear perfectly at ease when working in direct contact with all components of the organization, from operators to maintenance workers, from janitors to product engineers, from supervisors to commercial employees and so on. The fact that we speak multiple languages gives a nice added value in getting in tune with colleagues.

Taking the time to talk to all who approach you and breaking the ice with those who have a more closed and reserved character are skills that must be learned and cultivated, especially when different races and cultures might appear as constraints. To achieve a high level of harmony and mutual respect, it is necessary to devote many hours to the purely executive aspect of production.

It is beneficial to spend a lot of time on the production floor, to work for substantial periods with your teams in manufacturing and maintenance; the results are assured: after a few months they will see you as one of them, especially when our work uniforms are the same (possibly with name pins without titles) and when you do not take advantage of your role in terms of work breaks (longer than allowed) or flexible hours of get to work. For example, I like to dress the production uniform from the moment I arrive and make the production-floor my "office", because I think that the production area is the core of the entire plant. Being always available "on sight", without having to access "distant" offices, working together with operators, side by side on the same processes and sharing the same production problems, are infallible methods to establish a climate of trust and earn the respect that overcomes the differences in culture and ethnicity. The time spent on the production floor does not replace the one a manager or a president has to dedicate to other departments: the days become then very long and physically tiring; you need to be prepared to face "abnormal" working hours. For example, we want to talk about when I built mono-ethnic teams and created a production challenge between various lines? A competition between teams for example Vietnamese against Nepalese? Incredible results!... working non-stop, when the market requires it, becomes possible: for example, many workers of Asian ethnicities do not refuse to work on New Year's Eve, as they typically celebrate it one or two months later; same thing to work during the Thanksgiving holidays; an international manager must be flexible with regard to this type of constraint. They will do it for you, as long as you give them the off-days maybe two months later when they celebrate their national or religious holidays. The environment of trust creates loyalty to the company, this creates job stability, which in turn creates in cascade involvement, commitment, results, profit. Give with your right hand to take with your left one, concede to ask; in the end, working in a multi-ethnic environment creates more wealth than anything else and often it creates bonds of friendship that are no longer lost.

empathy #profit #respect #leader #high_performance #trust #