Managing Differences and Multi- Cultural Context AMP- DUBAI Vijay Singh

Option 1

Please share a difficult cross-cultural situation that you have faced at work. Share what
happened, who all were involved, and what was the final outcome. Now that you can
sit back and think of it-what are some of the reasons that lead to the situation and also
what in hindsight you could have done differently? You may also speak to one or two
people (if possible) about the issue in retrospect.

Currently I am working in a UAE based company with Indian management and we do

not have much multi-cultural situations, however I faced this situation while working in
KBR (head office in Boston US) in Doha, Qatar. I was working in KBR from 2013 to 2015,
we were doing the Project Management Consultancy on QR 140 billion worth of
Expressway Projects for FIFA world cup 2022. Our total staff was 305 number and we
had 60 nationalities working in all the departments.

I joined as Area Contracts Manager in Commercial Department of PMC handling south

area of QR 20 Billion worth of projects. Our job is to appoint and manage the Design
Consultants, Supervision Consultants Contractor and coordination with other
authorities.

I was reporting to Area Director, David, he was from USA. I was heading a team of 10
persons, Kapilan and Kumaran – QS from Sri Lanka (joined 2 months before me), Joy
and Marlin from Philippines (working from last 4 years in KBR), James (from Scotland)
and Albert (England) (joined 1 month before me), John from Malaysia (appointed by
me), Macqsood from Pakistan, Anuj and Rajeev from India.

During first week I can sniff that some issues have presence our office due to multi
culture workforce, one of them was in relation with the language, staff from different
department use to talk in groups in their native language, in our senior management
Managing Differences and Multi- Cultural Context AMP- DUBAI Vijay Singh

meeting it was agreed that circular will be sent to all employees for speaking in English
as common language. We saw great improvement in the working environment.

In mentioned above my team was consists of staff from seven nationalities, we need
work very closely to achieve deliverable and improve KPI for our department, I was
trying mixed with each member of my team member, knowing them personally, I took
my team for dinner and all we knowing each other more. I involve each team member
for PDR, setting goal for next six months for achieving certain objectives, appraisal was
depends on the performance of the goal set by supervisor and team member.

We use to have daily meeting to decide day today activities, our team we divided into
A) Contracts – daily routine

B) Payments – Ones in a month

C) Change management – daily work

D) Weekly and monthly commercial reporting

Contracts, Change Management and Reporting team was sharing their workload as per
the need of time, I can notice Joy and Marlin always feel uneasy which discussion on
daily activities and they were not ready to take any more work, even though they are
busy for only 12 to 15 days in a month, they were working in KBR from last three years
and they were feeling comfortable in what they do, they were not matching with the
hard work that team were doing, this was tendency of the Filipinos, they were stubborn,
this was worrying me.

All the other team members had complains about above mentioned issue. I have
spoken to Joy and Marlin separately and very clearly explained the situation and ask
their point of view on same, they not even realizing about what team is feeling about
them. I need to take tough decision, I reported this to HR and asked for replacement. I
got the replacement with in one and half months. Our performance was showing the
results of change, our turnaround time for deliverables was reduces and we got better
KPIs.
Managing Differences and Multi- Cultural Context AMP- DUBAI Vijay Singh

I can think about that situation, I could have dealt differently. I should build the mixed
team and or I could give rotation of work among the team. Now I can feel the
importance of building trust in the team can differ person to person, each member need
to dealt differently, for dealing with the Filipinos I needed to have understanding of the
their culture.