Honoring Diversity

Let’s define respect as the willingness to listen to and learn from anyone who has something to contribute, no matter how different he or she is.

The United States was founded on this fundamental appreciation for diversity, and I believe it accounts, at least in part, for America’s enormous success and prosperity. People often credit this country’s vast resources, but that cannot be the whole answer; after all, Latin America is also rich in resources. What America has in addition to resources is its climate of mutual respect: We try to recognize and honor the differences among us. When the natural order presumes respect for differences, instead of discriminating by creed, religion, color or gender, then the sky’s the limit. The result is an environment in which equal opportunity is the ideal we constantly strive for. That’s why so many people come here from all over the world.

Mutual respect is also characteristic of Japanese culture. In Japanese culture, to cause someone to lose face is a serious misdeed that compromises your own honor as a person. When someone loses face, he may be humiliated enough to commit hara kiri, suicide; even so, it is worse to cause someone else to lose face than to lose face yourself. Only in a society that puts a premium on mutual respect would that be true. Japan has a high (I) culture. That is not true for countries with (E) culture like Greece, Israel where mutual respect is difficult to come by.

We noted earlier that when we have major decisions to make in our personal lives – new situations, new conditions, new complexities – we like to get a variety of opinions, preferably from people whose perspectives are different from ours.

But would you go for advice to just anyone who disagrees with you? Of course not. You would only approach someone for whom you have respect, who is different from you but whose differences you understand and can learn from. If this person disagrees with you, he or she will be able to show you the holes in your argument and make you think harder about what you’re saying.

What would happen if you spent a lot of time listening to someone’s opinions, but found that at the end of the discussion, you hadn’t learned anything new or accepted arguments that made you change your position; that your thinking had not expanded into new perspectives? Over time, you would lose respect for that person.

Some people have something to say.

Some people have to say something.

Avoid the second group.

—Anonymous

On the other hand, if two people agree on everything, one of them is dispensable. So we need to find people whose opinions diverge from ours and yet who retain our respect. These people, if we are lucky enough to find them, are called “colleagues,” and they are essential to making good decisions.

What I’m going to say now may sound very simple and obvious, but it took twenty years and a lot of personal pain to discover it. I wish it were obvious.

A colleague is not someone who agrees with you. A colleague is someone who disagrees with you but for whom you have respect. Why? Because you don’t learn from those who agree with you. You learn from those who disagree, in the course of the debate that evolves out of the conflict between you. Learning from differences is painful, but we also enrich ourselves through being different.

The root of the word “colleague,” in fact, comes from the Latin word “Collegum,” which means “to arrive together.” In other words, we started with different points of view, but through interacting we have arrived at the same point.

And in Hebrew, the words “colleague” Amit and “conflict” Imut derive from the same root. Words that share the same root are interrelated; in this case, the connection is that there are no collegial relationships without conflict. And the reverse can happen: Good conflict can make people to become colleagues, if they learn from each other because and not in spite of the conflict. Used appropriately, it can help legitimize and unite our differences. Like a spouse, who is ezer keneged (helpful against), colleagues help each other cross-fertilize ideas and expand horizons – through conflict.

Without conflict, then, you don’t have a colleague. For good decision-making, team members who both respect and disagree with one another – colleagues – are essential.

In Commonality We Trust

If mutual respect is necessary for good decision-making, what is required for good implementation?

The implementation side is very interesting. For efficient, effective implementation, a commonality of interests – a win-win climate – is of course ideal. But a permanent win-win climate isn’t a realistic goal. Why not? Because it simply is not going to happen all the time. People will naturally have different and often conflicting interests, depending on their positions and sphere of responsibility in the organization as well as their personal styles and perspectives.

Recognizing that reality, we need to come up with a reasonable and viable alternative that will achieve the same goal: Good decisions, well implemented. One workable alternative is to create an expectation of common interests in the long run. And to do that, we must establish and nurture mutual trust.

What is mutual trust? It is a vision, a long-term belief and hope that even if we do not have our individual interests met in the short run, we still share the same basic interest for the organization over the long run. Having that certainty – that we are all, ultimately, working toward the same larger objectives – ensures that there will be give and take among us. Even if the group makes a decision today that is not to my advantage, I am confident that eventually I, too, will benefit.

Trust means you take into account the interests of other people because in the long run they are equal to your own, and that you expect the same thoughtfulness from others.

That’s what happens in a good marriage: We are here for the long run, aren’t we? We have each made a long-term commitment. Once we’ve made that commitment, we assume that the partner who loses today will win in the near future. In the long run, it evens out.

Trust develops when there is faith in a win-win climate for the long run. If I don’t trust the people with whom I am in conflict, then I have no faith that they’ll cooperate with me in the long run. And if I don’t believe that, why should I cooperate with them now?

Without trust, managers cannot – and probably should not – rely on the long term to balance their own interests against those of others. In a distrustful environment, especially in an era of rapid change, no one can predict what might happen in the long run. One result is that people only feel comfortable with short-term thinking and planning. Another result is that each member of the group will protect his interests at any expense – because if he doesn’t, who will?

Patience, Pain and Tolerance

Mutual trust and respect are all about accepting others who are different. It sounds simple, but in fact it is a huge task, very difficult to do. Why? Because when someone is different, you don’t understand him; you have difficulty communicating. You might feel you’re losing control. At the very least it’s annoying, and often it’s painful.

To accept someone who’s different from you, you must be patient enough to hear and listen to him or her although their styles are different from yours. That patience is the first step toward tolerance.

In Hebrew, the root consonants of the word “tolerance” (SoVLanut) are “SVL” – and interestingly, there are two other words that derive from that root: “Patience” (SaVLanut) and “pain” (SeVeL). How are these three related? Think about it: Tolerance cannot exist without patience. But to be tolerant of other people’s opinions – and patient enough to listen to those opinions even when you strongly disagree – can be quite painful.

Why should we make such a sacrifice? Why should we have to be so uncomfortable? Because the pain has a payoff: You might learn something!!

Organizations that have achieved mutual trust and respect function in a way that is measurably and even visibly different from organizations that have not. You can see it in the body language of the team members. When there is mutual respect, people seek each other out when they need to make a decision. They meet and discuss and decide together, leaning toward each other and watching each other’s faces for reactions to their ideas.

Once a decision is made, team members in an environment of mutual trust turn away from each other and become engaged in implementing their piece of the job. They can afford to turn their backs to each other, because they know they’re not going to be stabbed in the back. Thus their energies can be devoted wholly to the task.

What would you see in an organization that lacked mutual respect and trust? You’d see just the opposite: When managers who don’t respect each other need to make a decision, they will turn their backs to each other and isolate themselves.

And when will they face each other? When it’s time to implement their decisions: Lacking trust, they’ll feel the need to keep an eye on each other.

Do you want a simple way to find out how well managed your own organization is? Just make a note of which way you are facing and where your back is during decision-making and during implementation.

Here is another way to measure the quality of management: The time dimension. To make a decision together rather than alone will obviously take a lot longer. On the other hand, implementing that decision that is owned and supported by the team necessary for the implementation, is easy and quick, because people trust each other and leave each other alone to do their jobs.

Well-managed organizations may spend a long time arriving at a decision because they make it together, but once they’ve decided on a plan of action, implementation is swift, because they don’t try to back-seat-drive each other.

In a badly managed organization, decisions are made quickly because “the fastest way travel is alone,” an individual made the decision and it was thus fast. But how long does it take to implement the decision? Looks like it is going to take forever. Managers who have no confidence in each other will quickly “back seat drive each other” become enmeshed in other people’s areas of responsibility, interfering with and slowing down the process, or not carry out the decision either because they do not understand it or because they do not support it.

For example, how does the decision-making process in the United States compare with Japan’s? We make decisions fast, but it takes us forever to implement. Their decisions are reached painfully slowly, but it takes them no time at all to implement. People often ask me: “Why are the Japanese so successful? Why are they so fast?” Do you know what my answer is? “Because they are so slow.”