Facing the Boss

I woke up this morning feeling a little depressed over my job situation. I have been having such moods frequently of late ever since the team I was working in was absorbed into another department headed by a lady boss using top-down management style.

The lady boss is a practitioner of every aspect of what we typically learned from management studies in using negative motivational tactics to get staff working in fear following a hierarchical structure. Her personality and disposition is generally fierce, and she constantly breathes down the necks of her staff every weekly department meeting. Words from her are like fire—hot and fiery, and like storm—cold and harsh, filled full with regular reprimands. The way her staff is handled is similar to the way elementary school teachers treat the kids. It is as if every of the staff owes her a living, and any difference in opinions finds trouble for oneself. Few are willing to put their jobs on the line to practice the freedom of speech.

Such is the depressive moods I faced these days, which similar feelings have once faded from my past many years ago. No such negative feelings existed when I began working in this corporation some six years ago. Things have been fairly well with everyone doing their part as a team, working with each other to resolve issues rather than being driven from top-down. When I woke up this morning, however, the first thing that came to mind was the urgent need to calm down and seek God. I knew in my heart there was a verse that express well how I felt and therefore desperately searched for the Bible verse to calm myself and cry out to God. I knew I was already late for work, but felt the need to read the verse I was seeking to express myself, and eventually found it.

Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence. (Psalm 42:5 NAS)

I then read the entire Psalm 42 and realized the cry in verse 5 ended with the same starting words in verse 11, but with a different ending.

Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God. (Psalm 42:11)

In my desperation I cried out to God. Yes, I shall call upon the Lord and seek His face in my time of difficulty.

Hostile Work Environment

Ever since the department I worked in was dissolved after a hostile takeover by another, I have had a hard time adapting to the new top-down management style of my new boss.

Just yesterday, I had an intellectual argument with my new department head (stationed at another country) about the importance of the media when writing press releases and news feature story in an email copied to my new supervisor as well. After several to and fro email correspondences, I decided it should end, so I thanked her and signed off.

All I need now is calm in my heart, and I'm not asking for more. In a few days time, my current new supervisor will be leaving the organization and her position will be replaced by another. My prayer is that everything will turn out fine, but for now, it's wait and see.

Selective Seeing

You have heard of selective hearing where one listens only the good things, but have you heard of selective seeing?

Selective seeing is much like what Conflict Management studies called avoidance. Avoidance is not about closing an eye to things, but it's about not seeing what you don't wish to see. Given the change in our nation state's cleanliness and the people living in the country with inconsiderate behaviors, ungraceful acts, it pains my heart at times to see things I don't see when I was still in my youth.

Today, just about everywhere in Singapore, and especially in public fields and on pedestrian sidewalks, we can see debris and litter, spats of phlegm and saliva, inconsiderate acts of cycling without considerations for pedestrians, and more. If you are like me always bothered by such uncultured 'gracefulness', then you must learn to see things selectively. When seeing tissue papers, cans, bottles and other types of litter on the grass and sidewalks, just look around and see the beigger surroundings of nature, the flowers and the trees, the chirping birds and moving leaves, and breath in the fresh air if there is any. Minimize your focus on the unpleasant, such as the debris and the phlegm, and keep calm in the face of uncultured acts of spitting and littering.

Sounds like escapism you may think, and maybe you are right, but if that can keep a person's heartbeat rate down, it is worth it. There is no reason for us to suffer a heart attack for acts performed by others. Like selective hearing where we can choose to hear only the good stuff, selective seeing allows us to see only the good stuff, so we can calm our hearts.

Alternatively, if you prefer, you can play the hero and right the wrong by complaining through the media, the town councils and the community development councils, but these usually end up as a waste of time because things are unlikely going to improve with such complains. I've tried, I've been promised, and sometimes after years, the very thing I've complained about has been theoretically 'solved' with no improvement.

Take for example the cycling issue. I've written in the papers, and the good news was they will be extending sidewalks to cater for both cyclists and pedestrians. So I waited and after 1-2 years it was complete, but at all the wrong places. The main narrow sidewalk under the track of the MRT is where most cyclists-pedestrians have accidents, but the completion of project has been celebrated, but the problem persist and is not fixed for the main sidewalk, although every other sidewalks with hardly any problem have been fixed.

This is truly our country, this is indeed our land.

Consultative Management

All of us know the many different styles of managing a country or a company or even our subordinates. We sometimes use authoritarian style, at other times liberal style, and occasionally consultative style.

The Bible records one of the ways King David manage his team of warriors in making decisions, through the use of consultative management.

1 Chronicles 13:1-4 (NAS)
Then David consulted with the captains of the thousands and the hundreds, even with every leader.

David said to all the assembly of Israel, "If it seems good to you, and if it is from the LORD our God, let us send everywhere to our kinsmen who remain in all the land of Israel, also to the priests and Levites who are with them in their cities with pasture lands, that they may meet with us; and let us bring back the ark of our God to us, for we did not seek it in the days of Saul."

Then all the assembly said that they would do so, for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people.

If you are a good leader, a CEO, a director, a manager, or a supervisor, here is something you can learn from king David in the ways he manages his team. Learn to listen to the people at times. Use consultative management, but ALWAYS make decisions with God in your plan! Be sensitive to your staff, colleagues, and subordinates.

Problem with Corporate Management

Many of us working in organisations often wonder why the management seems to always make lives difficult for their staff.

We constantly see organisational and departmental restructuring which affects the way we work. We see corporate reengineering exercise where people get axed. We see and hear things that threaten our livelihood and we feel our supervisors are always picking on us. We suspect and know there are spies for management who are our peers, always lurking around our backs, ready to stab on us at every opportunity.

One of the many ways our management keeps an eye on us is through spies tapping on the grapevines. Grapevines are informal gatherings by colleagues to discuss anything in general, and in general, workers talk about their bosses, their unhappiness at work and the likes. A manager can either directly plant a spy in grapevines or indirectly insinuate to get his or her staff, especially secretaries, to convey messages. For example, the manager can unofficially leak news about possible retrenchment to secretaries who unknowingly hint about it at these informal gatherings, thus motivating staff to work harder, or make them demoralised and then play saviour to win support from staff.

Such are the politics working in a corporate world and these by no means are totally the fault of management. The truth is, managers are trained by education to do such things. Attend any business management study and you will find all these written in the textbooks.

Another technique frequently used by management is the reinforcement theory, which takes the view that workers are by nature lazy and must be scrutinized or manipulated constantly in order to yield results expected by management. In short, it means behaviour modification. The management may introduce a consequence or change the environment in order to increase or maintain frequency of staff participation. These may include punishment, controlled rewards, psychological segregation, or other methods. For examples, the threat or rumours of possible retrenchments, punishment of a staff to set an example, and the cutting of bonuses. By using such shock or depravity tactics, staff will then modify their behaviours and change attitudes toward work.

Some of us who are reading this article may be supervisors, managers, or bosses in our own companies. As people in a position to determine the behaviours of others, we must constantly be reminded that not all techniques we learnt from books or education are in real life practical. We ought to treat staff as human beings and hence we must use our own brains to decide what is best and not rely on learnt knowledge. Instead of manipulating, we may wish to consider how to increase staff's job satisfaction so that they may willingly sacrifice their time and efforts to go an extra mile.

To workers who are suffering at the hands of the management, know that all these exploitations are not necessary intentional on the part of the supervisors or managers. All these techniques used by them are not new and have been taught in academic schools. It is a flaw of the education system that makes them what they are. If we can make them see their wrongs and 'educate' them through staff consensus and feedback, or even through unions, let us try to make it work. However, if such methods don't work, then use the techniques they use on us to reverse the role, and hopefully in this way get attention from them by getting our message across.