I’ve been repairing working relations between the Brazilians
and the Argentinians in my team. There have always been tensions. Although they
live so close to each other, they are continuously at each other’s’ throats,
finding fault, failing to clarify and resolve misunderstandings, undermining
mutual projects and so on.
What’s to be done?
I’ve tried all sorts of things up to now. For example, I got
them into a room together to try to understand the other’s point of view by
role-reversing, so that the Argentinians became Brazilian and vice-versa. I taught them how to
paraphrase what the other was saying in order to create clarity of
meaning. I had them try out English as a mutual language instead of Spanish,
which always puts the Brazilians on the back foot.
Nothing seems to work.
But the real problem is: none of this is real. I don’t have any
Argentinians or Brazilians in my ‘team’.
It’s all in my dreams.
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