Years ago I was in a polite feud with a local man (X) who headed another unit. He hired Penelope, a woman from my country. In order to not draw her in to the dispute, I didn’t try to meet her. We ran into each other by chance after she had been in-country for a few months and introduced ourselves. Penelope wondered why I hadn’t come to help with training on a particular program, so I mentioned that her boss and I did not get along well. She said that she had heard that rumor and, sacré bleu, at that moment her boss walked around the corner.

Penelope panicked and her sub-conscious self-preservation kicked in. “This is the first time I met her,” she blurted to her boss while pointing at me. He laughed, greeted us cordially, threw a veiled insult at me and went on his way.

When he was out of ear-shot, she resumed the conversation as if nothing had changed. Sigh. Of course I was longing to point out to her that she had handled the situation exactly wrongly but one can’t start in on the criticism with complete strangers.

But I can explain this to you, my dear. You see most of the Middle East in tribal – not in the tediously negative way explained in most news reports, but simply people understand that as one moves through life, one is (and needs to be) connected to each other in explicit lines of contact and care.

I have the same country of origin and am older than Penelope. Of course X would assume that Penelope would find me and ask me for advice as soon as she arrived because that is what he would naturally do if he worked for a large firm in a foreign country: quickly find compatriots. Thus, X assumed 1) that Penelope knew me well, 2) Penelope was lying about knowing me and 3) Penelope was lying because she knew of X’s feud with me.

So he saw her as aligned with me and a liar. Sigh.

This reminds me of an incident years ago when a newly-hired, fresh-faced young person sat down at important meeting and placed a large, well-worn water thermos on the table. Now this young person, just graduated from college, had been placing his water bottle on tables for years, but this particular very expensive wooden table and these particular very expensively-dressed senior managers had never seen a person come to a meeting with their own water supply. The table held only papers and pens and… the thermos which was covered with stickers in support of various colleges, organizations, locations and sources of what we shall kindly call music.

The silence and careful not-looking at the thermos were most amusing. As were the sotto voce jokes. “Are we going on a desert excursion after the meeting?” inquired one softly. “Dehydration from walking to work,” whispered another. [Humor is so culture-specific, the idea of walking to work in a very hot country with no sidewalks is hilarious, you will have to trust me on this.]

When the CFO came in, he glanced at the water bottle, then at a subordinate, who caught the glance and quietly said, “that is for the young camel he is taking care of in his office.”

A brilliant joke which will lose much in me having to explain it as it works. In North America/ UK/ EU the joke would imply the person was a farmer, i.e. a yokel unfit for a high-level financial meetings.

But here, owning a camel is something respected. To be giving careful attention to a camel shows that the person has property, takes commitments seriously, is steadfast and traditional.

The subordinate’s joke was that not the young person was a hick, but that he was trying to appear to be BETTER than he was. A person of gravitas might have nourishment for a camel, but not water to carry him through a half-hour meeting.

For the CFO, there was another layer of meaning in that neither the young person’s boss nor his colleagues had warned him against bringing his bottle into a meeting with higher-ups, meaning that either they didn’t know enough to warn him (they are not au fait), they had warned him and he didn’t heed them (he’s headstrong) or that they had deliberately not warned him (he’s an outcast).

Thus, something was off in that team which is clearly not acting like a group of people who watch out for each other, i.e. a tribe.

So much meaning from one old, battered, well-used water thermos.

Details, as I always say to you Darling, it’s all in the details.

Work advice for future CEOs

How and Why to Mentor People at Work: The Lessons of Lasso and Henry Higgins

Of Men on Zoom and Knowledge Avoidance

Bullet Train – Lessons in How to Behave Well

Quality TV: The Proletariats’ Revenge (or Watch the Executives Suffer)