by Mary/María “Bess” Lewis, M.A.T., Bilingual Management Development Specialist / Especialista Bilingüe para el Desarrollo Administrativo
Ima Ramirez is a supervisor for the Cornell Research Dairy Farm. He has worked in the dairy business for over 18 years and has been a supervisor for 8 of those years. Cornell Agricultural Workforce Development interviewed Mr. Ramirez to glean from his experience. The full interview will be part of the Agricultural Supervisory Leadership course in Spanish once it releases online this fall 2023. Here is a part of that interview:
“When the time comes to reprimand someone, it is important how we reveal that information to the person. I could be aggressive and say: Look, you broke the gate. Or maybe I could say softly: We need to be a little bit more careful. The gate is broken. And when we are upset: we need to become calm before we go deliver a message. The key is this: if you have a relationship with your employees, you won’t be able to even yell at them. If you can yell at them: you have not worked on having a good relationship with them.”
Spanish is a unique language for many reasons. However, it truly differs from English when it comes to accidents. In Spanish, there are two ways of placing blame. One is pointed and aggressive like, “You broke the gate.” (‘Tú quebraste la puerta.’) Or you could be kind and acknowledge it might be accidental like, “The gate is broken.” (‘Se quebró la puerta’; literally translated, “the gate broke itself”). Spanish uses a no-blame reflexive pronoun called “se”. This may get really confusing when a native Spanish speaker tries to explain an accident at work in English. For example, “The tractor broke. The gate broke. The keys got lost.” But this is how it is said in Spanish when there has been an accident and it was not an intentional act of defiance. A supervisor could use this kind way of referring to conflict to diminish tensions. We all know that even the best of all workplaces will have moments of confrontation and correction. However, remembering this simple Spanish technique might help ease the situation. You can still ask a follow-up question like, “How did the gate get broken?” as a question that might lead into a solution to not have it happen again. However, it all depends on how we start that conversation in a calm way. Give the blame a pass and look beyond the accident to the solution!
We are thankful for Ima’s voice of experience in our agricultural world. Stay tuned to our Agricultural Supervisory Leadership program in Spanish coming soon.
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By Mary Bess Lewis, Cornell University. Permission granted to repost, quote, and reprint with author attribution.
The post Insight from Ima, Part 4 appeared in The Ag Workforce Journal
