Abuse of Power

So a manager was serving quarantine in a hotel on an island off the mainland of Singapore. She just returned to Singapore from abroad and had to comply with the pandemic measures. She wanted to attend her yoga class via zoom but didn’t have her yoga mat.

So she called her staff to go to her home, pick up the yoga mat and bring it to the hotel on the offshore island. Her staff could have said no. But she didn’t. She was concerned about being loaded with unnecessary work, or being picked on, or worse, getting an unfavourable appraisal.

The culture of compliance in our workplaces is reinforced by the continued use of one-way appraisals. This breeds cronyism and favouritism unless there is sufficient checks on the power of bosses.

Why check their power, you ask? Because the cronyism can breed mediocrity and the culture reduces productivity, encourages hypocrisy. Beyond adopting 360 appraisals, a different attitude and approach to appraisal is needed in the workplace.