Why Understanding Existing Value Systems In The Workplace Makes For A Seamless Leadership Experience

Leaders should incorporate a values disclosure session into onboarding programs

Let’s first get over and done with definitions so that we enjoy a seamless reading experience.
 

The term Value System(s) is/are - A hierarchy of values that all moral beings have reflected in their choices. Said differently, Value System(s) is a set of individual values which exist in a scale or a hierarchy that reveals their degree of relative importance.

Most people’s value systems differ as we all rank things differently. Examples of values include individually determined values, culturally determined, and institutionally determined values. Individually determined value systems rank things such as altruism, courage, gratitude, and dependability as important. Culturally ranked values could include etiquette around greetings, orientation to time, stereotyping, and individualism versus collectivism. Institutional value systems include the need for punctuality, pecking order norms, a sense of quality work delivery, and being considerate around stakeholders, be they, colleagues, shareholders, or customers.

Within the workplace, people from all backgrounds, cultures, races, and geographically determined experiences, converge to work under one command. It is possible that everyone will be on the same page but certainly not in the same paragraph or sentence. These differences are sure to pose challenges across the workforce. It is not enough for a good leader to acknowledge them but to also understand how to step in the gap when they come in the way of work execution or relationships.

Two men at work, James, an international colleague on his overseas tour of duty, and John became very close. The plutonic bond strengthened when John took James home for lunch. Sally, John’s wife was glad to host but became apprehensive when she learned that for his second visit, James would have to choose whom of his two wives would accompany him. Sally was concerned that such a visit would violate her one-man-one-woman marriage values and even worse, encourage John to consider finding another partner to match James’s two. John sensing tough times ahead decided to keep the camaraderie within the office.
Elsewhere, the leader of a team working across different time zones and geographies picked an online meeting time suitable to him. The members were uncomfortable with the timing as it badly affected their schedules. For one guy this coincided with his soccer practice, for another guy, the meeting time kept him away from the special weekly dinner date with his wife and for a third person, the time prevented her from doing homework with her son who needed to sleep early in order to awaken fresh and ready the next day for another busy day at school. An adjustment on the leader’s end would see him miss out on nothing at all. Pleas for him to consider other times fell on deaf years. But a 360⁰ work appraisal session uncovered this anomaly and the team leader’s boss asked him to change the weekly meeting time to one agreed to with his team. This is a classic case of management versus leadership.

Leadership and management are two distinct creatures. Management has more to do with controls and getting people to conform to the manager’s desirable conditions. Leadership has more to do with inspiring people to deliver. Whereas, leaders must manage teams and they have a bigger role in keeping them motivated so that unnecessary interruptions don’t occur, lest objectives are missed by a mile.

When Sally went to work (a different organization from John’s), she spent an hour talking to colleagues about her disapproval of John’s friendship with James. She shared her worries about the unwanted practice possibly infecting John. She could not fathom playing co-wife to someone else. A culturally approved choice from another geography was now causing low productivity at an unrelated workplace. Peter, Sally’s boss called her to his office and agreed to have a word with John. In the meantime, he asked her to get back to work as she was one of his most valued employees. Leaders must learn to manage situations brought about by foreign value systems. John gave Peter his word that he was strictly a one-man-one-woman marriage person.

To better manage value system differentials at work, the leader ought to incorporate a values disclosure session into onboarding programs, where existing and new staff disclose their irreducible minimums to one another. Any disturbances noted arising from disclosures get known and hence managed at that moment. Any stereotypes consistent with certain cultural groups also get clarified and henceforth harmony is achieved at the earliest possible moment. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, Outliers talks of Korean Air’s disasters of the 1990s. The airline had underlying value issues. It no doubt is easier now to see where leadership was needed. Here is the story:

In the nineties, Korean Airlines, now Korean Air, experienced nasty plane crashes with its Boeing fleet.

After numerous investigations, a leaked audit report revealed that a high level of laxity within its crew was the major culprit. The planes were flawless and the Korean crew underwent the same training as the crew from other airlines that flew Boeing planes. The Captains were often senior in age to the First officers. The first officers in the Korean culture could not question these Captains in much the same way that their peers from other airlines could and did all the time. Korean culture forbids juniors from questioning seniors in ways that would be viewed as insubordination.

So even in crucial moments when all the other crew knew that things were not right on board, the pilots, many times tired because of the quick turn-around between flights, often missed out crucial details which in one particular case, resulted in a plane that had run out of fuel not getting the control tower staff to understand what was actually happening to the plane. First officers are there partly to help out during such moments when a tired captain clearly needs help.

The first officer, in a soft respectful tone, informed the pilot of the fuel situation and the pilot relayed the same information to the tower only that, it was received as a ‘by-the-way’ communication. So it sounded like they could circle the air a few more times to allow those who had communicated better to land. The pilot was also submitting to the authority of the control tower more in line with Korean cultural practices, than by airline standards that demand assertiveness during such troubling moments.

Because of their soft-spoken nature, when submitting to authority, the control tower staff kept them circling as other planes got the nod to land. The Korean plane lost power on two engines and could no longer carry its own weight.

In the black box recordings that were retrieved, the automatic altitude alerting mechanism’s voice could be heard warning the crew at 500 feet and progressively to 20 feet then a loud bang is heard and death thereafter. For the crew in the cloudy approach, they never realized that they were now 20 minutes from the runway and the loss of altitude detection, was actually how far they were from the high hills beneath them and their final crash site.

After investigations, it was decided that the first officers could take over the plane when in their judgment, the captain was wrong about the situation. This retraining got the airline back to a safe carrier and has maintained that reputation to date. What was viewed as laxity of the crew was actually the stretched role played by culture beyond the confines of its usefulness, and crossing the red line to endanger air safety. Market, revenues, lives, confidence, assets, and much more were lost.

The Korean cultural practice had taken away the role of the first officer who by training is just as good as the captain. They needed to overcome the traditional culture ‘bug’ that was not useful in aviation culture.

Concerned leaders should make it mandatory for all colleagues to understand the value systems within a diversified workforce.

References – The Korean Air story is mostly taken from the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

Author Bio

David Mugun is the Founder of Business Person's Mentor Limited. David is a management consultant with 27 years of experience gained in ICT, Insurance and Banking, business education, and private practice. He is the author of 10 books, all available at amazon.com. Connect David Mugun