[Sue C.]

How do you best manage a German employee? What is of value to them? How do you motivate them to do the best job? What’s the best interpersonal communication approach to use when dealing with a German employee?

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Name : Sue C., Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Catholic, Age : 37, City : New Milford, State : CT, Country : United States, Occupation : Human Resources Manager, Education level : 2 Years of College, Social class : Middle class, 

[Tomas S.]

The following assumes that by ‘German’ you mean ‘grown up in Germany’ rather that ‘nth generation German-American’. Perhaps I can help you by listing a few negative stereotypes popular with educated Germans about American employment conditions. I do not claim these to be true (I have never worked for an US company myself) but such stereotypes, in my opinion, give useful insights in what is important to people holding them. So here goes; no offense meant; please don’t shoot me 🙂 1. US companies’ objectives are more short-term as German companies (e.g. this quarter’s profits instead of the next decade’s), so managers are liable to make false economies. 2. Education and training that is not immediately applicable to the job in hand is undervalued. [note: in Germany your level of formal education (school, university) and to a lesser degree of training (apprenticeship) contributes a lot to your social status, not just by way of any higher income earned because of that education and training. A case in point is that the German chemical industry likes to hire people with a doctorate for legal, engineering etc. positions because the chemists have got a PhD and might regard a non-Doctor as their social and intellectual inferior.]. 3. Managers tend not to understand what the company does (like a nonengineer being CEO of an engineering company). 4. US employers are utterly disloyal to their employees; there is less job security, both because of short-termism and because of a culture where firing someone is a normal business move rather that a last resort. [note: German labour law makes it a lot harder than US law to terminate someone, except for extreme cases like theft or outright refusal to work.] 5. Creativity and responsibility take a backseat to companywide policies. 6. Managers use false friendliness with employees. [note: between adult Germans addressing someone by his first name implies a more personal relationship than that which is implied by Americans using first names. Using first names (in German, using ‘Du’ instead of ‘Sie’) does not necessarily mean full friendship, but implies a relationship of equality and trust. So when you address a German by first name but act like an authoritarian boss you send contradictory messages.] I’d like to stress again that the above statements are not meant to be factual but to illustrate how German employees would like not to be managed.

User Detail :  

Name : Tomas S., Gender : M, Age : 37, City : Tübingen, State : NA, Country : Germany, Occupation : electrical engineer, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class, 

[Dach,-KH]

Very complex answer would be necessary. Let me say what I don’t like in US companies: 1. Find often a very low education level, always in different balance than to us. But collegues try to educate us, because they assume the american way of life is the only one. (Reminds me to a very old German saying: ‘Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen’ – This behaviour was one of the reasons for the first world war.) 2. Germans, who immigrated to US, provide a picture of Germany, as it was 100 years ago. 3. Almost ‘religious’ trends, like the non-smoking approach in US. Waiting for the next wave, what’s coming then? 4. I can’t hear the word ‘manager’ anymore. Is there anybody still working? 5. Americans do not realize that they are about 4% of the world population. By the way, exporting more weapons than all other countries in the world together. And ‘english’ is not the most spoken language in the world. 6. I don’t like the well trained communicators. Woman must have all visited long seminars ‘how to undertain my guests’. Why not just handle even Germans as ‘normal’ people? 7. Political correctness: I never saw those much racists than in the US. You believe, that calling black (we say black…) people the ‘Afro-Americans’ makes them feeling better? 8. Sexual barriers in your mind. You know about articles like ‘The crazy Americans’, in which laws are referred to which describe what underwear you must carry when you are with your spouse?

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Name : Dach,-KH, Gender : M, City : Mannheim, State : NA, Country : Germany, 

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