Time to loosen up - this is an order
By Koh Buck Song
IN THE study of leadership, one discovers endless links between quite separate things. Research shows that people tend to be more motivated to work harder if bosses relate to them like key persons from their past, usually parents.
Sigmund Freud's perspective on psychoanalysis helps explain why Starbucks has a low staff turnover (four times below industry average) and high performance. Younger Starbucks staff, more used to getting room to manoeuvre at home, respond well in a workplace that includes them as 'partners' in decision-making.
This is 'transference' - projecting organisational expectations based on personal relationships.
In a Harvard Business Review article last month, Michael Maccoby, an American psychoanalyst, anthropologist and management consultant, observed that Westerners typically saw fathers and bosses as 'people who were helpful when needed but generally encouraged followers to be independent'.
Of course, there are strict Western parents too, but the generalisation is true: Western parents spare the rod and bring up children to be independent by age 18, if not earlier. So, Western employees appreciate getting the autonomy they are accustomed to at home.
Maccoby also found, with significant personal relationships extending beyond parents to others such as siblings, a team culture was more conducive.
By contrast, Asians - particularly ethnic Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore - 'wanted a father-manager who protected them and taught them. In return, they were willing to give the leader complete loyalty and obedience'. This follows from how the older generation raised offspring - to be seen, not heard. Thus, Asians are 'programmed' not to challenge authority whether in the office or society.
But there is a generational change happening now.
Maccoby found a new Asian trend: 'Young managers from Beijing, where the Cultural Revolution broke traditional family patterns, responded somewhat like the Westerners. They described the ideal leader as a good basketball coach who put people into the right roles, promoted teamwork, and knew how to adapt strategy to changing competition'.
The rise of Chinese individualism is personified in figures like American basketball star Yao Ming, a blend of Asian discipline and Western inventiveness. China's culture of family life has changed drastically, from a mix of control and benign neglect in large families previously, to today's liberation and close pampering of 'little emperors' in one-child families.
A similar shift has happened in Singapore. Children are being brought up differently now: Many parents want to give their children what they never had growing up: Asking awkward questions and making up their own minds.
How does this apply to the workplace? The many surveys showing high employee disengagement here suggest that leadership expectations are not being met. Employees who prefer less hierarchy and more peer teamwork feel hampered by old-style management. Over time, they lose the drive to show initiative, and also disengage.
These workings of 'transference' could explain why Singapore lacks entrepreneurial drive. Previously, following Dad's lead was instinctive and ingrained. Hence, the gravitation towards safe jobs. Now, young people are more adventurous but are still accustomed to rely on Dad for the good things in life.
Herein lies a fallacy in earlier thinking: Westerners are not 'genetically' more entrepreneurial or creative, so there is no reason to rely overly on foreign talent, or, worse still, stifle our own potential. It may just boil down to how we were brought up - much more nurture than nature.
This suggests the handicap can be overcome, although perhaps not entirely or easily, as we learn from Freud how deep and durable is the psyche, once formed. Still, what can be done to adapt Singapore's leadership culture to spur more entrepreneurship and the spirit of asking 'why not'?
One place to start is the effect of 'counter-transference' - opposite of 'transference' - when those in authority project their expectations as parents onto workplace subordinates. So, 'old-school' supervisors who expect staff to be like obedient children need to change their mindsets: Respect now has to be earned, not demanded.
This is relevant to the extent it is true that the current national desire to nurture more initiative may well be blocked at middle management levels.
But a solution may be at hand. If these 'old mindset' managers respond best to Freudian stimuli like top-down motivation, their bosses can try leading change by commanding them to loosen up. Why not?
The writer studied leadership at Harvard University.