To supplement Markvs's post about Power Distance, I must say that having a short (or is it small - two words you don't want to hear from a woman anyway) Power Distance isn't that great either with the wrong boss.
The thing about short power distance is that while your boss is more friendly with you, and maybe acknowledges your skills better - you might not want him to do either.
Let's elaborate:
Having a boss as a friend is great, if the particular person is someone you'd most likely to be friends with anyway. However, when a boss you don't really like wants to be friends, the situation turns crap. You don't want his attention, you don't want any extra crap. You just want to do your job. Period.
In a proper company, if you have to do overtime or anything extra, there is a proper compensation for it. Or at least something is agreed upon. In a "friendly" company, there's a chance the extra work turns to be the standard, and are expected to do extra work because you're all such a big happy family, all putting in 130% effort for the common cause.
And he acknowledges your skills, eh? Well great. He can throw more work at you! Super fun since now you can work extra tasks.
"Our company hires several professionals"
Wrong, it's one guy doing several people's jobs at one go. And no need to hire any more people.
Well, of course not all bosses are like that, and having a short power distance can be the greatest thing ever. However, though maybe most bosses are not total pricks, all it takes is one. Your own boss.
Nothing personal here, of course.
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Good point! However, I have to say your writing went slightly off-the- track in my opinion;
ReplyDeletePower distance as such is not directly related to boss's friendliness in a way you presented it. Furthermore, for example purposes, the situation of boss acknowledging your skills is not a minus anyhow.
If you have a shit head boss, then;
a) With short PD - he makes you work overtime based on friendliness
b) With long PD - he makes you work overtime based on authority
Simply put, the shit head boss makes you do overtime regardless of power distance. But the main point is, that with shorter power distance these overtime issues are easier to settle. If one doesn't have the guts to settle them, its not the problem of short/long power distance. The problem lies within one's personality and the solution is called "watching after one's benefits".
..and yet, long/short PD doesn't outright mean that in these situations you presented, the compensation of overtime is dependable upon the factor of power distance.
Power distance is a cultural concept, which does not suffer from the situations you presented. Furthermore, short power distance's benefits don't suffer from these situations either.
Of course short PD can benefit work environment only in a situation where the management does their job remarkably well, but in order to analyze PD we have to make this assumption.
Then when you begin to implement shorter PD in practice, you need to take analyzes with a pinch of salt, and adjust and adapt to the situation and results. People don't work on paper.
But if you take every possible scenario - which are out of the actual context - the analysis on power distance becomes not just extremely difficult, but also insignificant.
Good post on a good subject, but slightly off-the-track, like said.
Right you are, Markvs: I was off the point - and that was my point, actually. In fact, I forgot to mention at the beginning of my post that your original post was quite brilliant and I agree with you.
ReplyDeleteI just thought of bringing up the dark-side of friendly bosses (more found in the side of short PD), who mingle with their employees.
My post was not directly related to the cultural concept of PD, just a reminder that even the best systems can go awry with the wrong people using them.
In both options, long and short PD, you can have a shitty boss and in both it might work wonderfully. It's a matter of personalities at their positions and how the personalities meet the expectations of others (the subordinates).
A boss with a long PD, if a good manager, might still ask the worker how to better dig the hole. He won't dig it himself, no, but the PD won't stop him from asking. Or at least asking someone else to check that matter. If the boss doesn't have skills in management, he will not ask and makes decision based on assumptions.
Furthermore, I do think it's not always good when the boss acknowledges all your super skills. Of course in most cases it's nice to receive credit from bringing add-value to the company but being exploited for having them sucks. Of course at that point you quit. Simple as that.
Like Markvs said, a job is a job. If you don't like it, or your boss, quit. Get a better one.
I'm still a supporter of short PD, though. I think it's more "humane" way of doing things. And as Markvs well put it, bosses aren't better people than their subordinates, so why pretend being?
This are just my thoughts on the matter; raised by the original post by Markvs.
XXL LOL. Absolutely no personal experience. Greetings from Toijala and best of luck to this new super-blog.
ReplyDeleteJ