Final Group Project: Cultural Conflict

Individual Differences - Cultural Conflict

Our group encountered cultural conflict per below as we considered that we have different values, beliefs and goals. When individual cultural, value and perspective come together, they will inevitably clash against one another and the result could be devastating. 

* Team members who are from different disciplines and pose communication issues or assume different assumptions from different disciplinary or industry backgrounds;

* Team members who have ideological difference about content or methods in achieving group outcomes;

* Team members with different interpretations of accountability and responsibility of tasks and team outcomes; and

* Team members with different personality

Solutions

We resolved the conflict by Negotiation, Communication and Trust.

Negotiation

Negotiation is a process in which groups with conflicting interests meet together to make offers, counteroffers, and concessions to each other in an effort to resolve their differences (George Jones, 2012).  Negotiation helped us to resolve conflict and to enhance cooperation and performance instead of competitive or dysfunctional outcomes.

According to Robbins Judge (2007), negotiation permeates the interactions of almost everyone in groups and organizations.  Despite there was cultural conflict occurred in our group, we were able to achieve a win-win outcome through negotiation. By taking the perspectives of the team members, we did not only enhance problem-solving abilities but also the ability to jointly solve problem at the bargaining table (Thompson 2009). Our successful negotiation undoubtedly fostered good team spirit and coherent as each member knows their role and supports other team members.

Negotiation works best on conflict resulted from different disciplines but less effective on conflict resulted from different personality.  Since personality is inborn, it is difficult to change.  No matter how we negotiate, we were unable to change others’ personality.  For this, we can only compromise to some extent.  For the other three differences which are not inborn, negotiation works well in resolving.  Each of us could try to understand others’ standpoint and then arrived at win-win situation.

Communication

Effective communication improves relationships, empowers people, provides clear direction and increases productivity.  One may lose motivation and the inability to make decision without it (eHow 2015).

Through open communication within our team, we successfully resolved conflict arisen from individual differences.  By communicating, we understood each other more in-depth.  Communication allowed us to clarify own and other’s standpoint.  We can also fully utilize each member’s strength as we understood each other’s strengths and weaknesses.  By communicating, we could not change others’ personality but we could understand and react accordingly.  By communicating, we could understand each member’s concern and feeling so that we could better collaborate.

Trust

Only with trust among team members, negotiation and communication can be effective.  Only if we trust each other, we could focus on our own assigned task and made the collaboration process smooth and efficient.  Without trust, no matter how we communicate and negotiate, there would be no result.  As each of us tried hard to build up trust among ourselves by showing positive track record and integrity, we could trust each other’s expressions when we negotiate and communicate.

Conclusion 

Though we encountered cultural conflicts due to individual differences, through negotiation, communication and building up trust with each other, our group had successfully collaborated and resolved the conflict.  We are all glad to be in a group and we all agreed that this is a productive and efficient group. 

References:

Communication Skills (2015), Retrieved from 25 April, 2015, from http://www.communicationskills.co.in/

George J, & Jones G (2012). Understanding and Managing Organizational Behavior. (6th ed). New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Leigh L. Thompson (2009). The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator

Martin, v. (2015). How to Work With People From Different Cultures. Retrieved 25 April, 2015, from http://www.ehow.com/how_8780495_work-people-different-cultures.html

Robbins Judge (2007). Organization Behaviour (12th ed). Pearson

Assignment 2

Introduction

Cherry believes that the unfair accusation from Philip is mainly due to his ignorance of some facts behind what he could see. Also, his poor management was the result of his wrong assumptions. Cherry believes that these are the reasons that Philip had put the wrong focus to solve the company’s operation problem. As Cherry wants to get fair treatment and at the same time she wishes the company’s operation to be improved, writing a letter of complaint to let Philip knows the true reason behind the poor department performance is a good channel. That will not only help to resolve the conflict situation between Cherry and Philip but also help to divert Philip’s management focus to the right direction.   

_________________________________________________________________________________

Complaint Letter

Mr. Philip Wong

Head of Personal Insurance Division

Smart Insurance Company Limited

19/F, 1 Boston Road, Hong Kong

Dear Mr. Wong,

I believe I am a loyal employee in this company for the past 12 years.  Recently, I feel that I am not being treated fairly.  This letter is a formal complaint against the lack of communication and unfair treatment that I have encountered since you have been appointed to lead the Personal Insurance Division last year.   

In December 2014, you said that you would have to review my team’s performance and effectiveness.  Since then, you have been criticizing my work and making unfavorable comments on me to some of my team members.  I am being accused of not completing my daily work despite me fulfilling and achieving the sales target.  Sometimes, I have been kept out of the team meetings because your assistant forgot to inform me about the changes of meeting schedule.  As you found that there is a sharp increase in customer complaints, you blamed it on me.  However, you ignored my explanation of the reasons behind and did not try to figure out the true reason.

  

Below are some things that you may have missed out and I would like to share with you:

1. There is 50% increase in my premiums sold as compared to last year Q1.  This increase was not able to be reflected on the Management Report due to the many of the policies sold were still pending for approval.   As feedback from most clients, competitors usually issue the policy to them within 10 working days.  However, we have to take at least 5-6 weeks.  As a result, half of our clients requested to withdraw the policy within the cooling-off period due to late issuance of policy.  Recently, there are two newly joined underwriting managers who are responsible for approving the policies.  They spent much longer time than the previous underwriting managers to approve the policies.  I knew these two new colleagues are related parties of you.  I will be glad if all colleagues’ work efficiency can be judged fairly despite of their relationship with anyone in the company.

2.  Recently, our hotline center received many customer complaints about the incorrect information on their policies documents such as incorrect policyholder name, incorrect insured items, and incorrect premium discount, etc.  Even there are some premiums being overcharged from client’s banking accounts.  There were 500 dispute cases per month (i.e. 10% of policy issued).  The case details can be retrieved from the “Monthly Customer Complaints & Grievances Report”.  Upon investigation, these incidents were due to the shortage of manpower in Policy Administration Department.   The staff turnover rate of the department was 50% in the past three months.  This resulted in the high volume of policy termination as well as loss of customers’ loyalty and trust. 

3. Due to the long processing time and incorrect policy information, 70% of incoming calls were customer complaints in which both the talking time and turn-around time for case follow up were triple than our ordinary business.  Although all of us made the best effort to shorten the conversation and speed up the follow up action, the service level of our hotline couldn’t be maintained in these three months.  In the worst situation, the long call queue and low call pick-up rate would make customer frustrated and got angry with our services.  It would be a big challenge for us to acquire new businesses if no further improvement on the quality of our policy. 

4. Every day I had to deal with such customer complaints and also spend most time to follow up the matter with those affected customers.  Even though there is no overtime compensation, I was willing to work late till 10pm every day in order to speed up the case settlement and reduce customer dissatisfaction as much as possible.  Under my hard work, 95% complaint cases could be managed and settled within 3 working days.  However, my hard work had never been appreciated.

Honestly, I had never encountered such problems from my previous manager, Ms Kay Wu, who are now the Head of Commercial Insurance Division.   

During the past few months, I had raised my concerns to you for at least four times.  I tried asking for a formal meeting to further discuss on this matter. However, you were no show for the first meeting and refused to talk to me in the second meeting because you suddenly had a lunch appointment with friends.  In the third meeting, you expressed that my behavior was very immature and unprofessional while instructed me to stop complaining and just do my job.  

I was very disappointed about the unfair treatment to me.  No matter how well I perform in my job, I would not be recognized for my efforts and contribution.   This unfair treatment had a negative impact on my productivity and morale.  I really enjoy my work but it becomes increasingly difficult for me to maintain a high performing team because of the unfair treatment. I have no alternative to take this step for bringing the matter to your attention as you did not give me a chance to meet face to face. 

I am seeking your help in resolving these problems that I am experiencing at work. I would be grateful if I could have the chance to talk to you at your convenience.  

Yours sincerely, 

Cherry

Customer Service Manager

Sales & Service Department 

Personal Insurance Division

_________________________________________________________________________________

Analysis:

Complaints aroused from Omission & Lack of communication

Cherry was being accused of poor performance by Philip.  In the letter, we can see the differences between Cherry and Philips’.  Philip was accusing her while he is defending.  Obviously Cherry is reluctant to agree with Philip’s comments.  The below shows Cherry and Philips’ communication:

Red for Cherry’s; Blue for Philip

Figure 1:

Their communication lines are parallel and there is no overlapping talking point.  Therefore, their communication channel is not correct.  That’s why Cherry feels upset about the negative comments.  In the letter, it shows Philip did not pay attention to Cherry’s explanation although she tried to raise the concerns to him for 4 times.  It is an intentional ignorance.  In the letter, Cherry had pointed out to Philip that she had voiced out to talk to him directly but Philip had ignored.  For Philip, he only focused on the management report for the reported sales figure.  What he saw in the report did not reflect the reality.  As Cherry explained, the lower sales figures in the report does not mean she had not made enough insurance policies sales.  Her premiums sold even got an increase as compared to last year.  Her effort was not reflected in the management report.  Philip also omitted the reasons of receiving increasing number of complaints.  His only focus was only on Cherry’s Sales & Service Department.  In his perception, customers’ complaints must be related to the department’s service but not from other reason.  He ignored to investigate the content of the customers’ complaints and so did not realize customers’ dissatisfaction were due to slow processing and incorrect information of the insurance policies.  So, these are the information that Philip omitted.  To bring Philip back to the truth, Cherry had explained the reason of the low sales figures and the content of the customers’ complaints, which is because of the slow approving process of the policies.  Moreover, Philip had ignored the fact of high staff turnover rate of Policy Administration Department.  When figuring out the reasons of receiving more complaints, Sales & Service Department should not be the only responsible party.  By pointing out this, Philip should be aware that he ignored this kind of fact.  Another thing Philip had ignored was Cherry’s effort.  In the letter, Cherry tried best to explain she had put best effort to settle customers’ dissatisfaction.  This is a good chance for Cherry to point this out as Philip as a boss, did not realize what Cherry’s team had done to help the company in this adverse situation.  This helps to change Philip’s perception on Cherry and her team.  He had bad impression on Cherry and her team because he did not realize what they had done to settle the customers’ complaints.  By pointing out what Cherry and her team had done, the letter helps to solve the problem of Philip’s ignorance of their effort.

Figure 2: The Shannon-Weaver Mathematical Model

Shannon, C. E. A (1949) Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 27, pp. 379-423 and 623-656, July and October, 1948.

According to Shannon’s communication process model, it is a conceptual model to explain how human beings communicate. Cherry (the information source) to explain the difficulties by talking (transmitter) to Philip in a meeting (channel) and Philip (the receiver) listened.  However it seems the message doesn’t go to Philip’s brain or mind (destination).  He gave no feedback at all. This creates miscommunication.  Miscommunication refers to fail to communicate clearly.  There are many reasons for miscommunication such as: office romance, assumptions, favoritism, criticism and non cooperation. In this case, assumption is the major problem. Philip has a roughly assumption on Cherry. (SpeedupCareer, 2015)

Miscommunication can cause severe damages for a business such as drop in revenue and productivity, investment lost, lost of human assets, etc.

Miscommunication generates Cherry’s negative feelings. She is upset, anxious, nervous or even angry by what Philip has done.  A negative emotion can influence employee’s performance.  At the end, the company suffers.  As Philip refused to communicate with Cherry face-to-face, she brought up his attention by writing the letter.  This is the only way that Cherry can do to “communicate” with Philip.  The letter helped Cherry to bring up the issues that Philip ignored as he refused to communicate.  Communication is the only way to provide channel for them to arrive at a viable solution to the situation.  

Complaints aroused from Differences

We are all human beings but the most interesting part is that we are all different but why don’t we all see eye to eye?  It’s because of our different education, family backgrounds, life experience, etc.  We have different values, perceptions and beliefs.  We select difference aspects of a message to focus our attention based on what interests us, what is familiar to us or what we consider important. (McLean, 2012)  Philip selectively believed what he is interested to see, such as there is a sharp increase of customer complains.  He only saw Cherry’s poor performance and ineffectiveness, however, Philip didn’t see the reasons behind.

Why do we see things differently?  It is because of the involvement of our senses and what we like to choose to experience by our context and environment.  Our habits, values and outlook on life are influenced by where we come from and where we are. (McLean, 2012) 

As in the case, Philip did not listen to Cherry by sitting down together in a formal or informal meeting.  He did not give feedback to Cherry’s explanation and her concern about the difficulties Cherry is facing.  In Cherry’s angle, as her manager, he also did not help Cherry to manage her stress level about the conflict.  Due to the different understanding of the facts with Cherry, Philip refused to talk to Cherry and keeps on accusing her.  By writing the letter, Cherry brought out facts in her points of view.  In Cherry’s point of view, increasing customers complaints are mainly caused by incorrect policy information, over-charged premiums, long processing time, etc.  These are not in Philip’s mind.  Cherry clearly pointed out in the letter for these facts and it helped Philip to look at the matter in another point of view.  For Philip, what he saw is only decreasing sales and increasing complaints.  In his understanding, these were caused by Cherry’s team.  The different understanding of Philip with Cherry is the main reason for the current conflict situation.  The letter clearly told Philip these are not caused by Cherry’s team but other departments.  Since he rejected to listen to the reasons explained by Cherry, the letter can provide a channel for Philip to understand these in a calm way.  

Avoid Climbing the Ladder of Inference

It is highly likely that Philip could have drawn wrong inferences on Cherry’s poor performance based his bias and the adverse comments provided by the two newly joined and inexperienced managers who are also related parties of Philip.  By referring to the materials appended in the letter, Philip should be able to select the reality and facts through the reasoning process in the ladder of influence.  By pointing out the fact that these two newly joined underwriting managers are related parties of Philip, he got a chance to climb down the ladder of inference again to rethink the reasonableness of his perception.  He should consider this factor when he draws his conclusion about the reasons of the decreasing sales and increasing number of complains.

The compliant letter could help Philip to draw better conclusions.  It could help Philip to analyze the evidence and data such as sales figures and the “Monthly Customer Complaints & Grievances Report”.  It would allow Philip to form opinions and judgment impartially based on the true facts and reality. The letter could help Cherry to check if her arguments are sound enough to validate or challenge Philip and other people's conclusions.  The complaint letter could also be used to challenge Philip’s assumption.  Apparently, Philip did not pay attention to Cherry’s explanation and selected the facts based on his own beliefs and experience.  He jumped up the ladder and assumed that the poor performance and the upsurge of complaint figures were mainly due to the laziness of Cherry’s team.  Once Philip has the opportunity to read the complaint letter, he would have changed his assumption and focused on addressing the issues with Cherry. 

Resolving the Conflict situation

According to Jain (2005), conflict is a process that begins when one party perceives another party has negatively affected or is about to negatively affect, something that the first party cares about. Obviously, Cherry cared about the accusations of Philip and concerned about the way he handled her complaint.  It is considered that root cause of the conflict was mainly due to the failure of Philip in fully appreciating Cherry’s situation and institutionalizing an effective mechanism in handling conflict. 

The conflict between Cherry and Philip can be regarded as relationship conflict which primary based on interpersonal relationships dysfunction.  Philip has all along been adopting a passive and avoidance approach to handle the conflict with Cherry’s as he thought the issue was trivial.  He was not willing to interact with Cherry in order to avoid unnecessary direct confrontation.  On the contrary, Cherry takes proactive and collaborative approach by proposing a meeting with Philip and writing him a compliant letter with a view to incorporating his concerns into a consensus. 

Weiss and Hughes (2005) commented that conflict management works best when the parties involved in a disagreement are equipped to manage it themselves.  The aim of the complaint letter is to get Cherry and Philip back to the negotiation table to resolve conflict on their own so as to allow them to improve their relationship.  

Powerful ways to resolve disputes without 3rd party direct intervention

As in the case, Philip had selected some data and put it in his own interpretation, such as sales data.  Reported sales data could not reflect the actual premiums sold because of the slow policy approving process.  By elaborating the reason of why the sales data could not reflect the actual policies sold, the letter had brought Philip down the ladder of inference. Philip should then interpret the sales data again with the reason behind.   

To bring Philip’s attention to the real reason of increasing customer complaints, the letter had pointed out the long processing time of policies and incorrect policy information. By focusing on these reasons, Philip should know the responsibility is not on Sales and Service department.  

In the letter, Cherry also pointed out she is not happy about the unfair treatment from Philip. She described her effort made to settle customers’ complaints. She also told Philip that she did not mind to work overtime for the benefit of the company and customers. These are the facts that Philip had overlooked before. Philip assumed Cherry did not complete her daily work. By pointing out what Cherry was doing every day in the letter, Philip was brought down to the bottom of the ladder of inference and should start to observe the situation again.  

Since Cherry had tried to talk to Philip but not succeeded, writing a letter is the only way to provide solid evidence that Cherry had given a trial to communicate. Cherry had provided a solution in the letter, such as they can sit down together to talk about the issue. If there is no communication between Cherry and Philip, the dispute can never be resolved. The letter is a channel to bring Philip’s attention to Cherry and let him start to resolve the issue.   

Help an injured person to deal with feelings & the disruption in life

Since Cherry is not quite comfortable with the current situation, she could voice out her feeling about Philip’s ignorance and unfair treatment in the letter.  She pointed out that she likes her job and would like to contribute to the company. No matter Philip will look into the matter after reading the letter, Cherry had tried her best to voice out her feeling and this surely will help her to lessen her pressure.    

References:
Speedupcareer (2015) Miscommunication In The Workplace, available from http://www.speedupcareer.com/articles/miscommunication-in-the-workplace.html, accessed 31 March 2015
N.K. Jain (2005) Organizational Behaviour. India: Atlantic
McLean, S. (2012) Communication for Business Success, Chile, Creative Commons
Jeff Weiss and Jonathan Hughes (2005) Want Collaboration? Accept- and Actively Manage - Conflict