Negotiating styles – Report from a Canadian Consultant in Egypt by risa
From a Contributor working in Health Care in Egypt:
It is starting make some sense today. It helped when someone said that the metaphor for Egyptian management and leadership styles lies in their driving. It is totally instinctive and improvisational. Everyone goes as fast as they can, ignoring any formal rules but guided by some very clear ‘strange attractors’, with lots of communication through subtle variations in the how they use the horn: use it lots but every beep means something different. I love the metaphor! Ironically, the person who used it is a German doctor who thought it was all madness. No wonder he isn’t getting along too well.
Meetings are like traffic: one central theme ringed by secondary conversations, both live and on the phone, with lots of animated conversation that doesn’t actually go somewhere. I think someone came up with a roundabout after listening into one of these meetings. We were deluged by data this morning, all of it highly suspect because there is no central cancer registry so all is an ‘estimation’ designed to take the conversation where the speaker wants to go. We were told that it is a badge of honor in Egypt, a male prerogative if you like, to nod, smile and agree with you in a meeting and then go out and stab you in the back, without any remorse whatsoever. At the heart of it all, though, is a deep desire to make a difference in the lives of children and to create a working environment that respects people and gives them the opportunity to do good work with fair compensation.
The challenge is that half the budget is dependent on donations, which in the West would be a high risk strategy, but here it is a cultural norm. Unlike Canada, people here do not like to donate to buildings, they don’t want their name on a structure. The have a cultural law/norm that requires they give 2.5% of all savings and they give during Ramadan. In fact, the first lady had to persuade the chief imam to issue a fatwa or decree that it was okay to give for a building – then the hospital got built. In fact, 80% of the donations were an Egyptian Pound or two – .20 or 25 cents Cdn. They prefer to give directly to services and people who provide care – and to do so anonymously. We could do with some of that in Canada.
I am also beginning to understand that ‘tribal’ leadership (one chief, many followers) is not so bad and that while there is a pecking order, it is not what we would think of as a hierarchy. We lose concepts like duty and shared respect when we think of hierarchy: they don’t. Our task is to help them shape a middle ground that honors and celebrates the best of who they are with solid theory, both in medicine and management. Very cool!
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