Analysis on Asian Power Distance

One thing that I completely hate about people is the concept of power distance. Seriously, I unleash my blackest hatred on people who think of themselves greater than others, and this can be also applied to work life. Guess what?Asia has power distance, I live in Asia. Maybe Asian people are so beat-down in the beginning of their career that they become tyrants later on? I really don't know, but I know that I damn sure don't like Asian bosses shouting, disrespecting, spitting and telling their sub-ordinates how to live their life. Job is just a job, and despite how much a boss values one's employee's skills, there should be mutual respect with an employer and an employee.

Maybe I'm talking about this with too narrow perspective, but before proven otherwise, my conception is this. Of course on the other hand, it is easy to see the benefits with power distance once you've grown into it (ie. without it workers don't do shit), but a method of managers discussing the solution, and later on forcing the workers to complete their job does not deliver enough to me. It results in serious overtimes, exhaustion, too high competition amongst the workforce, and all-in-all missing the real point of life. Pooping.

When managers don't cope on a same level with their sub-ordinates, they will never know how to create a solution to the problem. They instead create even more problems, while they should create solutions. I dare to argue that with a great power distance, a manager is bound to be partly unaware of one's employee's competences and areas of expertise. If the situation would be different, we could easily see how and what are the means of completing a task. Right now we instead got pink-clouded dreams of impossible schedules, technical solutions and such. A common worker knows how to dig a hole, he knows how long it takes, and he damn sure knows what tools and how many men are needed. Manager doesn't know these things in a situation where one just wants things done, but never contributes.

In order to understand the procedures and requirements of digging a hole, manager should have respect, discussion and genuine interest to those who can and will do it. Otherwise the job is done inefficiently, there is unnecessary tension around, and furthermore, the job takes a good while longer to complete. For me, this is directly connected with the concept of power distance - without it, if the problems still persists, its relatively easy to discover which of the involved parties (employee, employer etc) are incompetent.

Power distance does not need to be completely absent. However, it should derive from a healthy and natural respect of higher position instead of a whip and shouting.