I spent a tiring half hour trying to explain to a colleague why it is better to avoid confrontations. Alas, without success.
It is a syndrome with us in India. We always have to feel superior. My caste is better than yours. My religion is better than yours. My gender is better than yours. I am your employer therefore...I am senior to you by few seconds so you better... constantly we hammer this into the other person.
So my colleague wants to show that he is Da Boss. Go ahead. Show it. But do not expect the people working under you to have any respect for you or work properly for you.
The other faculty are amazed that my Lab attendant does actual work for me. I have been very lucky. He is amazing. Of course there are times when I get angry with him but since he ends up doing all the paper work, I usually forget to remain angry with him. He got promoted and was moved away from my lab but he still does all my paper work. He also ends up fighting on my behalf. On one memorable occasion, when the project cell was making my life miserable as usual and refusing to pay my air fare for a conference, he told the project cell section officer that as I had paid the fare out of my pocket, he better be ashamed of himself and reimburse me pronto. Needless to say the section officer called me up, apologized and reimbursed the entire amount pronto. And after that incident he has never harassed me and my bills do get paid sooner or later.
But I cannot explain this to others. Just treat the other person as a human being. Why can´t you?
The same phenomenon holds for interviews too. The committee sits grim faced, ready to show that the candidate walking into the room knows nothing and then proceeds to grill him/her on all that they have memorized. For heavenś sake, why can´t we simply talk to them, try to figure out their interests and ask them questions that they can answer?
Oh well, one cannot change the leopardś spot.
