Courage and Brave

Got this from Indika, a friend from my Bangkok cookie and cracker course. So good that everyone is still keeping in touch.

Scenario	(Me) I am…	(Boss) He is…
Taking a long time to finish	slow	thorough
Not doing it	lazy	busy
Doing something without being told	trying be smart	taking the initiative
Pleasing the boss	apple polishing	cooperating
Making a mistake	an idiot	only a human
Out of the office	wandering around	on business
On a day off sick	always sick	very ill
Applying for leave	going for an interview	being overworked

I should have laughed at this. Ever wonder why we always talk bad or think bad about our boss, no matter how good the boss is? I never did until I myself handle my staff. I realised that a boss needs to consider many aspects. They never want to be a mean boss, but circumstances force them to.

You need to be responsible and answerable to your staff's action. You need to consider budgetary constraint, human staffing issue, and technical issue while still maintaining your routine obligation at work. You need to ensure proper discipline at work and curb any problem from going out of control.

All this and you still need to focus on your own self-development. You need to consider your staff's self-development as well. When you yourself are demotivated, you still need to put up a tough front to motivate your staff. You dare not appear foolish since you do need to maintain your professionalism to garner some respect.

All these and lots more... how on earth do you expect a boss not to be mean at times? I myself is still finding my way in the dark, wanting to do some good to myself and to my staff, but honestly, we are all just humans. We fail at times. We lose respect at times.

I sometimes envy my staff because I yearned to be reprimanded and criticised for my shortfall. There wasn't much such thing around here. Sometimes when I met some resistance from my boss, I do feel like strangling him on the spot. Can't help, young blood boils up very fast.

But then, when I give myself some time to review the whole situation, I asked myself, if I put myself into my boss' shoe, how will I react? And that's when I realised that no one is at fault. We each value things differently so we interpret the situation differently. Factor in experience and technical knowledge, the gap is even bigger.

No right or wrong but there is a truth to the old adage... Great title comes with great responsibility. When you are the leader, you need to consider many factors in order to maintain the balance between productivity and expenditure. You need to plan for the overall improvement and fight the war with unforeseen circumstances.

Hence, I always believe that if your subordinates are better than  you in certain area, by all means, go ahead and develop them. Subordinates and boss should always complement each others strength and weakness. So the next time before you criticise your boss out of anger, do sit back and rethink, whether it's really his fault or it's purely due to different outlook on work.

Finally, we always heard people say this about our boss:
When I do good, he never remembers. When I do wrong, he never forgets.

I have to admit that I myself am like that. I always tell my staff, if you don't receive compliment when you do good, that is because you are hired to do good. But once you made a mistake, people will remember forever because of the trouble you had caused and because you are not hired to do wrong. So never made too rash decision as mistakes will cost you your credibility score.

This is definitely old school way of thinking but there is truth. I am not going to pretend that I am a modern in thinking. I do admit that I still work the old school way...