Indian bosses are very ‘collectivist’ and are low in ‘individualism’ in their thinking, identifying with a family, caste, religious group—and their employer—although again, things are changing as the economy continues to grow, and especially in the high technology sector. The diaspora of many Indians to Britain and US means that managerial habits are changing, but Indians hang on to their culture despite integration into a new country. The Indian boss in a western company is quite capable of being western in appearance during the working day but very traditionally Indian when at home. He’s risk-averse in so far that he’s extremely concerned with job security and continuity, and ‘uncertainty-avoiding’ and blame-avoiding and not doing the wrong thing.

Everyone has a boss—some of us have two bosses or even more—but how to work effectively with this person? What are our objectives in dealing with our boss? Most of us like to have a friendly, cooperative relationship in which our boss likes us and trusts us, and gives us a positive evaluation during the performance evaluation process. But how can we ensure this result? How about if our boss is from a different country or region? How can we ever understand this person, and what is expected from us?

These reflections are based on cross-cultural dimensions created by well-known cross-cultural management authors Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner. Readers are referred to www.geert-hofstede.com and Riding the Waves of Culture: understanding cultural diversity in business (1997). But these are not statements of theory: these examples are based on real people, known to the authors. We have focused on four very different countries where your boss might come from—the UK (and a US boss is fairly similar); the Arab countries, and especially Egypt; from Russia, based on an example from Kazakhstan; and India. Then we will evaluate the best way to deal with—to manage —each boss!

For example, let’s look at a typical boss from the UK. He’s quite low ‘power-distant’ in that he likes to be friendly and accessible, available for consultation at any time. He likes to join his subordinates for lunch, sitting around the same table and sharing jokes as well as the food. He will even share his own problems with his team, trying to involve them in everything. He tries to delegate but sometimes is not very good at it, because he has a strong sense of conscientiousness and responsibility. He takes the problems of his team on his own shoulders and is upset if they don’t perform well, fall out with each other or are moody and difficult. Being their boss is very much his full-time job, and he is most concerned about not having to leave them alone. As a result of his extreme sense of responsibility and inevitable reluctance to delegate, all kinds of disasters can take place in his absence, as some of his team may take the opportunity to take things easy. His sense of responsibility means that if they don’t respond to something urgent, not to worry, he will do it!

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