Our electrician didn’t show up Monday … again. So, what do I (we) do now? We signed his estimate in October 2025. He said he would do the work in February 2026. February came and went without a word from him. We tried “cajoling” him by sending friendly emails asking if he could tell us when he planned to begin the work. We tried being direct but overly gracious when sending him text messages. Finally, I just called. When he answered, I said: “I just wanted to know for our planning when you might be coming by to do the work. Nothing urgent.” His reply shook me out of my gracious stupor: “Don’t say it’s not urgent. Otherwise, I would never come.”
You could take this same situation and simply rewrite it in a cross-cultural work context. A project is developed as a team. Everyone commits to the planning schedule and flexible time frame. However, time and again, one team member seems not to follow through on his part. As a team, we try “cajoling” this team member into action. We try to be direct but gracious. Promises are made but follow through never happens. The situation is becoming urgent, but we’re not sure what to do now.
“When it comes to risky, controversial, and emotional conversations, skilled people find a way to get all the relevant information (from themselves and others) out into the open.” The Bible puts it in other words: “We will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head that is, Christ” (Ephesians 4.14-15).
Probably the hardest thing in any difficult situation or conversation is focusing on truth (what we really know) and love (how we can better serve the other by listening and engaging them in dialogue).
This is never easy and the path to this kind of conversation is strewn with emotional pitfalls and groundless accusations.
So, what do I do now? Figure out what a path looks like to a crucial or important conversation. And then practice and regularly review some basic baby steps in that direction.
Guess what? Through good counsel from the past I wrote one more note to our electrician: direct, culturally contextualized, and with no comments to make him feel guilty. He stopped by unannounced yesterday. He apologized for having forgotten us because of his workload and forgetting to note us in his agenda (we gained more relevant information). We agreed as to what out joint goal and desire was: to provide light to our upstairs living space. Then I asked when he would begin. He’s coming tomorrow.
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Thoughts Along The Journey 
Just thinking of Peter Mayle’s “A Year in Provence.” Gotta throw a party! But seriously, I recall being on church staff and the youth pastor didn’t attend the church staff Christmas party for several consecutive years. Finally, our senior pastor named the Christmas party after him. He and his family started attending from that point forward. I learned a lot from that — as his boss, he could have ordered or threatened him. Instead, he used humor and a gentle approach to draw him in to community.