Monday, February 6, 2012

Hanging Out with the Boss

Would you hangout with your boss?  Dinner, or drinking, maybe sports, or shopping?  Proabably not.  Peer and social pressure is very strong in the Philippines.  It would be probably be better to be called tamad (slacker) than sipsip (kiss-ass).

There is no chance for an employee, even a manager to be buddies-buddies with a company president.  The implication is just too much.  If you are a very good employee, and the whole office know you are friends with the president, at the end of the year, you get a good rating or even got promoted, hmmm chances are people will think you got it because of connections.

So just like knowledge is alienating, so is position.  CEOs or company presidents have vast connections of people, but I doubt if they really have many good friends.  There is an invisble barrier that people have to keep.  It is an interesting unwritten rule that employees abide.  You can have dinner with the boss, of course, but maybe once every 3 months.  Otherwise, you become a regular boss's dinner buddy and it does not look good.  Even if the only thing you are doing is ...well, dining.  The mechanics does not change whether you are a man and your boss is a man. Or a woman, if your boss is a woman. 

Be ready for controversy if you and your boss have opposite sexes.  Maybe not just controversy, maybe a scandal of job-termination proportions.

So how do you make friends if you are the boss?

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