Bad Monday, teamwork and values: Asian’s spring roll and approach to work.

”Some of the substance of English words, I just don't understand at all, because the culture is so strange to me.”

Chow Yun-Fat

哈罗 嘿 , 안녕, selamat pagi!

Hello everybody – it is nice to meet you again in this third post.

Our today’s journey finished in Asia! I would like to invite you to an exciting trip to Hong Kong, South Korea, and Indonesia…. Together with my guests, we discussed a way of perceiving job and happiness in their countries, what kind of cultural differences can be observed and are crucial to being looked on a polite person and proper candidate for a vacancy.  

I would like to introduce my guests and thank them for sharing own experience and broaden my current perspective: Irene and Hoan from Hong Kong, Kyung Min from South Korea and Dwiki from Indonesia :)

Individualism or collectivity?

As we may notice, people from Asia, in general, are a huge fan of spicy and tasty food. One of the best known are spring rolls, which are a combination of various vegetables, meats and other depending on a country. As all Asian people love this kind of snack I realized that for all of my guests “good relation with coworkers” is a significant factor to be satisfied and happy in the job. 

An interesting aspect in this area is that in order to be promoted in Indonesia it is not only to be polite, but also to make good connections with employees in a company. This is even more important in South Korea: they appreciate cooperation more than being the best expert who has not good relations with the group.

Literalness or to reading between the lines?

Working as a collectivity and taking care of relations are not the only common elements for my guests: all agreed that this what lead to being fired or just lose possibility for promotion is to communicate in improper way. For such open and direct person as Dutch, who are used to give “negative feedback” in a very direct way, working with Asians may be problematic. 

An indirect way of speaking, taking care of other person’s mood and feelings, being polite and pay attention to someone’s age (in South Korea even 1 or 2 years difference in age counts) play first fiddle. It is quite hard to use to totally opposite way of communicating. I used to work with people from Asia and it was always quite confusing for me to catch the main point of an answer: and still, I had no idea whether my interpretation is right or not really…

Does satisfaction and happiness mater?

“With a suitable job, you are not afraid of Monday” I really enjoyed Irene’s quote. 

Indeed in each country, a satisfying job is perceived as part of happiness, but there are some differences: in Indonesia satisfaction may be driven down because of unsatisfying salary or bad relation with colleagues people from South Korea are quite serious with finding “fit-job”: one aspect is that society requires to provide a high quality of service and also have job corresponding to their values. As Kyung Min said: Happiness cannot be fulfilled by only doing joyful things, but fulfilled by working and being in charge of some rules in our society

Hong Kong employees are more realistic about the current job market: from one side job satisfaction makes them feel happy, and another side of the coin is that they are aware of how hard is to find a satisfying job. They accepted this “fact” and tend to find a happiness through good relationships and social status.

To be HONEST, in order to find a suitable job, we need to WORK HARD as in Hong Kong, COOPERATE and ask about advice someone who knows this background well and just be AFFABLE – it is hard to win trust after losing a face.

Cheers,
Natalia