Bassam’s manager had a choice to make, and probably never knew it was a choice.

An employee had just spent his own money feeding a customer’s children. That behaviour can be recorded as a lapse — an employee giving away what is not his to give, slowing the line, setting a precedent — or as the single most memorable thing that happened in that shop all week. Nothing in a standard performance system distinguishes between the two readings. There is a box for speed and a box for cost. There is no box for this.

So the first recommendation of this book is aimed at the box.

Count what actually happened

Service organizations in Canada should recognize and integrate the collectivist service behaviours of Arab immigrant workers into their service delivery standards rather than suppressing them. The warmth, generosity, and relational care that these workers bring to service encounters are expressions of high-quality service according to a collectivist logic, not deviations from professionalism.

In practice that means adjusting service delivery policies to allow and even promote relational gestures — personalized greetings, acts of generosity, emotional engagement with customers — within a specified limit. It means that speed and cost measures should not be the only measures in performance assessments; relational service contributions should be counted as well. And it means developing evaluation criteria that capture the relational dimensions of service quality, not only transactional efficiency.

The limit matters as much as the permission. This is not about letting cultural cordiality supersede business regulations. It is about finding the middle ground where the two can coexist.

Read deference correctly

The second thing managers need is a translation.

Managers and team leaders in the Canadian service industry should be trained to understand that deference to authority in immigrant employees is a cultural behaviour, and does not indicate passivity or a lack of initiative. Once a supervisor knows that, several things change at once. Instructions should be clear and direct rather than implied, because high power distance employees are more confident when they know exactly what is expected. Organizations should also create safe opportunities for egalitarian participation — team meetings where every voice is genuinely expected to be heard — so that workers can adjust at their own pace instead of being pushed to abandon core values.

The age-based dimension of deference should be communicated to managers too, so they understand why certain employees show extra kindness to elderly customers. This is not inconsistency in service. It is a deeply held cultural value that can be channelled positively.

Remember what happened to Elias: an elderly customer wrote in to praise him, and he had to have it pointed out to him, because he did not know he had done anything. The organization was already receiving the benefit. It simply had no way of seeing where it came from.

Cultural intelligence, not cultural excuse

Managers in culturally diverse workplaces need to develop cultural awareness to understand the range of behaviours around them, in themselves and in their employees. That awareness lets them treat people equitably while still accommodating subtle differences. Employers should create inclusive environments and set policies that permit the expression of positive cultural traits — personal warmth, hospitality — while respecting professional boundaries.

One qualification is important enough to state on its own. Cultural awareness belongs in support systems and training design. It must never become a hiring criterion. Candidates are hired on qualification and merit.

What organizations should be aiming at is bicultural competence in their workforce — the ability to meet host-country standards without discarding what the worker brought — supported by evaluation tools that let the organization measure whether its diversity integration is actually working. Companies are caught between the consistency of a service brand and the dynamism of a culturally diverse workforce. The resolution is to stop treating diversity management as a compliance obligation and start treating it as a competitive advantage. Culturally diverse service teams serve multicultural customers better, provided the differences are managed deliberately rather than ignored.

The return, stated plainly

There is a direct return on this investment, and it does not depend on anyone’s goodwill.

Developing bicultural competence reduces service gaps across diverse customer segments, which raises satisfaction and repeat business. Training that helps workers navigate cultural expectations reduces turnover, because employees who feel free to adjust tend to stay — and the cost of recruiting and onboarding a replacement is well documented as far higher than the cost of retaining someone through training. Culturally intelligent service teams can also reach customer groups that monocultural competitors cannot, which is revenue rather than savings.

Investment in cultural intelligence pays back in retention, customer loyalty, and market reach.