Singapore Expats

How many people have direct local bosses? What is your experience?

Anyone work with one of those completely authoritative bosses who want it their way only and really doesn't care about his people? He is not interested in the welfare of his people but simply his own agenda

How do you deal with such a boss?

I have a local boss , and my experience is a very good one.

I dont know if this is because he spent some time working Europe, and started out in a European owned company.

He is pretty cool about everything as long as you get your work done, and he is open to inputs from anyone with regards to to improving work practice.

It is definately not a case of " My way or the Highway"

The two best bosses I ever had (out of approx. 15) were, probably coincidentally, both Malaysian Chinese. The two worst were Westerners, and your description perfectly matches one of them (the other one didn't care about anything, just forwarded blame when things went wrong).

macaroonie wrote:How do you deal with such a boss?

My workplace had a training titled "how to deal with a troublesome manager" as well as another one that was "how to deal with difficult bosses"

Plan A : would be to look up something similar

Plan B : Find another boss


PS: my work place, post training, became more fun

Now, instead of arguing blindly, we argue in a structured way, like "make the story", "Make the fact", "present the story", "Find mutually beneficial areas", "work towards Common goal" .. though end of the day, our boss still doesn't waver from his decisions, though he goes through the motions ..

I'd say you either have to adapt or to move on. But there's no guarantee that you will have a better boss if you choose the latter.

macaroonie wrote:How many people have direct local bosses? What is your experience?

Anyone work with one of those completely authoritative bosses who want it their way only and really doesn't care about his people? He is not interested in the welfare of his people but simply his own agenda

How do you deal with such a boss?

Sounds exactly like one boss I had. 100% local, completely authoritative. Very educated, a PhD holder from a very established Scottish university. Made life a living hell for his employees. The solution? We all left

To be fair, arsehole managers are not confined to locals. You can find them anywhere in the world. Non-local managers that are here, though, seem to be more open-minded (probably a soft-requirement of being assigned to manage people of a different culture).

Personally, I had a boss who was less than ideal--chides and berates people, always moving goalposts, always sets high expectations, asks questions to which he expects nothing but the answers he wants to hear, sets deadlines that are too aggressive...blah, blah, blah. From a neighboring country, non-local, non-Chinese (let's just get that out of the way). His boss (our big-boss) once gathered our whole team and told us, "all of you seem to be... lacking motivation in your work"

One person lacks motivation --> probably his fault. But a whole team of different temperaments, abilities, cultural backgrounds lacking motivation now but previously did not when they were managed by a different boss? I think we--and especially the big boss--know the cause of the problem. Because we effin' gave feedback.

The solution? Our big boss gave us a manager who has more empathy. The unmotivating manager was then assigned elsewhere (outside his technical comfort zone) and has a team who already have motivation and are known who will talk smack back to him if he tries to pull the crap he did on us.

beppi wrote:The two best bosses I ever had (out of approx. 15) were, probably coincidentally, both Malaysian Chinese. The two worst were Westerners, and your description perfectly matches one of them (the other one didn't care about anything, just forwarded blame when things went wrong).

My boss is Malaysian Chinese

Thanks heaps for sharing your experiences. Sometimes i think there is a lack of a specific skill set and hence the boss we have is by default, not because they are the most suitable. I am not sure if those higher up have a big enough backbone to do something, do asians have that culture?? i dont see it happening often. It is really demoralising when one's boss doesnt have the team's best interest at heart and is the cause of the problems, rather than helping to solve problems.

When a new boss is appointed, those higher above should also assess the boss's performance, and the best way to do this is to ask the subordinates, but i have never heard this being done before - has anyone?

And after awhile working, i tend to pick a job because of the people and not necessarily just the paycheck size - what do you all think?

macaroonie wrote:Thanks heaps for sharing your experiences. Sometimes i think there is a lack of a specific skill set and hence the boss we have is by default, not because they are the most suitable. I am not sure if those higher up have a big enough backbone to do something, do asians have that culture?? i dont see it happening often. It is really demoralising when one's boss doesnt have the team's best interest at heart and is the cause of the problems, rather than helping to solve problems.

When a new boss is appointed, those higher above should also assess the boss's performance, and the best way to do this is to ask the subordinates, but i have never heard this being done before - has anyone?

And after awhile working, i tend to pick a job because of the people and not necessarily just the paycheck size - what do you all think?

Nice idea but you won't know much about the people part until you are on board for a considerable period of time.

Expects you to have more output compared to what is reasonable according to task and time given….everything to him can be done in 10 mins, he also tries to save on costs but makes stupid decisions which costs more than expected. Doesn’t listen to suggestions and opinions. What I do is everytime he does not listen, I say everything twice…with more emphasis. I have also taken to writing through email all sensitive topics, issues, clients, etc. And because he likes to flip flop on his decisions and pretend he didn’t instruct something, I have decided to ask him for every single decision on projects, etc. ..And because in the beginning I was able to accomplish any task, even the ones I have no responsibility over, he decided to give me every task he can think of..so I decided to say "no i don't know how to do that." even if i could do it.

he is indian singaporean but he migrated from India...does this have anything to do with that survey on insing i think that said "singapore bosses are the most stingy" ?

Perhaps the worst two bosses I've worked are from very different backgrounds and race, but, both managed people very badly.

First was a chap from my home country (UK) who was racist, rude self interested, demoralizing and generally a stuck up tw%t!

Second was a chap in Singapore (not local, but not western), and I didn't stick around for long! (I'm a little older and wiser now than previously)

Basically, my approach is, let them know your standing ASAP. Don't let them get one over on you at the start and you'll probably find you have a good relationship.

The manager in the UK made a racist (based on nation) comment to me on my first week, in front of my colleagues, so I immediately retorted by calling him a see you next tuesday and I never had a lot of problems for the remaining 8 weeks, but he was dreadful at dealing with those who let him talk to them like crap!

Sorry nutnut i dont follow, what do you mean by 'see you next tue?"

macaroonie wrote:Sorry nutnut i dont follow, what do you mean by 'see you next tue?"

Say the words out loud and hear what letters they sound like. For example, "see" when you say it out loud sounds like the letter "C". I'll let you work out the rest yourself...

Thanks Adda.

I called him a lady part...

Not my finest hour, but he was terribly rude and deserved it.