I spent a lot of time thinking on this question so that it can have an answer, so please inform me if it needs modification since I really need help with this problem.
I am one of 10 team leads for small teams of engineers that specialize in various products our parent company sells/makes. There...
Some feedback: While this is a great question, I feel that all the details about teams A-J aren't really needed to answer it. The basics are that you have different teams (Caucasian, Latin American and Asian) and that after a work related disagreement, the former two started using increasingly complex language (with examples), which makes the last team unable to do their job. Then what you tried, how they reacted, and the actual question.
Please don't use code markup in this fashion. This syntax should be reserved for code or data, not normal text. Abusing code markdown has ugly results, causes problems for parsing tools such as screen readers for the visually impaired, and is easily avoided by using the other available formatting options.
Skimming through this question, I see no reason why it can't be condensed down into a single paragraph equivalent to "There's bad blood with another team and they're using complex language which our non-native speaking team struggles with." You also left out the actually important elements like what your goal is (escalate versus solve it yourself) and what the reporting structure / hierarchy above these teams is.
How does it feel racist? Did you consider the asian teams actually should have learned english at some point? Did you consider firing all managers that do not make sure their teams are not up to the task? THis primarily is a manager failure - which now is escalated. What will you do, in a market like we have now, when the tams decide that hey, another employer works better? The idea of using a dictionary feels correct - one learns at this page (and I say that as a non native english speaker, but then in germany at the time I learned english we actually learned english and using a dictioanry.
Let me confirm one of your teams seems to have unilaterally made a change that made extra work for 8 other teams - this does sound like the fault here is not on one side - and calling the other teams pretentious is not helping here.
Your team had no reason to support Team J (no benefit from their solution). It sounds like you were aware Team J solution was going to cause the other teams problems, but they were unaware of the solution until it was approved by management. So you didn't bother giving them a warning. Nor did you bother notifying management of how Team J solution could cause the firm lost time and effort, so in that sense you didn't show much loyalty to the overall firm either. I can easily see how it appears to others that your team and Team J is working together and causing issues.
Get a dictionary if need be Not racist, just a dick move.
Hello Xian, I made an edit to trim down some details and also removed references to A-I teams. I don't like portraying them by locale like that but I think it made the post clearer. Please edit or roll back if I have interfered with your intentions. And, welcome to the Workplace!
is there no man in the middle handling communications? This is the most common solution. My team is one of many on a lot of projects, we never communicate directly with other teams without supervision.
Why cant your team just do as they say and use a dictionary for words they do not understand? There is nothing racist about it. The only issue here is that they have created a lot more work for the other teams by not including you in the decission and thats what you should complain about.
Any native English speaker would know these terms unless we're talking about someone who simply doesn't read books and never has. ...which is not to say they're in the right to use complex language.
@Kyralessa I am a native English speaker who does a fair amount of reading, and I couldn't tell you exactly what "specious" or "supercilious" means without looking it up, or at least getting context clues from reading it in a sentence.
@rath Your edit removed some references to team names (Team H, Team J, etc) that have made some of the answers more difficult to understand. Could you (or the OP) add back in the most relevant team names to the question?
"Get a dictionary if need be. This feels very racist." No, it's not. And I hope you haven't pulled the racist-card with your co-workers yet or this question got a whole lot more complicated. Please clarify what you have already done so far, it will have influence on what your next step should be.
@Mast, I am not going to say it's racist, but it is a very aggressive move to alienate others by deliberately using obscure language. Non-native speakers will have a hard time understanding. It is very easy to cherry pick vocabulary, idioms, and figures of speech that will leave non-natives in the dust.
Do you know that the other teams have deliberately increased the difficulty of their English, or are they just not bothering to simplify it any more for teams that don't speak it as well? Are you willing to go to HR and risk being told that you need to learn English better? Are you willing to risk getting the reputation of teams that will call on HR for items that they should work out with management and the other teams? Do you really want to make the non-Japanese teams even angrier with you? Think about this.
Discussion on question by Xian: How t…
Discussion on question by Xian: How t…