Jason Crumb was very excited when he heard news (through the grapevine) that he was going to be posted to China as General Manager of a hotel owned by of the leading Hotel Chains. "Now I can put all my managerial training and experience to practice," he thought to himself. After working for two months in China, he realized that some of the employees were not working as hard as others.
He immediately called for a staff meeting and asked his management staff why this was happening and what needs to be done (from a Chinese perspective). His staff mentioned that some of them were having family issues that need to be resolved and that it is not acceptable for them to bring their family issues to work. In his attempt to exercise managing diversity, he thought that it would be best to give these employees some time to resolve their issues. He even told the staff to help them through this stage and keep monitoring their progress. His staff told him that it is not customary to do that. They should be fired as there are many locals who would love to have their jobs! Jason dismissed this approach as insensitive to employees needs and mentioned that perhaps he should create a session on "Managing Diversity" for his staff. Upon hearing this, his Director of Rooms, Zhang Xia Wen mentioned in a one-on-one meeting that managing diversity is not as important as working hard! Jason thought about Xia Wen's comments over the next two weeks as the four employees were still not performing well and constantly complained about family issues and difficulty to concentrate at work.
One of these four employees, Zhen Hui Wu decided to approach Jason and asked for a meeting. Jason, in his interest to be inclusive, scheduled the meeting the next day. Hui Wu mentioned to Jason in the meeting that he needed some time off to deal with some of his family issues and wondered if he could have two days off from work. Jason decided to probe why he needed two days and Hui Wu stated that he needed to meet with some contacts to help him straighten out his family problems. He also mentioned that he had a big family and there are many issues to deal with. Jason decided to give him a day off to deal with these issues and told Hui Wu to inform his manager, Yang Zhen.
The next day, Yang Zhen knocked on Jason's door and politely asked if he could have a word with him. In the conversation that followed, Yang Zhen tried to tell Jason that what he has done was inappropriate and that he should not condone such behavior from employees. In the next few days, Jason noticed that some of the hotel employees looked at him in a strange way and were even making some comments as he passed by. As time went on, Jason began to notice that employees were unhappy. Still these four employees were not performing well. Jason called for another staff meeting to figure out what was happening and what needed to be done. He staff told him that word is spreading around that he (Jason) was a soft leader and it is easy to manipulate him. Some even mentioned that he was trying to use western methods in China!
Jason was dumbfounded. He had to do something quick with the intent to send a strong message across. Should he fire all four of them? Perhaps he should fire only one so that the others can learn from it and improve their performance?