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All Asians Are Not Quiet
Kellye Whitney, 09-21-2009
Stereotypes aren’t just emotionally hurtful. If they’re deeply ingrained, as many are, they can actually prevent the recipients from advancing in the workplace. Consider Asians — and here we speak generally of the roughly 20 countries that make up Asia — who are often thought too quiet and meek for leadership positions. Deserving candidates may be consistently overlooked for their more vocally daring counterparts, while that perceived silence is actually a demonstration of respect for hierarchy and leadership.
Anna Mok, a partner at Deloitte; founding president of the Northern California chapter of Ascend; and current chairman and national vice president for the national board of Ascend, a membership organization focused on advancement of Asians in the workplace, said these stereotypes — being less vocal, less assertive, more technically skilled or very smart — can prove challenging and even make some Asians more critical of themselves as they attempt to adapt unique communication or management styles to a given situation.
“The perception that people don’t speak up is probably not true,” Mok said. “If you ever see Asians in a home setting, there’s a lot of debate, and it’s a pretty loud, verbal place. In the workplace, people don’t see that because there’s a high regard for respect and hierarchy. And there are nuances between all of the many countries that make up the term Asian or pan-Asian, down to the individual.
“That Asians tend to believe in respect for elders and hierarchy gets morphed in the workplace. If a person’s boss is talking, an Asian may be less likely to say something in a public forum that looks like it would be challenging or could be seen as not showing respect. Often in American business settings, that may be perfectly acceptable, and if you do that well it can be seen as adding value to the discussion.”
The aforementioned workplace stereotypes — particularly around communication patterns — have become so ingrained that some young Asian professionals may actually develop them because they think society or the workplace expects them to behave in a certain way, said Sandeep Gupta, a partner at Deloitte and the founding and current president of the metro New York chapter of Ascend.
“The other challenge is the expectation they may have that the broader workforce and the leaders within that want to force people to behave like themselves. [Leaders] may not be as comfortable with the behavior pattern or the communication style or the leadership style of Asians and want to force Asians to change,” he explained. “Then the Asian-American is put under pressure to transform completely to be accepted in the work environment.”
Diversity leaders can help mitigate these misunderstandings by increasing the awareness of all parties.
“This is not [that] an individual has a problem and they need to fix it, or the company is doing something institutionally wrong and they need to fix it,” Mok said. “A lot of diversity is about programs, strategies and the importance companies place on diversity, but it’s as much around what diversity leaders [are] doing to close that potential understanding gap.’
Essentially, managers may have misconceptions about the people they’re managing. The diversity leader can ensure people look and operate through a broader lens and have a higher level of sensitivity or understanding of the workforce.
“Individual[s] also need to recognize what works, what doesn’t work, figure out what’s most important to them, make adjustments and adapt in ways that allow them to be true to themselves but also allow them to be effective in their organizations,” Mok said.
Mok said diversity leaders also can drive advancement and retention of Asians, rather than focusing solely on boosting recruiting efforts for this group. For instance, they can help strategize succession planning and strategic deployment into different roles and functions that will develop the skills and experiences candidates need in order to take advantage when opportunities arise to step into leadership roles.
“It’s important that [those] in the leadership role embrace diversity as well as embrace challenges faced by people,” Gupta said. “But there needs to be a broader group of leaders that play a role in addressing these challenges. There is a need to create specific programs that every minority group needs to work on to help develop skill sets or help practice and get the right opportunities to make it known they have the capabilities to communicate or lead. Talent and HR personnel are good at providing solutions, but those solutions need to be tailored to a company’s people, and the solutions have to be developed with input from the field.
“Understanding Asian-Americans is a topic that’s here, it’s urgent in a growing workforce, and it’s going to increase over time. Understanding Asian-Americans, and the cultural side of it, is going to be even more important as Asia as a business destination finds its place of importance for those in the U.S.”
