Be Quick to listen, Slow to criticize

Do you flare up easily when your sub-ordinate points out some mistake in his work?

My big boss is … a boss, not a leader. A boss tends to see the faults of his sub-ordinates and act as if he knows all. A leader seeks to show the ways so that his followers can follow.

Once, I shared that a suppliers delivered an over specified component and was drawing too much current. He immediately started to flare out and questioned why we didn’t consider the efficiency of our design. My thought then was: “Hey, why should I bear the mistakes of a supplier?” I shared this to the management just to keep everyone inform that such subtle incidents do happen and not to point out any faults of anyone.

Then last week, we discovered some software bug. You know, software bugs always happen … after many trials and tests. Yep, the bug is a timing issue, it sometimes happen, but mostly it doesn’t. But when it happens, it can cause serious trouble, like what we see in some banks. When I told the management about this, again, he exploded and wanted to get people responsible and accountable. Instead of seeing the good of able to catch a software bug (like I did when my hardware engineer spotted it after meticulously tested the program), the big boss started to flare up.

Fortunately, my second boss is more understanding and I see the leadership in him. It is actually his technical knowledge and encouragement that keeps the whole engineering team moving. Without him, it is hard to work in this company.

¹⁹ My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, ²⁰ because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. (James 1:19,20)

 Agape