Building Bridges

Dwight Moore, Ph.D., Industrial Psychologist

Despite the fans whirring above, the air was stale. The atmosphere in the room tense. The group in front of me stoic and silent. I didn’t understand their reticence or why they couldn’t open up. This group of leaders, handpicked for their excellence, had superb communication skills and should have been at their best, proudly completing the assignments given to them. This didn’t make sense.

Apartheid in South Africa had lasted over 20 years and during that time it had decimated all education, apprenticeships and opportunity for blacks. But now, six years after it ended, employers were interested in hiring black men into leadership positions. As an Industrial Psychologist, I had been selected to spend a few months finding and training candidates for the first black supervisor of a sawmill.

I now had in this room five Afrikaner mill managers, three black interns, two black veteran mill employees and two white female accountants in a “Leadership Training” class. Their assignment this first hour was to share and learn from each other, but instead they all had been excruciatingly silent and tense. During the break, I asked one of the participants, Mpho, why so much resistance. Looking afraid, he said slowly and emphatically, “There are things that need to be said.” I encouraged him to take the risk, and pointed out that only by acknowledging and proclaiming his truth could things get any better.

When the class began again, I called on Mpho to share. He bravely looked his white colleague in the eye and said, “Christiaan, do you remember fighting in the Northern War?” Christiaan nodded, “Certainly, I was fighting, too.” Mpho responded, “Yes, my brother, but you were shooting at me.” The room was silent. Anger, grief and sadness, almost palpable in the room. “We have a choice now, ” I ventured, “reconciliation or continued hate. You are the new leaders of this company. Which direction will you take?”

Two years later the company had their first black supervisor. The efforts of all the workers (and a couple of key firings) helped the process of reconciling the white Afrikaner’s with the blacks, the elder blacks with the younger blacks, language differences between the tribes and the emerging scourge of AIDS. Men like Mpho and Christiaan had the courage to stand up and be counted in spite of the pressure they received from their peers.

Even today, we are in danger of separating into “tribes”: liberals vs conservatives, blacks and whites, Democrats vs Republicans. As this story shows, having the courage to listen to the “other” side, to not jump to conclusions, to take turns talking and hearing are essential to binding wounds and resolving conflict.