Making the Invisible Visible
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Praise for Making the Invisible Visible “Thatchenkery and Sugiyama have indeed succeeded in making the invisible visible in this powerful, research-driven account of the experience of Asian-Americans inside our organizations. More than a call for sensitivity or tolerance toward others who are different, this book shows us what we’re missing when we fail to notice the talented AsianAmerican resources around us. In a competitive business environment, we need all the help we can get. Some of that help is right under our noses, already available and waiting to be recognized for the strengths they bring. In the end, this isn’t a book about Asian-Americans; it’s about all of us, and what we need to do differently to win.” —William Pasmore, Professor of Practice, Teachers College, Columbia University “Excellence can be achieved through multiple ways that need to be adapted particularly to the culture around us. The leadership contributions of Asians and Asian-Americans through quiet leadership are supported by research and interesting illustrations. A must-read for those interested in a holistic approach to leadership and change.” —Manoj Juneja, Deputy-Director General (Operations), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations “As the challenges facing business change, we see how limiting the traditional leadership stereotype is. People outside the standard mold– younger employees near the bottom of the corporate hierarchy, women who wish to take a break from their careers, managers who lack ‘charisma’ but are quietly collaborative–can be more effective than the typical leader in meeting today’s business challenges. Making the Invisible Visible adds a cultural dimension to this issue, showing how in Western companies Asian-Americans often hit a glass ceiling, one that robs their organizations of the value they could create as senior leaders.” —Vineet Nayar, CEO, HCL Technologies, and bestselling author of Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down “A powerful narrative about the need to embrace an inclusive model of leadership in global organizations. Thatchenkery and Sugiyama have provided a compelling case for reaching out to the quiet leaders in your organization who may have ideas and strategies that if implemented may give you a solid competitive advantage.” —“Tiger” Tyagarajan, President and CEO, Genpact
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Making the Invisible Visible Understanding Leadership Contributions of Asian Minorities in the Workplace
TOJO THATCHENKERY AND
KEIMEI SUGIYAMA
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MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE
Copyright © Tojo Thatchenkery and Keimei Sugiyama, 2011. All rights reserved. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–10306–1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thatchenkery, Tojo Joseph. Making the invisible visible : understanding leadership contributions of Asian minorities in the workplace / by Tojo Thatchenkery and Keimei Sugiyama. p. cm. ISBN 978–0–230–10306–1 (hardback) 1. Asian Americans—Employment. 2. Leadership—United States. I. Sugiyama, Keimei. II. Title. HD8081.A8T53 2011 331.6⬘250973—dc22
2011005464
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: September 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.
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To my husband Jesse for his ongoing support, my sister Keikoh and brother-in-law Jin for being my sounding boards, my younger sister and brother, my parents, and to my nephew Evan and my own future children that they can have all opportunities available to them to achieve their dreams. —K.S. To Tessy, Sruthi, and my parents. —T.T.
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Contents
List of Tables
ix
List of Figures
xi
Acknowledgments 1 2 3 4 5 6
Introduction: Visibility for Invisible Leaders A Pulse Survey of Asian Americans at Work Making the Invisible Visible: Interviews and Analysis Invisible Leadership: What Is Invisible Leadership? Making Invisible Leadership Work Highlighting Invisible Strengths: Career Management Strategies 7 Invisible Minority: The Story of the Asian and Asian American Glass Ceiling 8 Invisible Ceiling 9 Seeing the Ceiling: “Our” Story: Who Are Asian Americans? 10 Strategies for Organizations Epilogue: A Conversation between Keimei and Her Nephew Evan
xiii 1 7 25 41 61 79 101 123 137 157 169
Appendices
173
Notes
177
Authors’ Biographies
191
Index
193
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Tables
2.1 Experience Base of the 250+ Respondents 2.2 Self-identified Country of Origin or Ethnic Roots 2.3 Educational/Professional Background of the 250+ Respondents 2.4 Work Experience of Survey Participants in Years 2.5 Level of Responsibility by Titles Held by the Respondents 2.6 Perceived Satisfaction with Career Growth 2.7 Percentage of Respondents Who Feel That They Were Treated Unfairly at Work Due to Ethnicity 2.8 Percentage of Respondents Who Feel Comfortable Voicing Their Opinions about Their Work with Colleagues and Managers 2.9 Percentage of Respondents Who Feel Their Coworkers Share Their Values That Are Important to Them in a Work Environment 2.10 Percentage of Respondents Who Feel Their Contributions Are Recognized by Their Supervisor 2.11 Percentage of Respondents Who Feel That Their Manager Understands Challenges That They’ve Overcome to Complete Their Work 2.12 Range of Possible Actions by Asian Americans If Their Contributions Are Not Recognized by Their Managers 2.13 Qualities Rated as Most Important for Career Success in Workplace 2.14 Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Know What They Need to Do to Progress in His or Her Career 2.15 Frequency of Meetings with Supervisor
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9 9 10 10 10 10 13
13
13 15
16
16 19 19 19
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TABLES
2.16 Percentage of Respondents Who Have Mentors and Role Models to Advance Their Careers at Work 2.17 Percentage of Respondents Who Belong to Affinity Groups within Their Organization Specific to Ethnic Roots 6.1 Understanding Social Capital 6.2 Increasing Your Social Capital 6.3 Increasing Your Social Capital with Appreciative Intelligence 7.1 Educational Attainment and Mean Annual Earnings from Descriptive Statistics for Men in 2003 7.2 Ethnic Group Based on Country of Birth from Descriptive Statistics for Men in 2003 7.3 Income in 2005 by Educational Attainment Year-Round Full-Time Workers, Both Sexes, 25+ Years of Age 7.4 Sector Wise Percent of All Jobs 7.5 Senior Pay Level (SPL) Representation FY 2008 7.6 Category Wise Workforce Percentage 7.7 AAPI Federal Workforce—Ten-Year Trend 7.8 Types of Racism 7.9 Occupational Status by Racial Groups (Age 25–64,1991–1996) 7.10 Summary of Finding from Carnfield Study 7.11 Basic Population Statistics
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20
20 82 84 91 104 105 105 111 114 115 115 117 119 121 121
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Figures
2.1 Qualities Necessary for Career Success. 6.1 Non-minority Student Identity Circle and Minority Student Identity Circle. 6.2 A Current Life Balance Scenario. 6.2 B Future Life Balance Scenario. 6.3 Job-focused Work Value Circle and Self-focused Work Value Circle. 7.1 Total Private Sector Employment by Race/Ethnic Group, 1998–2008. 7.2 Private Sector Professionals by Race/Ethnic Group, 1998–2008. 7.3 Private Sector Officials and Managers by Race/Ethnic Group, 1998–2008. 7.4 EEOC Private Industry Data for Senior Level Officials and Managers by Ethnic Group, 2008. 7.5 EEOC Private Industry Data for Professional Workforce by Ethnic Group, 2008. 7.6 EEOC Private Industry Data for Mid-Level Officials and Managers by Ethnic Group, 2008. 7.7 Percentage of Asian Officials and Managers and Professionals by Subsector. 7.8 Percentage of African American Officials and Managers and Professionals by Subsector. 7.9 Percentage of Hispanic Officials and Managers and Professionals by Subsector. 7.10 Highest Ranking Woman and/or Minority Reporting Levels Removed from CEO. 7.11 Highest Ranking Woman and/or Minority: Average Salary Ranking within Company, 1993–1994.
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18 87 92 92 95 107 108 108 109 110 110 111 112 112 113 114
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xii
7.12 7.13 8.1 10.1
FIGURES
Chance to Rise to Management Relative to National Average, 2000–2002. Sectorwise Breakup of Asian Labor Percentage of Total Labor. There Are Majorities within Minorities. Leadership at Three Levels.
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116 120 130 165
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Acknowledgments
We are indebted to several individuals in the endeavor of putting this book together. We thank the nearly twenty senior executives of private sector and government agencies who graciously gave their time to talk with us about their experiences. To protect their anonymity, the names of those organizations or the identity of the interviewees is not mentioned. We also thank the 250+ Asian American managers in profit, nonprofit, and government agencies who took the time to complete the survey on Asian American work experiences and the 30 Asian Americans who took the pilot survey. We are also grateful to several colleagues who supported us in many ways and for helping us reach out to the Asian American staff at various organizations to complete the survey on Asian American work experiences. They include J.D. Hokoyama, President and CEO of LEAP; Linda Akutagawa, Sr. Vice President of Resource & Business Development, LEAP; Lily Tang, The FutureWork Institute; Jino Ahn, President of National Association of Asian MBAs; Robina Singh, Program Manager, National Association of Asian MBAs; Ravi Behara, Florida Atlantic University; Yann King of the Asian American Government Executives Network (AAGEN); and Param Srikantia, Baldwin Wallace College. Sunil Kumar, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, School of Public Policy; Debasree Das Gupta, PhD candidate, School of Public Policy; and Penny Potter and Irma Firbida, graduates of the ODKM program helped with research literature. Keimei would also like to thank her friend and supervisor Hillarie Elizondo for her flexibility and support during the entire duration of this project. We have tried our best to ensure that references and citations are used with the permission of the copyright holders or publishers when
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xiv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
necessary and to give appropriate credits to individuals and organizations. If we have made an error, please let us know and we will make appropriate acknowledgment in future editions of this book. We thank Laurie Harting, Executive Editor of Palgrave Macmillan for enthusiastically commissioning our book and providing us with continuous feedback during the writing period. We are grateful to Tiffany Hufford, Joel Breuklander, and Rohini Krishnan for their very capable and prompt editorial and production assistance. Although there may be others whom we have not mentioned by name, we are sincerely grateful for your contributions. Last, but not the least, we are indebted to our families—Tessy, Sruthi, and Jesse for their understanding and support. Tojo Thatchenkery and Keimei Sugiyama
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Chapter 1 Introduction Visibility for Invisible Leaders
The American iconic company Apple Inc. lost $7 billion in market value on January 18, 2011, when news broke out that their most visible leader Steve Jobs will take a leave of absence for health reasons. This was despite the fact that Apple had announced a “blow out” profitable first quarter the same day when sales surged 75 percent and gave even more promising guidance for rest of 2011, even though the company is known for providing generally conservative estimates. Much less known was that over the last several years, Steve Jobs had nurtured and assembled an extremely capable team of senior leadership to look after all aspects of Apple’s business, and this team was responsible for the exceptional execution of business strategy for the company. Yet, these leaders were not as visible as Apple’s legendary founder Jobs has been and hence the market’s lack of faith in the quiet leaders. When we think of the most visible person in the workplace, we typically think of those who are in the most senior leadership positions: the CEO, the president of the organization, the program manager. Typically with this view of leadership, we associate traits that promote the individual, such as having charisma, being outspoken, and having a sense of showmanship to engage an audience. We assume that having visibility means leadership through “showing” others what it means to be a leader. Yet through our interviews with leaders of an Asian American background, we found different and more collectively
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focused themes for leadership. Rather than leadership through “showing” or talking up their work, we found a common theme of leadership through focusing on the action of “doing.” The benefit of leading this way is that because leaders spend their energy on “doing” rather than “showing,” the natural focus of their attention is on their team. If energy is focused on “showing,” the focus of attention is on who they are “showing” to or speaking the loudest to be heard. Yet, what happens when everyone is focused on showing? Often talented individuals end up spending their time and energy on one-upping each other in a work environment of competition and showmanship. This kind of work environment may be effective in turning around short-term achievement; however, it is not a long-term sustainable approach and leads to burn out. A recent research by Grant, Gino, and Hofmann (2011)1 provides insight on how leaders who lead through these more extraverted qualities, such as having charisma and having an outgoing personality, are a potential liability for performance, especially when employees or people they lead show initiative. They found that highly extraverted leaders tend to talk more and listen less to the ideas that the employees provide. In a research conducted at Carnegie Mellon University by Anita Wooley, it was found that groups who approached problem solving with a collaborative and collectively focused approach had a more efficient problem-solving process and came up with more innovative approaches as compared to groups who had individually focused participants who dominated the discussion.2 Grant et al. (2011) study also shows that introverted leaders typically have more trouble getting promoted compared to their extraverted colleagues who actively draw attention to themselves. So, although the introverted leaders support their team members and build collaborative teams that provide longterm sustainability, their contributions are going unseen. They are the invisible leaders that provide the building blocks for organizations to sustain their talent, yet they are not receiving a voice at the senior leadership table. What we found in our research of Asian Americans is that many apply more collectively focused approaches to leadership. In doing so, similarities can be found in the way Asian Americans seem to struggle in reaching higher levels of leadership. The contributions of these leaders were not gaining the visibility above them where promotion decisions
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INTRODUCTION
3
are made, which often led to delays in upward mobility. Why does this occur? What causes the invisibility of these leaders? We explore in this book the possible causes for this invisibility and particularly the glassceiling phenomenon that can be found for Asian Americans and Asian minorities in other Western countries. The glass-ceiling metaphor is easy enough to understand as a concept, but understanding the various ways in which the glass ceiling can be experienced by different groups is a challenge. The glass-ceiling issues facing Asian Americans are particularly difficult for people to wrap their minds around. Some may argue that Asian American don’t have a glass ceiling at all. After all, just look around you. Asian Americans are everywhere in institutions of higher education and in the professional workforce. How could there be any issues or challenges to discuss for Asian Americans? They’ve (or we’ve) got it pretty good. However, this common perception is a misperception. Although Asian Americans have achieved a certain amount of success and have good general representation in the professional workforce, that representation is not translating into upward mobility to the highest levels of leadership. Chapter 7, the Invisible Minority, explores the statistics and data available that show that these challenges exist. Part of the reason this invisibility persists is because Asian Americans have not found full acceptance into the most senior levels of leadership and do not have a voice at the top. In addition to missing a voice of advocacy at the top, because of the model minority paradigm that Asian Americans have “made it,” they also lack a voice of advocacy from a diversity perspective. In the United States, where identifiable and commonly accepted diversity issues that have a voice receive the support needed to address these challenges, the ambiguous nature of Asian American identity and the lack of awareness for their issues leaves them without an outlet or a way to address their experiences. Who are Asian Americans? Interpretation of who is included in this group is often unclear. At times, even Asian Americans themselves do not identify with this term. The term “Asian American” groups together ethnicities from a wide variety of very different countries across the Asian continent. Although widely accepted as a geographical reference point, the continent itself is somewhat arbitrarily defined through the concepts of East versus West. Some may ask east of what? What is the reference point that groups these very different and
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distinct countries together? If Asian Americans themselves experience this ambiguity in defining themselves as a cohesive group, then garnering support for the issues identified in this book pose a challenge. In writing this book, we knew that we had an important story to tell regarding Asian Americans from our own direct experiences as well as through our research and from hearing the stories from Asian Americans about the difficulties they were facing in pursuing upward mobility at work. Many didn’t know how to make sense of their experience and lacked a forum in which to vet their ideas. In our survey information as well as in interviews, we found that Asian Americans either do not have the opportunity for building advocacy communities at work or do not know one may be needed. Many interpret their experience as an individual experience, yet in our research, we found that there are common themes of experience across Asian Americans despite the ambiguity for the definition and identity for Asian Americans as a cohesive ethnic group. Gaining support for this book proved to be a long and evolving process. Faced with the paradigm of the model minority, we struggled to market the need for support for Asian American issues and the positive contributions that could be made by increasing their presence in senior leadership positions. We found that life imitates art, and as these issues remain invisible for Asian minorities, we faced many challenges in getting the advocacy and support needed to make this book possible. Multiple iterations of proposals were needed to bring clarity to complex and competing set of issues to a diverse range of reader audience As we worked through all the different iterations of outlines and strategies for how to approach this topic, we were forced to continually question our case. Did we really have something to contribute to the diversity dialogue? What do we have to say that could make these invisible issues visible when even Asian Americans themselves are often unaware? For those who question its premise, this book provides a framework through which to transform the same qualities that are contributing to this invisibility phenomenon into a positive leadership approach that provides a counterweight to balance the showmanship approach to leadership. Showmanship can lead to short-term achievement; however, an environment full of only this kind of leadership does not provide the opportunity for long-term sustainable performance. Change is starting to happen to take a more balanced and inclusive
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INTRODUCTION
5
approach to leadership. An example of an Asian American leader who has been able to rise to the most senior level is Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo. In leading PepsiCo, Nooyi established PepsiCo’s performance with a purpose that commits to human, environmental, and talent sustainability.3 It is this ability to lead with long-term focus, with collaboration, and with an approach to reward the whole that builds a leadership of “doing” versus one of “showing.” These qualities give Asian Americans the ability to positively contribute and balance dominant leadership approaches that exist in the United States and other Western countries. In the second chapter we provide different examples of Asian American leaders and how they utilize these elements of invisible leadership. In later chapters, we also discuss strategies for Asian Americans in career management. Although change is slowly happening, individually focused styles of leadership continue to be more common in the most senior levels of leadership. Given the increasingly global nature of work environments and the ever changing make up of the workforce, this commonly held view must change. Although there may be challenges faced today, invisible leaders are in an opportune position to help organizations make this change. For Asian Americans, what can be learned is how to translate their positive attributes and apply them not only to how they lead their teams, but also in managing up to levels above them. We will also provide strategies for organizations for how to support these efforts of those leaders whose contributions may be going unseen today, and how to find the invisible leaders of their organization. Although Asian Americans are the primary focus of this book, we also take a step back to consider those of an Asian ethnic background in other Western countries to see if similar trends exist. Given the increasingly global climate of today’s work environment, taking a look at Asian minorities in other countries to determine whether similar experiences existed provides us an opportunity to determine if there are cultural aspects of Asian cultures that contribute to the overall themes we found for these invisible leaders. What we found for Asian minorities in other Western countries is also provided throughout the book. The similarities provide the context that there is something to be said for the cultural background of Asians that contribute to this ability to think differently, to take a more collective approach to leadership, and provide a long-term focused perspective.
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We begin to unfold this story through providing our findings as we conducted a survey of Asian Americans and interviews with Asian American leaders. This information can be found in the first two chapters of this book. From there, we propose the concept of invisible leadership to place structure around the themes that we found in our interviews and in finding what is working in terms of Asian American leaders who have reached the highest levels of leadership, such as the very well-known examples of Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, Andrea Jung of Avon, and Tony Hsieh of Zappos. After establishing the concept of invisible leadership we provide Asian Americans with strategies for how to leverage these elements and how to use these abilities to proactively manage their careers. We also provide organizations with ways to seek out and benefit from these leaders who can balance more individualistic leadership approaches so that all voices may be heard in their organization. In addition, readers can find the historical background of how paradigms of Asian minorities formed over time, and how this phenomenon created the invisible minority and the invisible glass ceiling faced by Asians in Western countries. By providing data, anecdotes, historical information, and a structure around these issues, we hope that we can raise the awareness and support that has been absent for this group that has so much to offer. In doing so, the invisible leaders that are going unseen today can be the visible leaders of tomorrow.
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Chapter 2 A Pulse Survey of Asian Americans at Work
In writing this book, we knew from personal experience and through facilitating past discussion groups that Asian Americans were facing unique challenges in the workplace that were going unseen. We found research and statistics to support the glass ceiling for Asian minorities that can be found in chapter 7, Invisible Minority; however, we wanted to find out how Asian Americans themselves felt about their experience and provide them with a voice. We also wanted to validate our assumptions and determine if the impressions we had could be found across a random sampling of Asian Americans. The common theme we found in talking with Asian Americans through different discussions and focus groups conducted by both authors throughout their careers is that Asian Americans often viewed their experience as an isolated individual occurrence, and they did not see the tie into a larger community of experience. One survey respondent commented on this issue by saying: I think the whole idea of labeling oneself an ‘Asian-American’ is defective thinking. Living in America, we need to believe and understand that we are not ‘Something’-American. We are all simply American; regardless of our heritage, or ethnic background . . . I hate organizations that are specifically designed to promote a minority race or ethnic group. . . . I am proud to be an American, not Asian-American. Whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.
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Although this is just one comment out of many survey respondents, clearly, the term Asian American is not one that all Asian Americans identify with, making it difficult to build a community of advocacy around these issues. What we’ve found, however, is that despite the perception that their experience occurs in isolation, there is a common experience because of the way that others perceive and treat Asian Americans. This impression that others hold of Asian Americans can affect the degree to which Asian Americans can gain the social capital needed for career mobility. (More can be found in chapter 6, Highlighting Invisible Strengths, about impression management and social capital.) The intent behind this survey was to take a current pulse of Asian American attitudes toward work and career mobility and provide a snapshot across a random sampling of Asian Americans on whether these common threads could be found. We also wanted insight into whether we may have blind spots in understanding Asian American experience in the workplace. Finally, we wanted to validate whether the concept of “invisible leaders” that we use throughout this book has resonance with the population that we understood to exemplify these characteristics. We surveyed across public, private, and nonprofit sectors and across different levels of responsibilities and years of experience. As of December 31, 2010, we received 253 responses from Asian Americans across the country by leveraging distribution lists of different Asian American advocacy and affinity groups. Respondents were asked a series of questions about how they feel their ethnic background influences their experience in their work environment, how they manage their relationships with supervisors and managers above them, how they manage their careers, and what they value in leadership. Different work environments vary greatly in terms of the level of awareness and understanding that exists for diversity issues. As such, experiences can range from blatant discrimination to more subtle actions that affect Asian Americans in their workplace. In surveying Asian Americans, we sought first to establish the degree to which they experience negative behaviors from others in their work environment because of their ethnicity. We also measured levels of communication and engagement of Asian Americans in their workplace by asking about relationships with supervisors, career management–related activities,
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and participation in affinity groups. These survey questions can be found in appendix 1. Demographically, the majority of survey respondents were seasoned professionals with seven plus years of experience, yet percentages of representation drop significantly at the senior manager and above levels. Although this is a random sampling meant to simply establish a pulse of Asian Americans, this trend reflects the broader understanding that many Asian Americans are stuck at a mid-level manager or in a smaller team lead position despite their amount of work experience. When asked if they are satisfied with their career growth, only 48 percent were satisfied. Many have been bypassed for promotion or feel stuck in their careers, which reflects that the challenges with the glass ceiling are being felt and experienced. Demographic data and percentages for answers to these questions can be found in the tables.
Table 2.1 Experience Base of the 250+ Respondents Public Sector Private Sector Nonprofit
32.8% 50.2% 17.0%
Table 2.2 Self-identified Country of Origin or Ethnic Roots Indian Chinese Korean Japanese Vietnamese Filipino Others Thai Multiracial Malaysian Cambodian Pakistani Bangladeshi Nepalese
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43.4% 24.5% 6.0% 5.6% 5.2% 4.0% 3.3% 2.4% 2.0% 1.2% 0.8% 0.8% 0.4% 0.4%
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M AKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE Table 2.3 Educational/Professional Background of the 250+ Respondents Management Engineering Information Technology Social Sciences Biological & Medical Sciences Physical & Mathematical Sciences Arts Humanities Law Public Policy
40.4% 27.8% 24.9% 15.9% 11.0% 6.1% 4.9% 4.9% 4.5% 4.5%
Table 2.4 Work Experience of Survey Participants in Years Entry Level (0–3 years experience) Mid Level (4–6 years of experience) Experienced (7+ years of experience)
6.8% 16.1% 77.1%
Table 2.5 Level of Responsibility by Titles Held by the Respondents Team member Team lead Manager of a division/branch/department, etc. I own my own company (small business) Senior manager, director, or vice president of several divisions/branches/departments, etc. Chief officer at my company (large business) or program manager (public sector) Office assistant
28.9% 22.7% 21.1% 11.8% 10.6% 3.7% 1.2%
Table 2.6 Perceived Satisfaction with Career Growth I am satisfied with my career growth I have been bypassed a few times and others have got ahead of me I feel stuck in my career I have been bypassed many times
47.9% 27.5% 16.7% 7.9%
Several survey respondents provided comments regarding being bypassed for promotion. One respondent shared that other Asian managers at his or her work were afraid of how they may be perceived for promoting others of an Asian ethnic background. They feared the
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perception of showing favoritism simply because of a shared ethnic background. One respondent also commented that a Caucasian woman coworker was provided with an equity adjustment to her salary, while he received no response from his senior leadership for the same request. This story shows that as an Asian American, the respondent was perceived differently from his Caucasian woman coworker and that perhaps his supervisor did not see the need to provide additional support to an Asian American man. Similar differences in treatment by colleagues or those in leadership can be found in the comments below: “My opinion does not have the same weight as that of a white male or female with less experience and less education; I am not given the high-profile assignments because of the perception that I do not have the ‘presence’ and senior executives will not listen to me.” “I feel my opinion is less valued in group discussions though a month later I would realize that my idea would have corrected the situation.”
In other comments Asian Americans struggle with the expected behavior based on stereotypes: “As an AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) female, I was expected to be quiet and submissive and when I acted like myself, it was as if something was wrong with me.” “If I show leadership qualities, people are a bit surprised, as if they did not expect that of me.” “I am seen as the ‘techy’ so my leadership skills are often not acknowledged.” “We were at a Christmas party and the CIO who never spoke to me, waved me over. Wow, finally an opportunity to speak to the man. When I got there the man put his shrimp tail shells onto my plate and laughed. He expected me to dump it for him. Thank God this is the exception than the rule.”
One of the greatest contributors to the glass ceiling for Asian Americans is the mental models through which they are seen. These stories bring to light the challenge of the model minority paradigm that is discussed in chapter 8, Invisible Ceiling. With the model minority paradigm, Asian American issues are seen as nonissues because there is the perception that they have “made it,” and that additional support is not needed because they have achieved the success expected by a minority. This mental model is so pervasive
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that it can affect the level of performance expectation from supervisors and also the expectation of Asian Americans themselves. Survey respondents share the following comments saying: “When it comes to work performance, my project manager has a higher expectation of me than some non-AAPI team members. Also, I tend to receive more complex or difficult tasks than some non-AAPI team members.” “I’m in a good place now, but I spent 10 years at a previous job where my boss was probably afraid that I might pass him. Lesson learned— Your worst competitor is not your coworker or subordinate, but your boss. Work hard, but not too hard.” “Most people see me as a model minority. Most importantly, it’s how I see myself.”
Although at first glance the model minority may seem to be complimentary or a positive association, in reality, this adds to the different factors that make Asian minorities the invisible minority. In later chapters, the glass ceiling is discussed in detail through describing the challenges for Asian Americans as the invisible minority who face an invisible glass ceiling. Because the ceiling is invisible, despite the feeling of Asian Americans that they are stuck and that they are being bypassed, a way to find an actionable solution evades organizations and Asian Americans. In chapters 6 and 10, Highlighting Invisible Strengths and Strategies for Organizations, we provide frameworks through which these issues can be addressed.
Work Environment The majority of survey respondents have experienced some level of discrimination in the workplace. When asked if they have been treated unfairly at work because of their ethnic background only 21 percent indicated that this never occurred. The rest of survey respondents have experienced some degree of unfair treatment, even if rarely. About 63 percent of respondents, however, do feel comfortable voicing their opinions at work. This level of comfort indicates that the unfair treatment may not be a consistent occurrence in their day-to-day
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Table 2.7 Percentage of Respondents Who Feel That They Were Treated Unfairly at Work Due to Ethnicity Sometimes Rarely Never Often
41.1% 29.5% 21.1% 8.3%
work. Half of the 250 respondents also feel that their coworkers share the values that are important to them in a work environment, such as having a strong work ethic or valuing teamwork; however, about 30 percent disagree or strongly disagree. Although respondents who feel this way represent a smaller percentage than the 50 percent who felt otherwise, 30 percent is still a notable number of respondents who experience isolation from their coworkers in what they value in their work environment. Table 2.8 Percentage of Respondents Who Feel Comfortable Voicing Their Opinions about Their Work with Colleagues and Managers Often Sometimes Rarely Never
62.9% 25.8% 9.6% 1.7%
Table 2.9 Percentage of Respondents Who Feel Their Coworkers Share Their Values That Are Important to Them in a Work Environment Agree Disagree Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree
52.4% 19.0% 16.9% 11.7%
Many respondents comment on feeling as though their values are different from those of their coworkers. Most comments reflect the values of hard work and teamwork, and survey respondents find it frustrating to be faced with a work environment where others are
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more individually focused. “They do not share the same work ethic of turning in high-quality, thoughtfully executed projects on time. They say they value team work but are actually more concerned with promoting themselves.” “I am more team oriented and cross functionally sensitive than some peers.” “What’s most important at my work environment is getting ahead and climbing the corporate ladder. No one really cares about team work and work ethic though they will all talk about them all the time as if they live by it. It is really a facade. What goes on in reality is simple competitiveness. It is a win-lose game here.” “I am different from rest of the crowd and I think others too know that. I think I listen too much to others and seek too much input while other managers do what they want.” “My values are to let everyone shine. No individual deserves the full credit. Visibility belongs to the team.” “The main value at work is competition. Collaboration is not taken seriously.”
The values expressed in these comments around quality-driven work and collaboration support the elements of invisible leadership, and the struggles expressed in their comments also reinforce the fact that these values are not being appreciated at their workplace. Further comments provided in the survey provide some indication on why survey respondents may feel disconnected from their coworkers due to their coworkers’ misperceptions, viewing these Asian Americans through mental models that can reinforce harmful stereotypes. The model minority is one that can affect relationships with supervisors and the perception about what level of support Asian Americans need at work. The forever foreigner perception is one that can also affect relationships generally within a work environment and hinder an individual’s ability to be effective in their work. One survey respondent conveys the experience of meeting resistance in completing the work he or she needs to do to fulfill the responsibilities of his or her job simply for how he or she looks. I head information security for a government office and sometimes people are critical when I have to do an inspection or access a secure area after hours.
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Another respondent faced negative assumptions about his or her communication abilities because of his or her ethnicity. I speak English fluently with a mid-western accent. At one time, in an elevator, I was spoken to by a staff person who mimicked an Asian accent. His prejudiced assumption about my language ability was completely wrong.
Although these experiences may not be deciding factors for whether or not someone is promoted, they do provide insight into the kind of negative experiences that Asian Americans can face in their work environment. Although small incidents like this may not necessarily lead to Asian Americans feeling that they are not able to speak their opinions or whether or not they are able to complete their work, they do provide a sense that some Asian Americans have not gained full social acceptance in their work environment.
Communication and Career Management Several questions were also asked about relationships with supervisors. Generally respondents feel that they have good relationships with their supervisors. When asked if they feel their contributions are recognized by their supervisor, 70 percent feel that they are. Sixty two percent of respondents also feel that their manager understands the issues or challenges they have overcome to achieve their work. However, if faced with issues that may cause them to not be recognized, respondents seem to take a passive approach to dealing with these issues. As seen in table 2.12, almost half of them would simply
Table 2.10 Percentage of Respondents Who Feel Their Contributions Are Recognized by Their Supervisor Agree Strongly Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree
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52.4% 18.3% 17.0% 12.3%
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M AKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE Table 2.11 Percentage of Respondents Who Feel That Their Manager Understands Challenges That They’ve Overcome to Complete Their Work Agree Disagree Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree
46.7% 25.8% 15.1% 12.4%
Table 2.12 Range of Possible Actions by Asian Americans If Their Contributions Are Not Recognized by Their Managers Move on with my work and not let it affect my performance Meet with my supervisor and ask to correct the situation Work harder to get noticed next time Meet with my supervisor/HR and lodge a complaint
46.5% 32.0% 21.1% 0.4%
move on and not let it affect their work, and over one-fifth (21 percent) would work harder to get noticed next time. Only 32 percent would take action to meet with his or her supervisor to ask to have the situation corrected. Less than half of a percent would approach Human Resources (HR) department to lodge a complaint. Although this small percentage may indicate that respondents have not experienced an issue severe enough to involve HR, it is notable that most respondents experienced some level of being treated unfairly, and slightly over 8 percent said that they are often treated unfairly. Although most survey respondents say they are comfortable voicing their opinions, this very low percentage for this question could indicate that respondents are not comfortable talking about their own personal situation and experiences that are negatively affecting them. Comments provided by the respondents are an indication of discomfort with discussing issues when faced with more outspoken personalities among their coworkers or if they are not being promoted at the same rate as their peers. “Sometimes, the ‘way I do things’ is different from the cultural norm here, which results in me being treated differently from my co-workers. For example, because I don’t frequently ask for promotions like some of
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my other non-Asian co-workers, [and] I don’t think I’ve progressed as far in the company.” “I have always been more reserved in the work place and kept to myself (even though I have been told that I am outgoing). I didn’t want to cause drama or conflict. But many times, I found it was those that ‘brown nosed’ and complained would always get their way despite their quality of work. I wanted to be recognized for my devotion, hard work, and character.” “My co-workers have a different work ethic, and are far more social. Know the right people, more outgoing.” “My biggest challenge/weakness is not being able to articulate my thoughts and opinions as clearly and quickly as others. Often, those with stronger personalities or those who are more vocal will get heard. My strength is hard work and the ability to collaborate with others.”
This last comment reflects how other respondents who said they would simply work harder to get recognized feel. This approach, however, is not representative of all respondents. Others express their dissatisfaction with peers who do not communicate their contributions and see it as that individual’s responsibility to get recognized. “I get very frustrated with my peers (especially the quiet ones) who I see are great but will not speak up because of their nature. I am very vocal and self confident and drive a lot of change but without additional support from those around me, I look and sound like the odd man out. The silent majority is killing progress and drive for me. I wish they could see that and take action.” “You have heard the question that if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it fall, does it make a sound. The answer is no. If no one knows what you have accomplished and the succeeding results; will you be recognized? The answer is no. In a very results oriented environment if no one knows what you accomplished, how are others to know. A person needs to take responsibility for their career.”
These two opinions reflect a more individualistic approach to leadership that emphasizes traits that promote the individual, such as being outspoken and having the ability for showmanship. Survey respondents generally acknowledged that the qualities that typically make individuals visible are what are needed for career success in their workplace. In a weighted average, when asked what top three qualities were necessary for career growth at their place of work, “being visible” (27 percent), “having
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connections/social networks” (22 percent), and knowing how to “promote oneself” (17 percent) were most frequently listed in the top three by the 250 Asian American respondents. However, “working hard,” “producing bottom-line results,” and “technical knowledge” were also the fourth, fifth, and sixth most rated after these top three. If we look closer at this information, about 11 percent of survey respondents ranked “technical knowledge” as the number one quality for their success and about 10 percent of survey respondents ranked “working hard” as the number one quality for success (see table 2.13). This means that 21 percent of survey respondents listed something other than the standard individualistic approaches of “being visible,” “having connections,” and “promoting oneself” as the most important quality to gaining career success. This distinction reflects that a notable number of survey respondents feel it more important to focus on their technical ability and on their work ethic than on the qualities that would help to build their social capital (see chapter 6, Highlighting Invisible Strengths, for more on social capital). This indicates the conclusions that we have made regarding Asian Americans and their focus on “doing” the work, rather than feeling the need to “show” their work. That being said, the weighted average does reflect that Asian Americans also understand that their workplace generally follows more individualistic approaches to gaining career success. Being a team player 2% Social skills 3% Charisma 4%
Helping others look good 2% Loyalty to company 0%
Having the technical knowledge to do the work 5% Having mentors 5% Producing bottom-line results 6% Working hard 7%
Being visible 27%
Having connections (social networks) 22% Knowing how to promote myself 17%
Figure 2.1 Qualities Necessary for Career Success.
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Table 2.13 Qualities Rated as Most Important for Career Success in Workplace Rated #1
Number of Respondents Percentage of Respondents
Having Connections Being Visible Promote Self Technical Knowledge Working Hard
52 47 31 25 24
23% 21% 14% 11% 10%
About 78 percent of survey respondents also say they know what they need to do in order to progress in his or her career; however, while acknowledging that being visible, knowing how to promote oneself, and having connections are important to their career success, not all survey respondents seem to be taking steps to increase their visibility and make more connections. When asked how often they meet with their supervisor, which would be one activity to increase the visibility for their accomplishments, only 56 percent meet with their supervisor regularly. Although 59 percent respondents have mentors and role models at work to help them meet their career goals, a notable amount of approximately 30 percent do not. Only 54 percent participate in affinity groups that would help to make connections and provide opportunity to find mentors for those who do not have mentors. Another possibility for this low rate of participation in affinity groups could be that opportunities are unavailable and these groups do not exist at their place of work. Table 2.14 Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Know What They Need to Do to Progress in His or Her Career Agree Strongly Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree Table 2.15
Frequency of Meetings with Supervisor
Regularly/Often Sometimes Rarely Never
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52.4% 25.8% 17.8% 4.0%
56.4% 32.0% 10.7% 0.9%
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M AKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE Table 2.16 Percentage of Respondents Who Have Mentors and Role Models to Advance Their Careers at Work Agree Disagree Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree
41.8% 28.9% 17.3% 12.0%
Table 2.17 Percentage of Respondents Who Belong to Affinity Groups within Their Organization Specific to Ethnic Roots Yes No
53.9% 46.1%
The reason for a lack of participation in affinity groups could possibly be explained through the lack of awareness for Asian American issues as described earlier. Even if these groups exist, it’s possible that they are not effectively equipped to address Asian American issues. One survey responder provide context on this potential challenge by saying that Diversity initiatives are strongly geared towards African-Americans versus the whole concept of diversity. Much attention is given to traditional white males and females in industry, next is African Americans.
In analyzing these survey results in the context of our research on culture and leadership concepts and theories, those of an Asian ethnicity do have cultural influences that affect their approach relationships at work. Particularly in this survey, respondents are able to foster positive relationships with direct supervisors and coworkers; however, when it comes to communications with key individuals outside of their immediate work, some individuals do not seem to take action to actively engage in these relationships. Above the supervisor level, it seems that there is the impression that talking about one’s accomplishments is perceived as boastful and has a negative connotation for many Asian Americans. Asian cultures are more heavily collectively focused, and rather than highlight their individual accomplishments,
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Asian minorities may prefer to have their work speak for itself within the team context. This approach may explain why so many survey respondents said that if their contributions are not acknowledged, they would simply work harder. In a work environment that is also collectively focused, this approach would still result in visibility for contributions because leaders seek out and value each team member’s contribution. What is occurring for Asian minorities is that it takes longer for their contributions and their approaches to leadership to be valued and result in career mobility because their environment does not value those qualities as highly. They are the invisible and “quiet” leaders who achieve their goals by strong dedication to their work, and not by promoting themselves. Through reviewing theories on culture and leadership as well as through discussions and interviews, key values of invisible leadership that we have identified include collaboration, long-term focus, and rewarding the whole. This is not to say that invisible leadership is appropriate for all occasions; there are certainly times when it makes sense to recognize significant individual contributions. What we are proposing is that invisible leadership provides a balance to individualistic leadership values that may overshadow other valuable contributions that are being made and are going unseen. Invisible leadership is leadership through “doing” versus a leadership through “showing.” By its nature, invisible leadership fosters an appreciative work environment versus a work environment focused on advancement. Some of the core elements for invisible leadership values that we have identified are as follows: • Collaboration • Drive toward consensus • Emphasize teamwork • Lead through facilitation versus direction • Long-term focus • Develop leaders at all levels • Manage to the future • Substance driven • Rewarding the whole • Recognize the team, not just individual recognition • Emphasize a meritocracy rather than a “star” leadership structure.
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Survey respondents were given the opportunity to share their thoughts and input on the concept of invisible leadership that emphasizes these core elements. This concept resonated with many survey respondents, which can be seen in their comments. “In the long run, collaboration is more successful than confrontation, teamwork more important than competition, and trust/integrity more valuable than publicity.” “Increased awareness of other ethnicities and their leadership/ interpersonal styles is an important factor in understanding the value of ‘quiet’ or ‘invisible’ approaches. We all know about the Type-A, in-your-face, style that is highly recognized, and often prized in corporate and government America. All need to learn and understand all the other styles. My executive style was finally recognized as effective, but it took time and effort.” “Quiet leadership seems more effective in work environments that are more altruistic or team-oriented and are more concerned with value creation over politics. However, politics plays a very important role in the ability to influence others, make decisions, and garner power within an organization. This involves being more visible and social. Sometimes a large presence—even if not entirely positive—is better than no presence at all.” “Once I’ve achieved sufficient security for myself and my family to ‘survive’ i.e. a roof over my family’s head and enough to eat and keep us warm, I no longer considered career advancement as important. I worked on projects, whether career oriented or not, to satisfy my own sense of helping others. I think it worked out very well for me. It made me feel content.” “After reading the article, I realized that it’s the style I’ve been practicing . . . and been taken advantage of. Most people enjoy this style because they don’t want the blame, and it’s wonderful that someone is willing to take the blames. They also like to take credits for success as long as they have ‘touched’ the project. The invisible leadership style does not help with career advancement in the US, unless you have a very good boss who knows who’s really doing the work.”
Although survey respondents acknowledged the value of invisible leadership, it was also acknowledged that at some point, leaders must be visible. In using the terms “invisible leaders” our intention is not to deny the fact that in order to be an effective leader, a certain amount of social
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capital and visibility is necessary. What we are saying is that there are contributions being made that are going unseen and are currently invisible in career advancement structures that focus on showmanship and individualistic leadership approaches. What we are emphasizing is the importance of having a balanced approach to building leadership teams, and the importance for organizations to take concrete steps in incorporating and valuing these more collectively focused leadership approaches. As can be seen in the last quote, those who practice invisible leadership find themselves negatively taken advantage of. If organizations do not learn to appreciate invisible leadership, then they miss the opportunity to build their workforce for the long term and for establishing “talent sustainability” as acknowledged by companies such as PepsiCo. In chapter 3, we continue to define what is meant by the concept of invisible leadership through providing more contextual and anecdotal information from Asian Americans who have reached senior levels of leadership in their organizations. We learn from their experience and their stories of challenges that have been overcome to attain the level of success that they have, and how they continue their journeys for further progression.
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Chapter 3 Making the Invisible Visible Interviews and Analysis
A leader . . . is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind. —Nelson Mandela, The Long Walk to Freedom
In chapter 2, we discussed the results of a pulse survey on Asian American perspectives and attitudes toward work, career advancement, and invisible leadership. We asked Asian Americans about how they feel at work, how they are treated, how they communicate, and also about how they perceive career advancement opportunities to progress into leadership positions at their workplace. The results of this survey confirmed our understanding of the Asian American experience and the information we’ve found around glass-ceiling issues. Although we received several comments in the survey that provided contextual information for the numeric responses, we decided it would be important to deepen our understanding by conducting additional interviews with Asian Americans. We chose to interview Asian Americans who reached senior levels of leadership in their organization so that they could provide insight from their broad range of experience and from their big picture perspective on their organization. We interviewed 15 Asian American leaders whose levels of responsibility ranged from presidents, vice presidents, and other senior executives
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in the private sector as well as SES (Senior Executive Service) level leaders in the government. We talked with these leaders about their career growth that led to where they are in their organizations today and the different challenges they faced across their experiences. We also talked to them about the concept of invisible leadership and whether these elements resonated with them in how they approach leading their teams. Many agreed that they see themselves as having a different approach to leading than what they typically find in their work environment that could be tied back to their cultural values. In chapter 4, Invisible Leadership, we discuss various concepts about leadership, and we propose that in the United States and other Western countries, a more individualistic view of leadership exists. Particularly in the United States, a culture of competition creates an environment where a seat at the executive table means winning out over others by building individual accomplishments and credentials in order to gain that seat. Yet in many other countries, the cultural values center on the collective rather than the individual. Research also supports the importance of collective focused approaches to work. According to Anita Woolley of Carnegie Mellon University, collaborative groups who equally participate in discussion to problem solve work more efficiently and more intelligently as a group.1 In an increasingly global economy where companies and organizations have a presence throughout multiple countries, the ability to adapt to multiple cultural contexts to lead diverse teams is a critical success factor. Values focused on the collective that can be found in other cultures can be seen in the quotation at the beginning of this chapter by Nelson Mandela. This is a quotation provided by one of our interviewees in relating to the concept of invisible leadership. Mandela says: A leader . . . is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind. . . . It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.2
We found in interviewing these senior Asian American leaders that they use more collective in their approach to leadership. An interviewee
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says that in comparison with peers, they can see that they take more collective perspective in how they work. I am a bit more community oriented—we are very quick to pass on the glory to others, and deflect visibility and not take the credit to ourselves—we grew up in a social environment where individualism is not as valued.
As this interviewee expresses, the idea of leading by standing behind others without being visible contradicts much of the predominant individually focused approach to leadership. Many career management books focus on what individuals can do to gain visibility by playing the “game” to improve career opportunities, “rub elbows” with the right decision makers, build a reputation, as so on. Although we do not refute the need to be known by decision makers in the workplace, what is missing from this perspective is an understanding of how to build a team for the long term. Without taking care of the team, despite shortterm individual success that can advance individuals to higher levels within the organization, the team itself may dissolve putting long-term success of the work at risk. In the Introduction to this book, we referenced a study where extraverted qualities can be a potential liability, and yet introverted leaders that may be more collectively focused are going unseen and have a harder time getting promoted.3 These trends are similar to what our interviewees expressed with challenges they’ve faced at their place of work. The importance of having leaders focused on building the strengths and talents of their team members can be found in the Gallup organization’s survey results as explained in First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently. Buckingham and Coffman say that “today more than ever before, if a company is bleeding people it is bleeding value . . . ” and the key to retaining talent and sustainability for a company is to have strong frontline managers who are focused on developing their teams.4 Connecting the importance of talent management and the contribution that invisible leadership can make for the long-term outcomes for an organization, one of our interviewees said that the case to be made [for invisible leadership] is around retention of talent and the ability to get the best out of different cultures. Everyone is
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M AKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE trying to climb the ladder quickly and get to the top. But they need to know that there are different ways to get there. For example, look at Indra Nooyi—she kept her own identity. You don’t have to sell yourself to be a leader. Vikram Pandit (CEO of Citi) is another example, He kept his cool under fire and acknowledged that lots of success can be attributed to just luck. He did not want to take credit for the positive developments in Citi after the stock market crash in 2008. I have to change a bit to adjust to US style but my fundamental DNA has not changed. I believe in fate as well. You must do your job well and not worry about rewards.
This comment reflects that the elements of invisible leadership have an important place in global economy of today. Invisible leadership is an approach that is currently underutilized in countries that value the individual context more highly. Although there are just a handful of these leaders that are well-known examples, the ability to effectively build and sustain talent in the way that the leaders mentioned above are capable of will become critical factors in the success of companies that wish to stay globally relevant. One interviewee expresses the importance of learning to recognize other cultural values that influence the way people lead. The interviewee has observed talent going unseen because decision makers have not sought out and identified these resources. There is a huge wealth in people from other cultures and they [decision makers in organizations] have not paid attention—that there is another leadership that they need to recognize. If you don’t reach out to them, you will lose them, as has happened in many cases I know.
Although there are examples such as Indra Nooyi or Vikram Pandit, many of our interviewees continue to face challenges in staying true to their cultural values by not “selling themselves” and their accomplishments. If one’s approach to leadership is to allow others to stand in front of them, then a work environment that emphasizes the importance of talking themselves up can feel unnatural and uncomfortable. Many interviewees acknowledged that they struggle with the idea of speaking up to communicate individual accomplishments. Some chose to take on the characteristic that was expected of leaders in their work environment, but others chose not to.
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The interviewee quoted below chose to change who he was in order to fit in with the more widely accepted approach to communication expected of a leader: To me the biggest challenge is communication—I don’t speak well— then I realized that I need to become better. That was a big moment in my life. I learned to be public speaker—Every time I get a chance to talk, I talk. I even learned to say jokes to get the audience to warm up to me. If you do not communicate, others won’t see it. Nobody came to me to say how good I am. I had to show it to them. My American colleagues did not see me as a leader. The culture here is that the more noise you make the more people will listen to you. So I had to improve myself to fit with the culture.
A different interviewee chose not to change how he communicated and felt strongly that his work should speak for itself. Despite the significant contribution that was made for the company, he did not feel it necessary to boast or to self-promote this accomplishment. I conceptualized and created the practice of service operations for my company. It was my baby and my creation. It became a big business [and generated hundreds of millions of dollars of business]. But I did not thump my chest for it and did not get a formal recognition for it.
This choice not to conform to the American values about leadership affected many of the interviewees’ careers. Another interviewee quoted below felt that although he was ultimately able to achieve the success he sought, his preference not to speak up may have caused his career advancement to take longer than others. I have never cared about bragging. But I still got ahead. . . . Did it take me longer to get there? Probably yes. But I am not disappointed about it because I can’t be someone I am not to get a promotion. All said and done, this place is a meritocracy. You can’t move up if you don’t know what you are doing.
We can see in this last comment that the cultural value of meritocracy and hard work plays a very large role in this interviewee’s approach to
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work. We found this same cultural value expressed from many of our interviewees. “The value of working hard I got from home influences—my parents. I am also a doer—I get things done. The whole cultural value of the East might have some influence—such as working in teams, not being the center of attention, and community orientation.” “In my case, my working style is a combination of [several] styles. From the Indian side, I picked up the value of collaboration, hard work, and work ethic.” “My parents taught me to be very principled in everything I do. I may have paid a price. High integrity is important for me, and I believe people see that in me.” “I can see it [invisible leadership] being very true for people from Asian cultures. They are taught the values of hard work and duty. Rewards were never the goal.”
These comments show the common thread of a focus on doing the work and valuing the team or the collective effort that supports the accomplishment of the work. When leaders are focused on doing the work itself, they naturally focus on the people that can get the work done and the teams that come together do accomplish their joint goal. In order to most value and reward the contributions to getting the work done, Asian cultural values emphasize meritocracy. To many of our interviewees, the idea of superseding this meritocracy and instead taking an approach of showmanship and taking credit, versus receiving credit when it is given, may feel as though their integrity is compromised. My preference is always to be in background. I don’t like to thump my chest. For lack of a better term I will call it a bit vulgar. Maybe it has to do with how I was raised.
As such, we found as in earlier examples provided, many of our interviewees chose not to take on the characteristics that they knew were helping others around them to get ahead despite understanding that it may affect their career advancement. Several interviewees experienced delays in their career advancement compared to their peers who were focused more on showmanship and were more outspoken. They emphasized the importance of listening
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because of their collective approach and because they valued the input that others had, yet their actions were interpreted as weaknesses rather than strengths. “Yes, [culture] influences in a big way. We are much more polite. I have a very tough time looking tough! If I politely say I disagree, it is seen as weakness. I had to struggle through that. . . . In Asian culture, the silent one is valued as a positive point. You are not beating your chest, but you are valued. But in a U.S organization, it is lost—if you are not beating drum, you are not visible.” “I don’t seek visibility—I wait for my turn—there is a sense of politeness and decorum which is the way we were raised. It did not serve me well. It took me a while to understand. I will sit back and let others speak, and I would listen well—but that was not seen as leadership-like. I paid some price for that.”
This interpretation by the decision makers in their organizations is the unfortunate trend that we see in putting together the pieces from the different comments from our interviewees. In Cultural Intelligence, Thomas and Inkson emphasize the importance for leaders in a global economy to become culturally intelligent, and one of the keys to do so is to develop the ability to be mindful and the ability to adapt based on the context of the situation.5 Although they are more introverted qualities, the ability to listen and the ability to observe are critical components to leading an increasingly global workforce and are necessary when taking a collective approach to leadership. These are skills vital to build an organization for the long term and to see them as a weakness is an unfortunate shortsighted interpretation. Although many organizations say that they are a meritocracy, several of our interviewees acknowledge that they still struggled to get their contributions seen. The merit was not seen on its own, it had to be shown and demonstrated in order to be taken into account in advancement decisions. “A paradox of career advancement at [my organization] is that theoretically, it is a meritocracy—decisions and criteria are still the right one— but in many cases the degree to which you demonstrate progress against that criteria is as much as a function of what people see you doing as opposed to what you have been really doing. . . . You can do reasonably
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M AKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE well here if you manage your impressions very well even though your abilities may be just average.” “I put in longer hours . . . and did not think much about it. Gradually I started noticing that people develop specific reputations or credibility because they talk about what they do—even in casual conversations. It came so natural to them and I had to struggle to do it myself.”
One interviewee struggled to make sense of the meaning behind the emphasis on showmanship and felt that the time spent doing so would negatively affect getting her ability to actually complete her work. There are so many constituents that I have to serve—I have so many functional areas—where is the time to be worrying about being visible? By the time you have relationship with everyone the day is over. Shouldn’t it be about results? . . . My boss sees that as a difficultly about me—not everyone is happy with me—I don’t want to be in a popularity contest. I just don’t have the time.
Many interviewees expressed similar concerns as they continue to struggle with a feeling that they have to change themselves in order to be recognized for the work that they are accomplishing. They feel that they have to force themselves to become someone that they are not, and they have not found a way to balance their approach to leading their own teams with what is required of them to stand out among their peers. In my profession it is important to be visible and I have to force myself to be that way. I don’t enjoy that part of it, but I have to do it. I find others doing it. I find it disappointing that we have to be that way.
Despite these challenges that even these senior leaders face at work, several did not and have not pursued opportunities to share this experience within an affinity group even if their organization provided one. In the pulse survey, we found that less than half of the Asian Americans surveyed belonged to an affinity group. In the leadership interviews we conducted, we found similar trends among these leaders where some did not feel the strong need to have active involvement in these groups. Their lack of participation reflects the ambiguity that many Asian Americans feel about any kind of shared Asian American experience, as
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seen in the survey results. Without being connected with other Asian Americans in leadership positions who have had similar experiences, even these senior leaders with their breadth of experience found it difficult to relate their cultural values to the challenges they faced in their career advancement. It took me longer than others [for the last promotion]. But it was not probably due to cultural barriers. Maybe people did not know what I did. It’s possible I did not communicate as much as I should have. I have been very busy doing the work. But my immediate supervisors always know what I do.
If Asian American leaders are not aware of how cultural factors have played a part in their challenges, then they also may not feel the importance of participating in groups that may look to them for their input to help shape and raise awareness for these issues. They may see their experience as an isolated incident, not within the context of a shared experience. With this lack of awareness of Asian American challenges among the general workforce, an opportunity is being lost to further build a support network for Asian American professionals. Commenting on Asian American affinity groups, one interviewee says: APA [Asian-Pacific American] issues—I don’t have time to work on it. Every month they meet—I leave home 6 AM and get back at 9 PM. My feeling is to help in other ways—I have several APA in my staff.
If interviewees have the opportunity to participate in other affinity groups, they may feel that they have more in common with these other groups if there is generally a higher level of awareness to identify with the challenges of the other group. I have not found Asian leaders to be mentors. I am more active with [gender equality groups] rather than APA affinity groups.
In these interview results we found a similarity in the overall trend from the pulse survey that many Asian Americans do not feel strongly about identifying as Asian American, and they may feel more connected to the idea of being Indian American or Chinese American specific to their country of origin. Also, due to lack of education and awareness
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initiatives regarding the shared experience for Asian Americans, many do not feel it necessary to identify with being Asian American. Interviewees talk about how diversity was not frequently discussed in their household while growing up. As I was growing up we did not talk about diversity. There were so many nationalities in the area. As I grew into more professional role and moving into the LA area, I became more aware.
One interviewee we talked with did not even acknowledge his country of origin until the very end of the interview, whereas most interviewees offered information on their background as one of the first pieces of information they shared about themselves. This lack of identity poses a significant hurdle for Asian Americans to overcome to gain an increased voice of advocacy and support. Clearly there are shared challenges due to difference between the cultural values that influence the way Asian Americans work and the dominant views in their work environment. However, these issues have remained invisible partly due to the nature of the work environment that has a different set of values especially in how they view leadership and also due to the lack of awareness and support among Asian Americans and those who have been able to progress in their careers. We hope that by shedding light onto these issues in this book we will help to highlight these shared challenges to increase a sense of community and the need for advocacy for these issues. Although not all interviewees felt a strong connection to being Asian American, most related to the core elements of invisible leadership that include collaboration, long-term focus, and rewarding the whole. In collaboration, leaders focus on the collective taking on the role of a facilitator versus a director. In facilitating their teams, they drive toward consensus and emphasize the importance of teamwork. With a long-term focus, leaders lead through doing rather than through showmanship. By doing so, they focus on the substance of the work and manage to the future building sustainable talent and leaders at all levels of the organization. In rewarding the whole, leaders emphasize a meritocracy where the overall team is recognized for their contribution, rather than focusing on individual recognition. This supports the idea of building leaders at all levels rather than creating a “star” leadership structure built on showmanship and individually focused rewards.
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When asked about their approaches to leadership and what they most admire in leaders, interviewees provided responses that reflect the core elements of invisible leadership outlined above. In seeking to build a team based on collaboration, one of the interviewee says that I am very respectful and listen to people as if it is my second nature. I believe they come from my cultural background. I also think about things before acting—that too must have something to do with culture.
This comment shows that rather than take the approach of directing work, her instinct is to first listen and to take a more facilitative approach before acting. In the comment below, the interviewee expresses that she is collaborative; however, she will also balance this approach to be “tough” when needed. The interviewee also explains that she takes a strong interest in the long-term career and growth of her team members. I have a very open leadership style. I am very collaborative. But I am also very direct with my team. Sometimes I can be very tough. But I also take strong interest in people’s careers.
The interviewee below expressed that he likes to be involved in helping to shape the work at first, but then also trusts the team to deliver and to get the work done. I am in constant touch with the team leaders and staff. I give them lots of guidance. I get my hands dirty all the time. If I get in the front end of projects—I do a bit more thinking upfront and then pass it on to people.
When asked what they most admire in leaders that they work with, the interviewees’ responses also reflected elements of invisible leadership. They valued leaders who can allow others to shine and highlight their team’s accomplishments and also those who are collaborative and focus on developing their team members for the long term. “The characteristic I most admire in other leaders is the capacity to stand behind and let others shine.”
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M AKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE “I will admire someone who is very open in their style. He or she should have the patience to help others. He/she should listen to others and show strong values.”
When asked about how they recognize their team members in an approach that rewards the whole, interviewees commented that they reward those who do the work and that they make it a point to know who did what on the team. “In my style, people who do the work always get recognized. . . . The chance of only visible people getting recognized in my team is very low since I know each person in my team. I know what they do and they know what I expect of them. I don’t expect my team members to be formal with me. If I need something, I will just walk over to them and get it. . . . Likewise, they will come to me if they need anything. . . . I am always thinking of my team. How they are doing and what I can do for them.” “I give more credit to people and less to myself. I am quick to make my team shine.”
Given these shared themes on how these leaders incorporate their cultural values of focusing on the collective and long-terms development of their teams, we find that even if Asian Americans may not feel a strong affinity to a shared Asian American experience, they do share in their approach to their work and in building their teams. What can also be found in the thoughts and comments of these leaders is that although many acknowledged that their promotion was delayed in comparison with their peers, they still found self-satisfaction in knowing the work that they accomplished. They felt strongly about holding true to their style, even if that meant that their job-focused style (for more on impression management styles, see chapter 6, Highlighting Invisible Strengths) led to a slower pace of career growth. They saw value in their results, not in having everyone know what they do and what they’ve accomplished. Many didn’t see the need for self-promotion and what they value and choose to focus instead is on delivering results and then keeping their support structure around them to keep them grounded in other aspects of their life that are more important. I would tell [new recruits to the organization] that it is important to know your weaknesses and very important to be comfortable with who
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you are as a person—know your role in family, circle of friends, and your values. Create a support structure around you. It is a bit like ‘it takes a village.’
Other interviewees also managed to strike a balance between gaining visibility that they needed to advance and maintaining the values that are important to them. “You have to have some visibility. If you can deliver good, then quiet leadership concept will work, but you still need to have visibility. When I talk about quiet leadership, it is about influencing quietly, without making a big noise or saying ‘look what I have done.’ ” “If you are asking me if I am a visible leader, the answer is I am not, but people in my practice know me. They know my reputation for quality and about my ability to produce results for clients. Do I talk about it to everyone I meet? Of course not. . . . But honestly, I don’t need to advertise myself. I have been pretty happy with my success.” “I have never worried about visibility—I never had to publicize myself. People come to know of the work I do. If anything, I tend to pass on some of that credit to others. . . . What I have heard is that my review board says things like ‘yes, we know him’ So I am known for the work—everybody is looking for help from [my team].”
Others look to the future to help mentor and to develop those who come after them in understanding how they can contribute value and gain acknowledgement for their efforts. In this culture, they promote people who can talk—you should know that. We have to improve ourselves. We have to train ourselves. But reach out to those who are silent and help them to speak up. I will talk to the individual and say go and talk—volunteer a lot. Don’t ask what the organization can do for you. Do something for the organization.
Although some have come to terms with their situation in their own rite, all the interviewees acknowledged to a certain extent that they faced challenges in getting to the level of acceptance that they have to become a more senior leader in their organization. Apart from those that we interviewed who were able to attain their level of success, how many more could have made it and didn’t? How many more continue
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to struggle for longer periods of time than their peers because they aren’t seen as a leader simply due to the fact that they choose to stay true to their values? If the predominant environment doesn’t value invisible leadership, does that mean that this approach to leadership doesn’t work? Although it took longer for these leaders to get the recognition from the decision makers in their organizations, clearly their approach is working for them if they have been able to sustain a level of high performance since achieving the level of responsibility that they now have. These interview results provide the context that invisible leadership can work when those who practice it are allowed to progress to senior levels of leadership. In addition to the examples provided through our interviewees, there are also examples for invisible leadership that can be found in more commonly understood contexts. In the dynamic workplaces of today, the one constant that can sustain an organization’s growth is the capability of its people to adapt and to find new ways of doing things. Silicon Valley has become a household name for innovation in the area of technology. Yet, when we think about Silicon Valley, who are the leaders that come to mind? Perhaps people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who got their start in Silicon Valley. Unless you live on the west coast or have taken a special interest in the Silicon Valley, you may not be aware that much of Silicon Valley’s success blossomed out of the work of Asian American leaders. Chinese and Indian immigrants founded nearly one-quarter of the information technology (IT) business started in Silicon Valley between 1980 and 1998 (Dun & Bradstreet database, quoted by Saxenian, 2000).6 They were running 29 percent of Silicon Valley’s high-tech firms between 1995 and 1998. When we think about what it takes to have built a reputation as the leading region for technology, these leaders must have done something right, especially when considering that the Route 128 area of the East Coast had a similar start to Silicon Valley, yet does not have the reputation for innovation that this California region does. The comparison between the two have been well documented by researchers such as Anna Lee Saxenian,7 and one of the key factors in Silicon Valley’s success is the collaboration that occurred among its early entrepreneurs. Although many of these Asian American leaders are not well known
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(with a few exceptions) they are the invisible leaders that helped to drive the significant growth and innovation in that region. In addition to the successful example of Asian American leaders in Silicon Valley, there are also a handful of well-known Asian American leaders who have a notably different approach to how they lead. Although they may not necessarily consciously incorporate their cultural values into their leadership approach, we saw many living and breathing examples of invisible leadership elements in how they have chosen to lead their organizations. In chapter 4, Invisible Leadership, we discuss how to make invisible leadership work, and use the examples of Indra Nooyi, Andrea Jung, and Tony Hsieh by showing how their approach to leading their organizations share these core elements of invisible leadership that many of our interviewees use.
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Chapter 4 Invisible Leadership What Is Invisible Leadership?
In 2002, the rocket scientist-turned-president of India, Abdul Kalam, delivered the first Satish Dhawan Memorial Lecture at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). The internationally known ISRO is one of the largest and most successful public sector organizations in India, considered to be on par with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for its scientific breakthroughs and innovation. In his lecture, Kalam said that if there were one management mantra that India should teach the world, it would be that of invisible leadership. Kalam himself was the recipient of such leadership that supported him in his successful career. In 1979, Kalam was the mission director of India’s first satellite launch. To the embarrassment of the scientists and the politicians supporting the mission, the satellite ALV-3 blew up over the ocean. Though Kalam was the mission director, Satish Dhawan, chairman of ISRO at that time, addressed the international media and took the blame for the failed missile launch. A year later, the second version of the satellite was successfully launched. A clear opportunity for redemption presented itself, yet Dhawan did not try to take credit for this success. Instead, he requested that Kalam address the media with news of the successful launch. President Kalam described Dhawan as “a leader who became invisible at the time of success.” He was a leader who took responsibility and supported his team through failure so
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that their work may lead to future success. When the time of success arrived, he allowed his team to shine and gave them credit for the work they accomplished together. In his lecture, Kalam also referenced the example of Mahatma Gandhi as a practitioner of the unwritten mantra of invisible leadership. The day his long struggle yielded independence to his country, he spent his time nursing riot victims, rather than claiming his own victory and success. In invisible leadership, the leader “takes the full brunt of failure, but shies away from the sunshine of success, handing over the glory to team mates.” These two examples illustrate an aspect of leadership that is inherent in many Asian cultures, and despite their immigration to Western parts of the world, those of Asian descent often carry on these values in their approach to work. The kind of invisible leadership described by Kalam finds its roots in cultures with collective mind-sets. Success belongs to the whole and not to one individual; therefore, the whole should benefit and the success should be mutually owned. Those who practice invisible leadership in cultures where this value is shared may be successful as Dhawan and Kalam, but what about those who live and work in other areas of the world where benefiting the collective is not valued as highly as the success of the individual? It is not the intention of this story or of this book to say that invisible leadership exclusively belongs to Asian cultures; nor do we intend to make the generalization that all Asian people practice invisible leadership. What the data do show is that Asian minorities have grown their presence in professional occupations, yet the number that succeeds through to executive levels of leadership in the “Western” world (in this book we use examples of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, where there are large concentrations of Asian immigrants) is disproportionately small. This phenomenon is uniquely tied to Asian ethnicities, with cultural values that emphasize qualities of invisible leadership. Whether it is a trend that shows challenges that minorities of other cultures with similar values will face, or shows the challenges of those who independently value the same characteristics, there is much to be gained from these observations. If nothing else, the awareness generated through the discussions in this book may allow ourselves to take pause at our own approaches to leadership and consider other options to engage teams and to lead.
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Cultural Lenses and the Way We Work Geert Hofstede, who spent years studying culture and organizations, explains culture as a “mental software” acquired through social environments over the course of a lifetime.1 These mental programs inform how an individual interacts with others in their environment. Theories such as social capital or emotional and social intelligence show the importance of relationship management in being successful at work. If our culture informs how we interact with others, then culture is a major contributor to our relationship management skills and how we interact with others at work. Certainly we continue to learn and adapt each time we enter into a new work environment. Yet, there are values that already exist that guide our behaviors at work as we start to build new relationships. Hofstede explains the formation of an individual’s values through the culture they are raised in by explaining that “because they were acquired so early in our lives, many values remain unconscious to those whole hold them. Therefore they cannot be discussed, nor can they be directly observed by outsiders. They can only be inferred from the way people act under various circumstances.”2 Culture is so ingrained in us that we often are not aware of how it influences how we behave and how we handle different situations at work. Today’s modern workplace reflects a coming together of individuals from many different backgrounds and cultures, and much time and effort has been spent trying to decode and demystify the challenge of diversity. A quick search in amazon.com for books with the key words “culture and work” yields 9,909 results. For the search term “diversity in the workplace,” there are 3,824 results. That is an overwhelming amount of information devoted to understanding how our diversity and our cultures interact in our workplaces. A quick scan of the results show titles where we are attempting to “manage” diversity or “make it work” and strategize to “get to the next level.” In other words, how do we get a handle on diversity, get it under control so that we can all make sense of it? The challenge is that there is no fast track to make sense of diversity. According to Karl Weick, who writes about “sensemaking” in organizations, “sensemaking” or making sense of the world is “about such things as placement of items into frameworks, comprehending, redressing surprise, constructing meaning, interacting in pursuit of
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mutual understanding, and patterning.”3 To tie this discussion back to the topic of this book, an Asian in an Asian context experiences sensemaking in a completely different way from an Asian in the Western world. As an example, someone who considers himself or herself to be Asian American, not an Asian living in the United States, will also have a completely different take on their life experiences. The diversity dialogue is one that runs through our minds in the smallest of instances throughout our days at work. In one story shared by an Asian American woman, she was sitting in a brainstorming meeting, and the lead of the meeting turned to her and said, “You’re getting notes on this, aren’t you?” Being a team player, she instinctively said, “Sure, I’d be happy to,” but then took pause. She looked around the room and saw that she was the only nonwhite person on the team. The wheels immediately began to turn as the diversity debate played out in her mind. Is it because I’m not white? Is it because I’m a woman? I’m not the only woman on the team, that can’t be it. . . . Is it because I’m not the most vocal? But I’m trying to be vocal, I’m just so new to this topic. . . . Is it because I’m the newest member of the team? Is it because I am sitting the closest to the person speaking, with my notepad and pen already out? Past experiences flashed through her mind of how she was treated differently because of her ethnicity. Despite good intentions on both sides, in a work environment full of color, perhaps it’s not a realistic expectation to assume we can all be color-blind. The Asian American woman’s interpretation of the situation is likely to be completely different from anyone else’s in the room. Others may not have taken any pause, or may have thought that the Asian American woman was being asked to be the one to take the notes because she could be trusted to capture the important highlights from the meeting. Later, the Asian American woman received feedback from this same lead who said that she should work on her presentation skills because she was “soft-spoken.” Again, the diversity debate flashed through her mind . . . am I perceived this way because of the stereotypes of my ethnicity? Surely in meetings, I have more than proven my ability to contribute. The Asian American woman regularly presented status in meetings and contributed to discussions often representing her team’s work. Seeking to understand, she asked other coworkers who she knew would be honest for their input, and was told they didn’t see the same issue.
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In understanding the complexity of these moments that may or may not have diversity implications, those who may feel misperceived may suffer the consequences of going too far to another extreme to try to separate themselves from these perceptions that they may feel hold them back. In another instance, one of the authors participated in the planning of a diversity event meant to highlight challenges faced by minorities in rising to leadership positions and understanding how culture influences our management of interpersonal relationships. When the design for the event was presented to executive sponsors, the discussion quickly turned toward individual characteristics that were “critical success factors” to rise to the leadership ranks. Some of the characteristics mentioned by one Asian American leader included, “being aggressive,” “tooting your own horn,” “taking risks,” and “getting visible.” The emphasis of these characteristics claim victories to highlight individual accomplishment, yet the reality of how most of the company operated was through teamwork and collaborative efforts. In working to reach the level of leadership he had, the Asian American leader clearly moved away from the collective values in his culture to adopt the more individualistic culture of his work environment. Should this be something that Asians in the Western world are advised to do to rise up in the leadership ranks? As an Asian in the Western world, should they give up invisible leadership values in order to assimilate into a Western approach to leadership? Women who experienced the glass ceiling in corporate America faced a similar dilemma. Some of the studies even pointed out that a woman who succeeded in climbing the corporate leadership ladder did so by showing more masculine qualities than feminine. They also had to deal with gender stereotyping: When male managers took initiative, the behavior was labeled proactive, but when women did the same, it was “aggressive.”
Culture and Leadership Walking through the business section of a typical local U.S. bookstore, you’re likely to find shelves of books devoted to the topic of leadership. Books that tell you how to lead, what are the best leadership practices,
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what every manager should know about leading their team, and so on. A quick search in amazon.com on the topic “leadership” yields 309, 287 results. Out of curiosity, one of the authors of this book took a stroll through the nonfiction section of a Japanese bookstore located in the suburbs of New York City. While there were certainly books about economics, global business, a biography or two about prominent businessmen, none stood out as being specifically about providing individual leaders with the “how-to’s” of leadership. What can this tell us about how we think about leadership in the United States and other Western countries? This same author spent two years living and attending school in Japan at the sensitive age of 13. Without a good understanding of how American culture differs from Japanese culture, she went full speed ahead, showing off her talents of speaking fluent English, jumping to informal ways of interacting with her classmates. Without even trying, she would have stood out as being different given her background of growing up in the United States, but having been successful in the past by appealing to what was unique and what made her an individual, she continued to do so in this new context. Unfortunately, the students and teachers of the school very rarely came in contact with anyone outside of their small town in Japan, as it was at least an hour away from any metropolitan city. The saying that “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down,” held true. The efforts to stand out turned off her classmates instead of appealing to them. The author learned a hard lesson as a teenager on how to pay attention to the collective context and to observe how others interact in order to understand what works and doesn’t work in any new environment. The story suggests that outside of the United States, promoting individual visibility does not necessarily build positive relationships; however, in the United States, the lining of shelves with books on leadership indicate that there’s a significant audience for materials that promise to assist individuals in improving their leadership skills. There’s an underlying assumption that if an individual finds the right tools that provide an edge over the competition, he or she has the advantage to become more successful. According to Geert Hofstede, who has spent over a decade studying and writing on culture’s impact on the workforce, the United States ranks #1 on the individualism index out of the 50
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countries researched (2005).4 He goes on to say that “individualist societies not only practice individualism but they also consider it superior to other forms of mental software. Most Americans feel that individualism is good and at the root of their country’s greatness.” In Richard Lewis’s When Cultures Collide: Leading across Cultures, he makes a similar observation that American attitudes toward work is routed in the history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of chasing the American Dream.5 He says “For decades it was first come first served—you staked your claim, cleared the land, tilled, planted and defended it . . . ; if it worked, you did it, before anyone else did . . . Work equates with success, time is money. [You] have to get there first.”6 If this same culture of competition is applied to how we approach leadership, then it’s no wonder that books that promise to provide a competitive advantage fly off the bookshelves. In the context of cultural intelligence, Thomas and Inkson define leadership as “the ability to influence other people to strive willingly to reach common goals.”7 Certainly then the mental programs or culture that an individual has collected over the course of a lifetime influence the way in which they lead. Hofstede explains that there is, in fact, a clear connection between an individual’s leadership approach and his or her nationality. He says, “Managers and leaders, as well as the people they work with, are part of national societies. If we want to understand their behavior, we have to understand their societies. . . . 8 In much of the Western world, there is a clear connection drawn between an individual’s personality and talents and his or her ability to lead effectively. We look for the leader’s charisma and persuasiveness in measuring his or her aptness to lead. Ronald Heifetz, who directs Harvard University’s Leadership Education project, credits the first theory of U.S. leadership to the mid-nineteenth-century “great man theory” of history. The “heroic” personal talents of leaders throughout U.S. history built the nation.9 Although we may not consciously think so, in the United States, we have a mind-set that the individual is the driving force behind successful leadership. It is the individual who drives his or her success or failure in leadership. Yet, a leader is only a leader because he or she has others to lead. There is a collective context within which we lead, so what makes us focus so much on the individual? Where’s everyone else in the individualistic view of leadership?
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Heifetz compares what we would see as individual and collective approaches to leadership in his book, Leadership without Easy Answers. In the individual approach “leadership means influencing the community to follow the leader.”10 If the individual leader is not able to influence people to accept his or her vision and to look to him or her for direction, then if something goes wrong, it is solely the fault of the leader. In this approach to leadership, the leader convinces others of what the “right” answer is to solving the problem. In this approach, getting to the “right” answer means “it’s not personal,” and there is no check and balance to fully understand the implications for the collective context. In the collective approach, “leadership means influencing the community to face its problems.”11 If something goes wrong, it is both the leader and the community that must face the challenge together and both are accountable. Heifetz goes on to explain that if we lead to “[mobilize] people to tackle tough problems,”12 then we must also develop a frame of reference for the values that exist with the people. This intersection of values and leadership shows how important cultural considerations are in leadership. The U.S. culture is one based on valuing the individual, but one cannot take for granted that other cultures do not espouse these same values. To explore why it is that we think of leadership in an individualistic way, it’s important to take a look at how we approach learning, and the methods through which we gain the knowledge we use to lead. In Women’s Ways of Knowing, Mary Belenky and her colleagues research the ways in which female students in the United States develop their knowledge, either through separate knowing or connected knowing. Although studied in the context of women, Belenky and her colleagues provide valuable research that resonates with the issue of comparing individual approaches and collective approaches. When we build our knowledge for leading focused on the individual’s role, we tend to view leadership as separate from knowing, the individual disconnected from the context of others. This impacts our behavior in how we approach the process of gaining knowledge from others. Nona Lyons, who developed the concept of separate and connected experiences, says that “people who experience the self as predominantly separate tend to espouse a morality based on impersonal procedures for establishing justice, while people who experience the self as predominantly connected tend to espouse a morality based on care.”13 In separate knowing, the
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individual seeks the “right” answer and continually doubts until he or she has argued his or her way to being the most “true.” To explain this “doubting game” Belenky et al. say that “separate knowers are tough-minded. They are like doormen at exclusive clubs. They don’t want to let anything in unless they are pretty sure it’s good.”14 If we play the doubting game in leadership, then the way we lead inherently creates an environment of exclusivity. People have to prove their worth before we let their ideas in. As diverse as it is, the United States cannot continue to sustain the kind of leadership that takes these exclusive approaches. If we continue to do so, then we may miss an opportunity to leverage a new way to look at the challenges posed in a dynamically changing global context that many organizations must now operate in. In contrast, connected knowing develops knowledge through gaining access to knowledge that others possess and through the experience of this exchange. If applied to leadership, we would develop our understanding through the collective context and “seeing others not in [our] own terms but in the other’s terms.”15 It is the context of others’ experiences that allow us to think differently and become relevant outside of our own current sphere of influence. It is perhaps more time consuming to take in the perspectives and experiences of many, yet without this insight, leaders would have only their limited view from 10,000 feet above the ground. Without a collective context, leaders may not see the potential and other ways of working that could make them more effective. In an example from the technology industry, a vice president noticed that in a division where there were several high-performing Asian Americans, none were receiving the highest rating in the annual review process. As with many performance management systems, only a small percentage of workers could receive the highest rating (10 percent). The vice president knew that, yet thought it strange that out of the Asian Americans who achieved significant results for the company not a single one was highly rated. All those with the highest ratings were white Americans. Something didn’t seem right. . . . The vice president decided to have an independent consultant conduct interviews to determine what might be the cause for this phenomena. In speaking with the Asian American workers, it was brought to light that they were spending a significant amount of their time working
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away from their office location. The Asian Americans used their mobile phones and laptops to conduct their work virtually, allowing them to spend more time on location with their clients and in direct contact with them. Although not physically present in their office location, they offered to always be available by phone and through email. The Asian American workers were focused on building relationships with their clients and understanding their context, which was achieving results for the company. What led to this work becoming unnoticed? It just so happened that the white American workers who were rated highly were spending most of their time in the office, in close proximity with their manager. The manager witnessed firsthand the white American workers spending time on the phone with their clients, and these workers sought out the manager for advice outside of working hours. Their day-to-day work was more visible to the manager, and the manager intimately knew the challenges that these individuals faced in doing the work that they did. The Asian Americans, however, were focused on the delivery of their work and on making sure that their clients’ needs were met. They provided frequent reports of their status to the manager, but did not necessarily spend time highlighting all that they were doing to contribute to the company. They simply did what they needed to do to get the job done. Coming from a collective context, they contributed as they felt they needed to and worked hard toward the common good of the company. As such, they didn’t feel that highlighting their achievements was necessary; the result would speak for itself. What the Asian Americans did not know was that the way the manager perceived hard work was related to the amount of time his staff was physically present in the office. As the consultant spoke with the manager, they both came to realize that the manager’s measure for high performance was based on past behaviors that made him successful. What hard work meant to the division manager was coming into the office every day and establishing physical presence in the home office. When the manager did not see the Asian American workers physically present in the office, it left him without a way to understand the level of performance it took to do their work. He did not equate their approach to work with the individual behavior he expected to see from his top performers. Thus in a performance rating system that forced him to choose one worker over the other for the top ratings, he chose those
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whose stories he had heard in the office, every day on the phone with the customer, and those who came to him for advice—those individuals whom he could equate with his idea of what working hard looked like. The manager felt a stronger trust and accountability toward the careers of the white Americans workers in the office as they modeled his view. By defining leadership in an individual context, what are we missing? The Asian American workers clearly had an innovative way of working with the client, but the division manager did not see their work in this way, because he was so focused on his view of what top performance looked like. What makes one individual successful may not be success to others, and in a world where our context is constantly changing, the same leadership approaches may not sustain whatever success has been achieved. Take for example the economic crisis that began in 2008. Much of the world blames “greedy” U.S. CEOs for the current state of the world’s economic downturn. Yet, these are the same CEOs who in the past may have been praised as visionary leaders who led their organizations to the heights of success they reached before plunging into bankruptcy. Eager top college graduates competed fiercely for employment at investment banks such as Lehman Brothers before its downfall. The rhetoric of “beating out the competition” and “time is money” is changing to that of the need for integrity, honesty, and responsibility. These qualities are ones that involve developing the presence of trust, and trust can only be created through a collective understanding and context. You appear trustworthy because others bestow that upon you through the relationship that they perceive to have with you. This does not have to be a direct relationship, but an understanding and knowledge of you created through a connected knowing. This shift in the qualities we desire from our leaders can be seen in the United States’ most recent choice of Barack Obama to serve as the forty-fourth president. Obama’s win was not just a political win, it was felt on a personal level by many, and a record number of participants attended the 2009 inauguration, and the world watched as Barack was sworn in. Chants of “Obama, Obama,” rose from the crowds gathered in the freezing weather on January 20. Beyond the achievement of becoming the first African American president, Obama made himself a relevant leader to a diverse population winning him both the popular and Electoral College vote. What contributed to his ability to connect
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with so many American citizens during the elections? Listening to the coverage of the inauguration, newscasters mentioned his calm, his eloquence, his down-to-earth approach. Yet what truly seemed to move people was the connection he established with each person listening to his speech and his invitation to the American public to join him in making a change for the better in the United States. In his inauguration, he provided messages about the presidency being “our” presidency, and his wins are “our” wins. Obama’s slogan, “Yes we can!” reflects his awareness at the time of his campaign of the importance of speaking to the collective consciousness. If we take a close look at Obama’s inauguration speech, it is filled with inclusive “we” statements, asking Americans to join him. He says, “We have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. . . . They [referring to the “men and women obscure in their labor, who carried us up the long, rugged path towards freedom” from earlier in his speech] saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions, greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.”16 In his campaigning and in his inauguration speech, Obama spoke from a place of connected knowing, and one that spoke to the collective consciousness of the United States. In a time where great change is needed, he called upon the whole of United States to support him in making change. This messaging to the collective and the use of “we” contrast with George W. Bush’s messaging in his first inaugural speech. In an important moment where Bush addresses his audience directly, he emphasized what he would do as the leader of the country. He said, “And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity.”17 Rather than call upon the collective United States, Bush emphasized his role in establishing justice and opportunity for an entire country. This statement emphasizes the image of the “heroic” leader. Yet can one man truly be accountable for creating justice and opportunity for a whole nation? If Bush took responsibility for this as one man, it would place him in the position of defining what justice is for an entire nation. In the context of a company, if a CEO is accountable for the direction of the whole organization, then he is also in the position to be the one to determine this direction. Can one person truly be accountable for the work of an entire organization?
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When leadership is so individually focused, the leader may begin to lose sight of the whole, clouded by what they see only in their purview. Perhaps Lehman Brothers’ CEO, Richard S. Fuld, Jr., truly thought he did nothing wrong. In his sworn testimony before a Congressional panel on October 2008, he said, “No, sir, we did not mislead our investors. . . . To the best of my ability at the time, given the information I had, we made disclosures that we fully believed were accurate.”18 He went on to blame the Federal Reserve for not moving faster to assist the company. Fuld was also questioned on his own compensation as well as that of his most senior executives of the company. In defense of the $18 million of severance paid to two senior executives, Fuld responded that one payment of $2 million was appropriate given years of service, and another $16 million paid to another was the result of a contractual obligation.19 Yet is this appropriate for a company facing bankruptcy? Or was Fuld taking what he felt he and the other individuals within his close circle of leadership deserved based on their individual contributions to the company over the years? In viewing leadership through an individual approach, Fuld failed to see the collective needs in a critical situation, and, therefore, created a perception of complete irresponsibility and greed. Such instances of placing too much importance on the ability of individual contributors to make a difference are not limited to the United States. In the year 2005 Canada witnessed an example of unlimited individual leadership in the dismantling saga of the well-known hedge fund firm Amarnath. The firm hired 32-year-old Brian Hunter from rival firm Deutsche Bank and gave him unprecedented authority to trade in the futures market. His reckless bets in natural gas futures produced over $6 billion loss, which in turn led to the fire sale of good assets of Amarnath. In 2005, Hunter was ranked 29th in the world for best-paid traders. Senior managers of the firm believed that he had exceptional abilities and allowed him to act as a lone trader as opposed to function through a trading team, which was normally the case. Another example is of 31-year-old Jerome Kerviel, the trader behind French banking giant Société Générale’s loss of £3.9 billion in 2008— the biggest in financial history (until Bernard Madoff in 2009). Within Europe, the amount dwarves the £827 million lost by British trader Nick Leeson, which led to the demise of Barings Bank in 1995. Kerviel had joined Société Générale a few years before the scandal and moved
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up to a dealing desk where he was supposed to work with half a dozen senior traders. Investment firm Goldman Sachs, even after getting bailed out by the U.S. government, had no trouble passing out millions of dollars in bonuses to each of its 100 London partners working at the London headquarters. Such examples of senior leadership of financial services firms and multinational companies receiving millions of dollars in bonuses and salaries abound. Even though leadership researchers such as Warren Bennis have predicted “the death of the great man” notion behind leadership,20 he knew that “given our continuing obsession with solitary genius, reflected in everything from the worship of film directors to our fascination with Bill Gates and other high-profile entrepreneurs, it is no surprise that we tend to underestimate just how much creative work is accomplished by groups.”21 A shift in how we see and define leadership is starting and can be seen in the increase in the amount of literature that now talks about leadership in the context of diversity, adaptive leadership, and what has now become a common phrase, “leadership at all levels.” Warren Bennis in an essay on “followership” argued that “following” should not be about nodding heads but about speaking out and dissent when decisions demand to be challenged. “Perhaps the ultimate irony,” he writes, “is that the follower who is willing to speak out shows precisely the kind of initiative that leadership is made of.”22 In books such as See Jane Lead by Lois P. Frankel,23 Minority Rules: Turn Your Ethnicity into a Competitive Edge by Kenneth Roldan and Gary Stern (2006),24 Breaking Through: The Making of Minority Executives in Corporate America by David Thomas and John Gabarro (1999),25 The Introverted Leader: Building on Your Quiet Strength by Jennifer B. Kahnweiler (2009),26 and Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age by Juana Bordas,27 the need in leadership to take more inclusive approaches can be seen. Bordas says, “From a We perspective, the spirit of generosity can be nourished because people will understand that a collective point of reference is the foundation of caring and generosity found in communities of color, which is reciprocal, circular, and a way to nurture oneself and others. Generosity is one antidote to the rampant materialism that reinforces individualistic advancement over the common good.”28 Heifetz discusses the need for value-based leadership that is based on working with a
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community to conduct “adaptive work.” Other books call for models of shared leadership and leadership at all levels of organizations, including Right Leadership: The Most Inspirational Leaders Are Invisible Heroes by Harry Stewart Mercer (2007),29 Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work by David Rock (2006),30 Leading Quietly by Joseph L. Badaracco (2002),31 Joseph Ralin’s (2003) Creating Leaderful Organizations,32 and a collection of writing, Shared Leadership: Reframining the Hows and Whys of Leadership, edited by Craig L. Pearce and Jay A. Conger.33 A wealth of literature that suggests that diversity can bring new perspectives to leadership and that leadership in a collective context is of value. The value of looking at the example of Asians in the Western world is that this presents us with the coming together of both concepts.
Benefits of Invisible Leadership Understanding approaches to invisible leadership provides options in how we lead and how we manage our work relationships. In a personal example, the father of one of the authors of this book had served as the vice president of a shrimping company in the Gulf Coast. He was formally a chemist, and loved to conduct research in his own time to improve his business. Through his research he discovered an optimal freezing temperature for shrimp, which provided the competitive edge of preserving the fresh flavor of the shrimp despite freezing it. In an individually focused leadership approach, he would have kept this secret to himself for his own business and success. Instead, he shared this information with a number of the other local shrimping businesses so that the community overall could benefit from his research. In doing so, a once outsider to the other companies, he developed relationships with the other companies that he had not had before. He paved the way for future sharing of information and camaraderie among the local companies. As outlined in Chapter 2, the authors have found that the key values of invisible leadership include collaboration, long-term focus, and rewarding the whole. These core elements of invisible leadership provides a balance to individualistic leadership values described in this
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chapter. As previously stated the core elements for invisible leadership values include: • Collaboration • Drives toward consensus • Teamwork • Leading is done through facilitation versus direction • Long-term focus • Develops leaders at all levels • Manages to the future, not managing to “get it done” • Substance driven, looking for long-term benefit versus surface driven instant gratification • Rewarding the whole • Recognizes the team, not just individual recognition • Emphasizes a meritocracy rather than a “star” leadership structure. The benefits of collaboration are similar to the case for the benefits of diversity. Collaboration allows multiple perspectives to provide a range of potential solutions to a problem, allowing the collective group to determine the best course of action. Leadership in collaboration is done through facilitating and supporting team members to develop ideas and possibilities. A few blue-chip firms have embraced the concept of collaborative leadership. For example, in 2008 Cisco launched the Cisco Center for Collaborative Leadership. Launched as the company’s “process for transforming leaders who will transform Cisco,” the Center focuses on three principles of executive talent management: talent strategy and planning, executive assessment and development, and organizational transformation. Several other management and leadership development centers in multinational enterprises (MNE) have embraced various forms of collaborative leadership such as team leadership, shared leadership, and servant leadership. In Leadership without a Leader: An Exploratory Study of Collaborative Leadership Janet Cox (2009)34 explored this idea through the perceptions of people involved in an economic development initiative where no conventional iconic leader was present. Results indicated the evolution of leadership theories that have emerged as an integrated picture requiring more emphasis on relational dynamics and best understood
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simultaneously from multiple angles. In “Developing Collaborative Leadership: A Study of Organizational Change toward Greater Collaboration and Shared Leadership” Jonathan Clarke (2008)35 demonstrated that implicit in leadership behavior is the “ability to work with others, to be in relationship, and to collaborate.” In a case study of an organization attempting to change from an autocratic leadership to a more collaborative working environment, he found that the collaborative leadership can be developed through the cultivation of the ten themes: (1) ongoing learning and continuous development, (2) flexibility, (3) trust, (4) respect/esteem/positive regard, (5) willingness/ commitment, (6) facilitative process (establishment of norms, ground rules/agreements, inclusivity, process capability/tacit knowledge of functional group process), (7) realistic optimism/positive personality/ resilience/solution/strength/future focus, (8) communication skills, (9) social intelligence (ability to transcend the ego and to self-organize and motivate), and (10) an appropriate level of technical competence. The importance of a collaborative leadership style is recognized not just in organizations such as the Cisco, but at the societal, national, and international level. For example, the 2008 World Economic Forum annual meeting ended with a call for a “new kind of collaborative leadership.” “Globalization is forcing changes in how people collaborate in a fundamental way,” said former British prime minister Tony Blair at the closing plenary session. “You need stronger and stronger collaborative political leadership. . . . If we are interconnected and the world is interconnected, the only way for the world to work is to have a set of common values.” Collaboration can also be messy; again, the elements we discuss are meant to compliment and to balance other leadership styles. Benefits of long-term focus and rewarding the whole can be seen in examples of the Tata Group, the global conglomerate that originated from India. Tata Companies are known for their legendary long-term focus and developing leaders at all levels. The company believed in sustainability, long before it was popular. In the typical Tata model, as exemplified in Tata Steel, they would build a whole city around the factory, provide lifelong employment, build schools and hospitals, and engage in prolific philanthropy by giving back to the community. Promotion was based on meritocracy and there were few star employees. Tata Consultancy Services, one of the largest information and communication technology
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consulting companies in the world has 143,000 highly trained IT consultants in 42 countries. Even during the economic downturn they stayed away from laying off people and resorted to other methods to keep as many employees as possible. Such differences are supported by research as well. In a research report, “The DNA of Indian Leadership: The Governance, Management and Leadership of Leading Indian Firms,”36 Peter Cappelli, Harbir Singh, Jitendra Singh, and Michael Useem shared their findings from interviews with 100 CEOs of leading Indian companies. While there were similarities with the U.S. style, they also found clear differences. In contrast to U.S. business leaders, Indian CEOs tend to be more preoccupied with internal management, long-term strategic vision and organizational culture. Financial matters, on the other hand, are not at the top of their agendas. . . . Indian leaders seem to care a good deal more about motivating employees and setting an example than about currying favor with shareholders or the markets.37 Each CEO in the study was asked a set of questions about leadership competencies, competitive advantage, and governance. When asked what they thought were the competencies most important to their success in the past five years, the Indian executives felt that shared values and vision, as well as building the top team, were some of the most important capacities. For example, B. Muthuraman, managing director of Tata Steel, a company that has become widely known after its acquisition of Britain’s Corus Steel in 2008, talked about being able to make people envision their future and empower them. The Indian business executives were marked by flexibility, being in a family ownership structure and entrepreneurship/risk taking. The CEOs’ ranking of their management priorities gave an indication of the Indian style. They chose themes such as “chief input for business strategy,” “keeper of organizational culture,” and “guide or teacher for employees” as the top three. Rajesh Hukku, founder of i-flex Solutions, a financial services software firm that was later acquired by Oracle, emphasized some key differences: “Indian leaders do not ascribe to the ‘hire and fire policy’ which is prevalent in the U.S. Indian leaders look at their people as long-term assets, and company behaviors and policies have evolved accordingly. Broadly, it is about taking a longer-term view versus a quarter-by-quarter view.” Exactly such kind of views are exemplified in the business philosophy of the Tata Group in India.
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The examples for the benefits of the elements of invisible leadership that are provided come from globally successful companies or globally focused government initiatives. These examples show that to be relevant in an increasingly global context for companies and other organizations, there will be a critical need for leaders who can incorporate the elements of invisible leadership into their leadership style. What we hope to encourage in the coming chapters of this book is to increase the level of awareness toward those in organizations who may already be leading with these different elements, but are going unseen because the current context of leadership in the United States and other Western countries do not allow for these leaders to gain upward mobility in their organizations. To help raise this awareness, we provide in the next chapter several examples of leaders who have been able to make invisible leadership work.
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Chapter 5 Making Invisible Leadership Work
In chapter 3, Making the Invisible Visible, we found from our interviews that common themes could be drawn between the experiences of our interviewees as they progressed in their careers. These commonalities suggest that despite the ambiguity around Asian American identity, shared experiences exist within the Asian American workforce. We also asked these leaders if their cultural values affected the way they experienced their work environment and also the way in which they lead. Although the reactions about their actual experiences varied among the interviewees, many felt that their culture influenced how they approach leading their teams, and despite the diversity across the interviewees in their countries of origin, some overriding core elements of leadership were consistent. We asked if elements of invisible leadership resonated with them, and many agreed. Through the information we collected in the pulse survey and interviews, we can see that although Asian Americans themselves may not be aware of it, there are certain values from their backgrounds that they use to be effective in leading, yet this effectiveness is going unnoticed. Because many Asian Americans may not lead through showmanship and instead focus on doing the work, in an environment where the squeaky wheel gets the grease, many Asian Americans who help to keep the wheels turning are not being seen. It is taking longer for these Asian Americans to rise to senior leadership levels. Some may argue that if there are shared experiences among Asian Americans and their contributions are going unnoticed, that it is up
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to them to adapt to their environment. They should be speaking up and having their voice be heard; however, many interviewees we talked to felt remorse over having to change themselves and who they are in order to advance. In doing so, do they in turn lose their true voice? By forcing Asian Americans to change, do organizations lose the benefits of their cultural values that are currently going unseen? As previously referenced, a study conducted at Harvard University showed the importance of balance in the work environment between both those who are very vocal, and those who are more inclined to listen and to take into account multiple inputs to provide solutions. The researchers found that “ . . . new ideas can’t blossom into profitable projects if everyone in the room is contributing ideas, and the leader is too busy being outgoing to listen to or act upon them.”1 Although many organizations promote diversity on its surface, if only a certain kind of leader is getting promoted and advancing to higher levels of leadership, then what message does that send to everyone else? What are organizations losing by not valuing a balancing perspective on leadership? As can be seen in chapter 7, Invisible Minority, from the pulse survey, and in interview results, Asian Americans face unique glass-ceiling issues; however, that is not to say that there are no examples of Asian Americans in very senior levels of leadership. Of the well-known examples of these leaders, some may have chosen to change in order to be seen as “leadership material.” Yet, there are examples of Asian American leaders who seem to have maintained the integrity of their values in their leadership approach and have reached very senior levels of leadership. In chapter 6, Invisible Leadership, we make the case for and reference the trend in leadership literature that shows the need for change toward more collaborative and connected approaches. At the forefront of these changes are leaders who are making invisible leadership work. Three well-known examples of Asian American leaders where invisible leadership qualities can be seen in practice are Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, Andrea Jung of Avon, and Tony Hsieh of Zappos. Each is known as being highly effective CEOs not only from the perspective of placing a strong emphasis on the development of the people in their organizations, but also in achieving business results. A common thread in all of their stories is the belief that by focusing on their people and long-term talent sustainability, they also achieve effective
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customer relationships and loyalty. Focusing on continuous improvement, all three leaders place great importance on ongoing learning and empowerment to maintain talent who takes ownership in the work that they do and to provide growth opportunities for them. Indra Nooyi for example deployed values training across her global organization to be completed in one year. She describes this training program saying that “for each country, they develop programs, so you had one generic program on how you roll out values, and then there was the country’s specific interpretation of parts of the values, where you have to put it in the country and their societal terms. Then, there was a whole session to train the trainer; then it got rolled all the way down to the frontline. . . . Everybody had to go through this values training—[both] values and code-of-conduct training.”2 Andrea Jung takes particular pride in the independence that the direct-selling model of Avon provides to women in many different countries. She credits her cultural background in understanding the importance of providing opportunities to a diverse workforce. Of her cultural background she says that “it has given me a global vantage point, being the daughter of immigrants from China, who had nothing when they came here. And now I am leading a company. It speaks to something deep in me, the concept that you don’t have to start with anything. The direct-sales opportunity allows people to change their lives.”3 At Zappos, one of the ten core values is to “Pursue Growth and Learning.” To support this continuous learning, Zappos has the Zappos Library. The books in the Zappos Library cover a number of professional development topics, and these 30–40 books are provided to every Zappos employee as well as to visitors. They also take classes on Good to Great by Jim Collins as well as Tribal Leadership by Logan, King, and Fischer-Wright providing employees with the opportunity to spend time focusing on their own leadership development.4 Each of these leaders also emphasizes the importance of giving back to the larger community through charitable work, focusing not only on the collective in their own organization, but to the broader communities outside of their companies. Although many companies have corporate charity initiatives, each of these leaders shows a genuine connection to his or her company’s initiatives, as can be seen by the creative ways in which each fosters service to his or her broader communities. In 2010, PepsiCo started the Pepsi Refresh Project
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where the general public may submit applications and also vote for charitable organizations to receive grants. In its initial stages, the project was noted for its unique approach of engaging directly with individuals and the larger community. In a Huffington Post article, PepsiCo’s giving campaign was highlighted saying that “ . . . where Coca-Cola historically connects individuals and their purchases with external partners, Pepsi partners directly with the individuals themselves, engaging with them on a totally different level.”5 Although the project has come under recent scrutiny due to the potential misuse by those who are submitting their grant applications, the original concept and intent provided individuals with the opportunity to directly impact for the positive charitable organizations seeking assistance. Avon also has an initiative to connect directly with individuals in the many different communities in which they work through their Avon Voices talent search. Through this initiative, individuals can submit videos for singing or songwriting to “let their voices be heard.”6 At Zappos, one of the ten core values is to “Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit,” and they also apply this to their community involvement. As is the case with much of Zappos’ initiatives, community involvement is driven by its employees who are allowed paid time off for volunteering, and also through accepting direct online submissions for grant requests. In observing these leaders through the many public interviews that they have participated in, it is apparent that they all have a strong passion for what they do and that they have reached their level of leadership without compromising what they value. Each provides candid and genuine answers to the questions he or she is asked. When asked about her work-life balance, Indra Nooyi is honest in communicating her own personal struggles. There is no canned answer, no spoon-fed talking points that she seems to be responding from. Her answer is simply to acknowledge what every person with a family struggles through in balancing work and life. What does personal life mean? Work is life, life is work. I don’t think there is a difference. . . . I think you make choices every day, almost every hour of the day, what you’re going to be. . . . I’m not sure I’ve been the best mom, the best wife, the best daughter, the best daughter in law. Maybe sometimes not even the best executive. But every day I have to wake up and make choices.7
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Her answer is the kind of response and acknowledgment of the daily struggles that all working parents experience that provides a way for every person to relate to her. In an interview conducted at Stanford Business School, Andrea Jung talks about how it was important to her to stay true to herself despite her initial struggle with gaining the seat as CEO. She says, I feel proud that I haven’t had to change who I am to be successful in this role. . . . Have I had to change some things, yes. I think I am much more assertive and understand the role of constructive conflict. I don’t think I’m aggressive. I don’t think I’ve had to change my personality or who I am or my value system, so the best thing I think my parents would say about me is that she’s still the same person even though she’s on some list some place.8
Reflecting on the ten years she served as CEO at that point in 2009, she says that “I have a love affair with my work and my company,” showing her passion for the mission that the company has and her strong belief in that value of its work. Tony Hsieh also takes an approach that is unique and clearly driven by a desire to be transparent and approachable. One of the core values of Zappos is to “Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication,” and in order to foster that kind of open-door policy, Hsieh does not even have a door let alone a corner office. In a video available on the Zappos Family Culture Blog, Tony Hsieh can be found sitting at his desk that looks no different from anyone else’s. It is in an open space, no bigger than what any of the other employees have.9 Each of these leaders in their own authentic way can be seen as exemplifying the core elements of invisible leadership that we discussed in chapter 3, Making the Invisible Visible. What we also see is that through focusing on the work and the people of their companies, they are able to guide their companies through the mission and the core values that are authentic and relevant to the people in the organizations as well to their customers. Most organizations have established core values; however, how many truly live them? In the rest of this chapter, we tell the story of each of these CEOs including how they make the core elements of invisible leadership—collaboration, long-term focus, and rewarding the whole—work. We will also discuss how these leaders have shaped the core values for their organizations by taking an
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authentic approach that is focused on doing the work versus one of showmanship.
Indra Nooyi In 2008, when interviewed by Diversity Inc. Magazine for being a “walking example of diversity,” Indra Nooyi was one of six Asians and one of thirteen women leading a Fortune 500 company.10 She has been characterized as a “caring CEO,” who is direct but also personable. She is said to be capable of relating to all her employees from the boardroom to her frontline employees.11 As acknowledged in Diversity Inc., “Nooyi is definitely not like most CEOs of Fortune 100 companies. . . . She listens to what everyone has to say, no matter what their level.”12 Nooyi’s success dispels the myth of the requirement to meet the characteristics typically associated with individualistic styles of leadership. She instead takes a collective approach, and she takes personal responsibility for the well-being of her employees. She is known for playing the mother figure to her employees, whom she considers part of her family, and keeps an open-door policy. Every quarter she writes hand-written thank-you letters to the spouses of all 27 executives for putting up with long hours away from home. After seeing the impact of her success on her mother during a visit home, Nooyi also began sending letters to executives’ parents.13
One of the primary focuses for PepsiCo’s Performance with a Purpose philosophy is talent sustainability, and Nooyi takes this core value very seriously. She ties this accountability directly to her own compensation. “My objectives to my board demand progress on all of those [diversity] activities. So, 50 percent of my bonus is based on people goals.”14 Her reasons for making her people such a high priority can be seen in how she views each person and why building a sustainable workforce is so important. “All employees in Pepsico are first mothers, fathers, children, husbands, before they are employees of Pepsico. The only way we could bring the best to Pepsico was to allow them to bring their whole selves to work. Performance cannot be delivered without purpose, and purpose leads to performance. Purpose is defined
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in three planks: human sustainability, environment sustainability, and talent sustainability. People feel that they can bring their whole selves to work. Not just make a living, but have a life.”15 Although they are not called out as core values, these three planks to performance with a purpose reflect the core elements of invisible leadership of collaboration, long-term focus, and rewarding the whole. In human sustainability, it is clear that Nooyi sees the importance of her work as reaching far beyond those within her organization and sees our global environment as her community. She also looks forward to the long term in supporting her consumers to have health options for snacks and also with environmental sustainability, she promotes the reduction of PepsiCo’s footprint and the importance of taking care of our environment in order to sustain long-term business. Taking a collaborative approach with talent sustainability, Nooyi sees the importance of what each individual has to offer and how the company may best support them in valuing their full potential, which goes beyond just who they are at work. She also expresses the importance that people should not have to change themselves, but if they do good work and they are making significant contributions to the company, then this is what should be rewarded. As with the interviewee themes found in chapter 3, Making the Invisible Visible, the cultural values of hard work and meritocracy played a pivotal role in Nooyi’s own development as a professional. In reflecting on her career progression, Nooyi says, I focused on delivering whatever was required in my job all the time. Singular focus was doing a damn good job. It wasn’t playing the politics. It wasn’t running for office. That’s the most important part. It was not running for office. It was always doing the job I was given exceedingly well but doing it better than anybody else could have done in that job. So I gave it my all and once people started seeing that you could over deliver on every job, they started giving you friendly tips on how to behave, how to act, how to interact in certain situations.16
In her comments, Nooyi reflects that playing politics and gaining visibility is what she may have seen typically in terms of what people around her were doing in order to get ahead. She goes on to say that she chose not to conduct herself this way and stayed true to what she thought was most important, which was to do the best possible job she
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could. Nooyi also says in another interview, “I don’t know why people think CEOs should be celebrities.”17 Nooyi credits her cultural background with the way in which she focuses on her work and leading through doing. In a recent interview conducted for the The Financial Times Top 50 Women in Business, Nooyi comments on how her values for how she approaches her work formed early in her life growing up in India. She shares her story about the values her paternal grandfather instilled in her. She says that he told her, “First, if you are given a job to do, do it really well. You must consistently ask yourself, ‘Have I done it to the best of my ability?’ Second, he taught me to be a lifelong student. Don’t ever think you’ve arrived, and remember that what you don’t know is so much more than what you do.”18 Nooyi firmly believes that she has achieved the success that she has because of meritocracy. She sees the United States as being one, and definitely leads her organization as one. She says, “I’m sure there’s some luck but largely been on stay out of the politics, stay out of running for office, focus on the job at hand and if you do those three, it does matter if you are international, locally born, man, woman, I think you’ll find yourself moving ahead. And I think the US has been a meritocracy but PepsiCo for sure is an incredible meritocracy. I think the combination of the two is what has brought me here.”19 Similar themes can be found in the Asian leaders we interviewed in terms of a strong belief in meritocracy. Nooyi also values the importance of learning from others by taking into input from all different sources within her company. Nooyi even went so far as to ensure that her own competition for the CEO spot stayed with the company and valued him enough to request that he be paid in equal compensation to herself. In October 2007, Nooyi became the fifth CEO in PepsiCo’s 41-year history. When she found out that she would become the CEO, Nooyi immediately left to visit the other top contender for the job. Nooyi and her colleague held senior positions at PepsiCo and developed a close friendship over the years. During Indra’s visit to her colleague’s vacation home in Cape Cod, they spent time together as two good friends and not as competitors for one of the most coveted corporate jobs in the world. When the time was right, Nooyi communicated authentically that she would do whatever it took to keep him as his equal in the PepsiCo, even if the title would say CEO and chair of the board for her and vice chair for him. Nooyi
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matched her intentions with actions by persuading the board to increase his salary to closely match hers. Her thoughtful actions kept her valuable colleague at PepsiCo, and Nooyi was very deliberate in treating him as her partner in the complex business of running a global conglomerate.20 Indra Nooyi demonstrated a type of leadership different from what one would expect in a competitive corporate environment. She showed her care for her longtime friend, while still maintaining her reputation as a corporate senior executive. Steve Reinemund, the CEO before her, calls her a “larger-than-life leader.” She is at once relevant to the competitive marketplace and at the same time socially responsible. As shared by Nooyi during the Yale School of Management Leaders Forum Lecture Series, “because society provides us a license to operation, we owe society a duty of care. . . . You have to worry about the costs that you as a company are imposing on society. What can you do to reduce costs you pass on to society.”21 Nooyi’s focus on the global collective community has not been without criticism and misinterpretation. In her 2005 commencement speech at Columbia University, Nooyi described the United States as the middle finger of the global hand. She says in reference to the United States: “The long middle finger—must be careful that when we extend our arm in either a business or political sense, we take pains to assure we are giving a hand . . . .not the finger. Sometimes this is very difficult. Because the U.S.—the middle finger—sticks out so much, we can send the wrong message unintentionally. Unfortunately, I think this is how the rest of the world looks at the U.S. right now. Not as part of the hand—giving strength and purpose to the rest of the fingers—but, instead, scratching our nose and sending a far different signal.”22 Although some took offense to these comments for which Nooyi later issued a formal apology, her delivery of this message reflects that her mindset is one that is focused on the collective. The fact that there were those who took offense to her comments reinforces that those individuals somehow saw her as separate from themselves. Had they only understood that she includes herself when she speaks about the United States and what message we—as a joint community and country—send to the rest of the world. The negative reaction to Nooyi’s comments could indicate that she was seen through the lens of the forever foreigner. Someone who, despite having naturalized and become a U.S. citizen, still was an outsider and someone who did not have the right to provide constructive criticism to her own adopted country. Although
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Nooyi has reached the level of success that she has, it seems that even she has not been able to fully escape the mental models that for many Asian Americans continues to contribute to the glass ceiling. Andrea Jung, our next example, also struggled with misperceptions in gaining her seat at CEO of Avon.
Andrea Jung In November of 2010, Andrea Jung was named No. 2 right after Indra Nooyi in The Financial Times Top 50 Women in Business. Her success and effectiveness as a CEO has been clearly exhibited; however, before becoming CEO of Avon, Jung experienced a significant hurdle reaching this level of leadership. In 1997, after considering three internal women candidates including Jung, it was announced that a man would be taking the CEO job. To explain the decision, the existing CEO said, “We wanted someone who had experience as a chief executive of a global company. A lot has been made of the gender issue. But the first responsibility of the Avon board is to place Avon in the hands of someone who can lead it.”23 Jung was named the president of Avon’s worldwide operations, next in line for the CEO position. In reflecting on this experience in 2009, Jung says, I received two other CEO job offers. . . . I was being offered the money, the title, the corner office. . . . A mentor of mine said follow your compass, not your clock . . . make this decision not from your head, but from your heart. And that was the biggest inflection point of my career. I made the decision that I love the company. I loved its mission, its purpose . . . I loved the people, and I decided that I loved that more than I loved being a CEO. . . . I would rather be with a company that I loved than just do it for the title. . . . 24
Less than two years after naming the new CEO, Jung was brought in to take over the role. What Jung’s story tells us is that somehow, despite being at the top of the list of internal candidates, she initially was not seen as being ready to take on a CEO-level role. What ultimately contributed to that perception we can only speculate; however, what is clear is that Jung
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was, in fact, the right person for the role despite any misperceptions the board had at the time. According to the New York Times, “Mr. Perrin . . . was never a good fit. When he arrived at Avon, he acknowledged that not having direct selling experience was a drawback.”25 In contrast, Jung was known for being very much in touch with the Avon consumer and also in understanding its direct-selling model. When Jung started with the company she herself was an Avon representative, and even today, every other year she becomes an Avon representative and spends time out in the field.26 Quoting a consultant to the beauty industry, the New York Times article also went on to say, “Quite honestly, I just don’t think he understood who he was marketing to . . . On Mr. Perrin’s watch, Avon confused its core customers by trying to become too upscale.” Despite having previous experience in a visible CEO role, without valuing the talent of their workforce and then in turn understanding the community he served, the visible CEO failed, whereas Jung’s invisible leadership has continued to be successful since. Jung’s comments about her experience also reflect similar comments from the interviewees we talked to. She acknowledges that she was passed up for an opportunity and that it came around to her later than she initially anticipated. Yet, what was more important to her than the title or the upward mobility was the work itself that she was doing through Avon. She believed strongly enough in Avon’s mission to provide economic independence for women across the world, even if it meant staying in the number two spot, and even though others moved on after being passed over, having the most highly visible role within the company was not as important to her. As luck would have it, Jung did end up in the position she clearly deserved seeing how successful she has been and seeing her longevity in the CEO role. However, her leadership and her willingness to give up the title and the corner office to do the work she most felt passionate about reflect exactly why we have identified the concept of invisible leadership. Had she not gotten to the level of CEO, Jung would have been the invisible leader making contributions to her organization that would have gone unseen. Jung credits her dedication and willingness to work hard to her cultural background. Of her family’s values, she was taught that “you don’t quit on anything in this family. No path to success comes without stones in it.”27 Similarities can be found in the values of her cultural background with those of her organization. These core values include,
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“trust, respect, belief, humility, and integrity.”28 These values support the core elements of invisible leadership of collaboration, long-term focus, and rewarding the whole. It is clear from her personal story that Jung greatly values the input of others and also understands the importance of leading for the long term. In an interview, Jung talks about 2009 when the economy took a downturn and rather than cut back on her workforce, Jung decided to do a commercial during the Super Bowl. The ad was not to market their products, but instead to provide personal stories of women who when they were laid off from work were able to become an Avon representative and find a new way to maintain their economic independence. Jung chose to have her organization be part of the solution for unemployment that was a dramatic difference from other companies who were choosing to reduce their workforce to sustain the company’s financials.29 The value that particularly stands out in the list of Avon values in the context of invisible leadership is “humility.” Although the other values listed can often be found in the core values of many organizations, humility is one that we may not immediately associate with a highly successful corporation such as Avon. Humility also is not a characteristic that we would likely associate with an individualistic or charismatic leadership style; however, humility is very much at the core of what many of our interviewees felt when thinking about accomplishments and not wanting to take individual credit. Many of our interviewees expressed that they would rather give credit to their team, and Jung exhibits this same characteristic and supports this value among those in her organization as well by making humility one of the core values for Avon. This core value shows a willingness to learn from others and to take input from others. In describing the core value of humility, Avon’s website says, “Humility simply means that we are not always right—we don’t have all the answers—and we know it. We’re no less human than the people who work for us, and we’re not afraid to ask for help.”30 This description shows the collective focus that is instilled throughout the organization. Similarly for Zappos, “Be Humble” is one of their ten core values. In describing this core value, the Zappos “family” website says, “ . . . we carry ourselves with a quiet confidence because we believe that, in the long run, our character will speak for itself.”31 In watching Hsieh speak in videos available on their blog or elsewhere, his tone of voice
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is softer and he does not necessarily command a room in an outspoken and commanding way. Instead, Hsieh presents himself as a relatable person who can be seen as a friend, or even a family member, in line with the Zappos core value of “Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit.” Although Hsieh does not seem to associate his approach to work and leadership to his cultural background, many of what he values and engages in his leadership reflect the core elements of invisible leadership.
Tony Hsieh Tony Hsieh arrived into his CEO position at Zappo through a very fast-paced entrepreneurial career path during the boom of the “.com” industry. His example is a bit different from that of Nooyi and Jung, considering how he grew into becoming the CEO of Zappos. Hsieh started his career at Oracle; however, he soon decided that he would prefer to start his own business and started a website design company with a friend. Eventually, they created a program for advertising across a network of websites. Their business expanded rapidly and they eventually received an offer from Microsoft to buy LinkExchange for $265million.32 Having such a large sum of money available to him, Hsieh went on to establish a venture capital firm called Venture Frogs. It was through one of their investments that Hsieh became involved with Zappos and eventually became the CEO. In addition to his rapid growth into multiple senior leadership positions and then also as a venture capitalist, Hsieh could also be considered to be part of a different generation of Asian Americans from our two earlier examples in this chapter. Nooyi immigrated to the United States and became a naturalized citizen, and Jung’s parents immigrated from China. Both seem to be more connected to and reflective on their Asian cultural background, and attribute much of their values that they apply to work to their culture. Hsieh, however, may be an example of the themes we found in our survey responses and interviews, where he does not seem to carry as much of an awareness of the influence of culture to his approach to work. He tends to attribute influences to learning through testing out different businesses and strategies throughout
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his life, as his unique career path allowed him to invest in a number of different ventures and experiences that those without his resources would not be able to. Hsieh would likely also say that he did not run into any significant glass-ceiling issues as he has primarily shaped all the companies that he founded or has funded. That being said, commonalities can be found with Hsieh, Nooyi, and Jung in terms of how Hsieh chooses to lead these organizations. Regarding his parents, he says, My parents were your typical Asian American parents. . . . They had high expectations in terms of academic performance for myself and my brothers. . . . There were three categories of accomplishments that mattered to Asian parents. Category 1 was academic accomplishments. . . . Category 2 was career accomplishments. . . . Category 3 was musical instrument mastery.33
These types of comments that Hsieh makes indicates that he may not necessarily connect to the ideas of hard work and discipline to his own approach to work that were instilled in him by his parents; however, regardless of whether he is aware of it or not, where Hsieh has chosen to focus his energies on as a leader reflects that he leads through passion for his work and in doing the work, versus leading through showmanship. Hsieh does, however, acknowledge that he listens to his parents and takes what they say to heart. He says, “Another common trap that many marketers fall into is focusing too much on trying to figure out how to generate a lot of buzz, when really they should be focused on building engagement and trust. I can tell you that my mom has zero buzz, but when she says something, I listen.”34 Although the cultural influence on his leadership approach may not be transparently communicated, Hsieh does exhibit the core elements of invisible leadership. In a talk given at the Asian Society in New York, Tony Hsieh talks about the importance of the Zappos company culture. “For all the stuff we’re doing for customer service, customer service is actually not our number one priority. Our number one priority is company culture . . . ,” and Hsieh goes on to talk about how they ensure that their employees are the right fit for their culture through their interview process. “If they [candidates] are not a culture fit, we just won’t
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hire them.”35 As much as he holds each person within his organization accountable for maintaining the company culture, Hsieh takes a very collaborative approach to building in this culture. Every year, Zappos issues a “culture book,” which is made up of employee submissions for their thoughts on what the Zappos culture is. The book is only edited for typos; otherwise the content stays exactly as the employees have written it. The culture book is then made available to all employees and is leveraged for new hire orientations.36 This book provides a way for employees to connect across the entire company to build a strong sense of teamwork and exemplifies leadership through facilitation and allowing employees to own their experience at work. In his view of long-term growth, Hsieh comments on what he chooses to focus his time on. Looking back, a big reason we hit our goal early was that we decided to invest our time, money, and resources into three key areas: customer service . . . , culture . . . , and employee training and development. . . . Even today, our belief is that our Brand, our Culture, and our Pipeline . . . are the only competitive advantages we will have in the long run.37
Although Hsieh initially resisted the idea of establishing core values, the values that have been established are now seen as critical to the operations of Zappos. The core values establish a basis for candidate screenings and have a part in employee performance reviews. We have already mentioned some of the Zappos core values, and listed below are all ten38: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Deliver WOW Through Service Embrace and Drive Change Create Fun and A Little Weirdness Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded Pursue Growth and Learning Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit Do More With Less Be Passionate and Determined Be Humble.
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Many of these core values are very unique and reflect a spirit of innovation and of allowing the personal values of employees to shine through. The way in which the values are phrased is also very active, reflecting that these core values are meant to be lived and that leaders are also expected to lead through doing. These core values do not give the impression of being overly polished and provide an authentic view into the company, particularly core values such as “Create Fun and A Little Weirdness.” Hsieh shares with Nooyi and with Jung this ability to relate to his employees and ultimately to his customers. Through having core values that create an environment that is collaborative and focused on the community and on the whole, Hsieh is able to access the information he needs as a CEO to most effectively guide and keep a pulse on the work and on his business. Hsieh says, “Our philosophy at Zappos is that we’re willing to make short-term sacrifices (including lost revenue or profits) if we believe that the long-term benefits are worth it. Protecting the company culture and sticking to core values is a long term benefit.”39 As with Nooyi and Jung, Hsieh sees that the long-term investment in the people that do the work of the organization is the critical success factor in his organization. As such, Zappos focuses on this “family” culture through different creative initiatives, such as the “random acts of kindness” activities conducted by the employees themselves and monthly team outings to reward the teams overall for their hard work and to encourage positive team relationships. These examples of leaders who exhibit the elements of invisible leadership are proof that the days of cookie-cutter organizations and business models are numbered. Unless more individually focused leadership styles adjust to the times, they will face challenges with being relevant both in their market as well as with their employees who ultimately drive the success of any organization through their work. The leaders whose stories are told in this chapter have risen to the most senior levels of leadership in their organizations while maintaining their authenticity. If these leaders have brought as much success as they have to their organizations, then what are the implications for organizations who find a way to promote and to develop leaders like them who can drive long-term growth through collaboration? Could we completely rethink the hierarchical models for leadership through which most organizations continue to work today?
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If the distraction of having to gain visibility and having to change in order to become “leadership material” were taken away, and leaders could focus on the work and on the people they serve either through their products or services, what could that mean for the success of that work? The opportunity for growth is significant for any organization that chooses to take the chance to find out. As can be seen in the examples provided in this chapter, there are organizations and leaders who are making invisible leadership work. Their stories are often not heard but their contributions are significant. From a historical perspective, the pendulum between “doing” and “showing” has swung too much to the showing side. There is a growing debate in the United States about how the country has come to lose many of its innovation capabilities during the last 15 years. The outsourcing movement in a way started the “showing” focus. Corporate CEOs were told that if you send jobs overseas to countries such as India, you will save a significant amount of money, your quarterly reports to the Wall Street will look good, and you will look good as a CEO because you have cut cost and increased profitability. The looking good in the financial market place was so important that many CEOs engaged in downsizing though they knew doing so will erode the innovation capabilities of their organization. Economies of countries such as India and China improved significantly during the last 15 years because of the offshoring and contract manufacturing business they have received from the United States. The trend has continued with such unstoppable intensity that agencies such as the National Science Foundation have put out alerts that the United States is gradually losing its innovation advantage.40 High intellectual capital–based and innovation-driven activities such as R&D and product development have been outsourced to countries in Asia. As more jobs have become available in India, for example, the number of PhDs who return to India after studying in the United States has increased significantly. In other words, the number of people who are “doing” the core, competitively important intellectual and human capital–based work is decreasing in the United States while the number of professionals working on the “showing” part, such as image consultants, communication specialists, lobbyists have grown rapidly and visibly. The net result is that the United States is becoming very good at “showing” but the gradual decline in the “doing” part will leave
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the country with long-term competitive vulnerability. The same can be said for countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom. Time has come for business leaders to reclaim the “doing” advantage that the United States once had. They need to rethink how they mentor and grow leaders within their organizations. Instead of promoting people with marketing and “financial engineering” background, it is time to promote engineers as leaders, as Google has just done. Larry Page, the cofounder has just taken over as CEO from Eric Schmidt who was a highly talented professional manager. Google has realized that in order to fend off competitive threats from Facebook and Apple, they have to become more innovative, something that they were very good at since the company was founded by two engineering doctoral students from Stanford University. In this context, it is worthwhile to note that the number of CEOs with an engineering background in the United States is extremely low, whereas in India that number is much higher. No wonder that engineering (along with medicine) is still the most sought after career choice among high school students in India.41 Board of directors of U.S., Canadian, and U.K. corporations need to worry less about how their companies “show” in the Wall Street and instead should focus more on growing core competence in innovation and product development (the “doing” part). In the chapter 6, Highlighting Invisible Strengths, we provide career management strategies for Asians and Asian Americans in raising their awareness on why it is that they may be experiencing their work environment in certain ways and how to address these issues. We will also discuss strategies to highlight the benefits and the contributions they can bring to an organization because of their more collectively focused mindset that feeds the ability to leverage the core elements of invisible leadership. In chapter 10, Strategies for Organizations, we will also provide information for organizations on how they can better identify and leverage their invisible leaders.
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Chapter 6 Highlighting Invisible Strengths Career Management Strategies
In chapter 5, Making Invisible Leadership Work, we provided examples of Asian American leaders who successfully make invisible leadership work in high-level CEO positions. Each of these leaders exhibit a great deal of passion for the work they do, and by focusing on leading through “doing” rather than leading through “showing,” they are able to lead their organizations from an authentic and genuine perspective. Each has a good understanding not only of their customer population but also of their talent because of the effort they make to be deeply connected to the mission of their organization and accessible to all levels of employees. They are able to lead in this way because the lens through which they see their organization and their work is not through one of showmanship or as Nooyi called it “playing politics,” but in taking a long-term focus to build for the future of their organizations. In order to achieve this long-term focus, they emphasize collaboration and meritocracy in recognizing the overall team and not a “star” leadership structure. These are key elements of what we have defined as invisible leadership. Given that there are examples where invisible leadership has been successful, what are some career strategies for Asians and Asian Americans in following these examples? As we have previously cited, the Asian American identity can be somewhat ambiguous, and not all people identify with this term. Because of the wide diversity of countries of origin and because there
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is not a good general awareness for the shared Asian American history, many prefer to be seen in their individual context rather than be associated with being Asian American. Throughout this book (in chapters such as Invisible Minority and Invisible Ceiling) we have made the case that there are shared experiences and challenges across the diverse range of countries of origin for Asians and Asian Americans. However, we acknowledge that when it comes to what individuals can do to manage their careers, we must make decisions based on what makes the most sense in our individual context. Understanding the shared experience can provide some insight for what we may be experiencing and also provides a basis for Asians and Asian Americans to support each other. However, we realize that these are inputs into each individual situation, and there can be a number of other contributing factors to each person’s situation. The issue of being a woman in the workplace for example may add additional complexities to the way a work environment is experienced. Given this variation for each person, what we provide in this chapter are tools and ways to self-reflect and make sense of our individual situations, and put together a course of action after increasing our understanding. There is no silver bullet that will work every time for career success; each person has to make their own choices and decisions for how they wish to drive career growth. For example, in our interviews, we found that some Asian Americans chose to adjust and change to their environment and felt that they needed to do so in order to accelerate their career growth. Others came to the conclusion that they preferred not to change themselves, but instead find a way to maintain who they felt they were even if it meant that it took longer to move up in their career. In a later chapter, we discuss strategies for organizations and how organizations can better support Asians and Asian Americans and value the unique contributions they can make. We do believe that more support could be provided by organizations to understand and to address the unique issues faced by Asian Americans. However, Asian Americans and Asians in other Western countries experiencing similar challenges can also take steps to raise their own level of awareness that will help them make sense of their workplace and to take steps to address the issues they may face. Throughout this book we provide information that raises awareness to feed this self-reflection and mindfulness for Asians and Asian
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Americans. By providing data behind the glass-ceiling issues in chapter 7, Invisible Minority; the mental models that continue to frame the perceptions of Asian Americans and Asians in Western countries in chapter 8, Invisible Ceiling; and the story of shared experiences told through history in chapter 9, Seeing the Ceiling, we provide insights to help Asians and Asian Americans better understand their own experience within the context of the collective community. All of this information provides input into each individual understanding their full context; however, each individual must then also reflect on their particular situation and context. To do so, it is important to discuss the concept of social capital. Consider this real-life story from a Fortune 500 company. An Asian American man with a PhD in molecular science worked in R&D and spent many hours developing a new product. When he came very close to receiving the patent for this product, he was transferred to a different division. The white American man who came after him completed the work and got the patent. The product went on to be commercialized and was very popular in the market. Who received recognition for this product? When asked, the white American credited himself saying that he got the patent. This was a true statement in terms of who ultimately finished the work, yet the white American man did not acknowledge all the work the Asian American man had completed in order to develop the product in the first place. Within the organization, the white American man became associated with the successful product, and he was the one to gain visibility for this accomplishment. What did the Asian American man do in response? Nothing. The Asian American man did not know how to respond. He was frustrated, yet he did not feel right in doing anything about it as he thought the work he did was for the overall achievement of the team. He had been comfortable giving credit to the team for the product as he saw this accomplishment not as individually owned, but shared collectively. Yet when this understanding was not reciprocated by the white American man, the Asian American man felt anger. Coming from the context of his cultural values of humility and of putting the collective over the individual, he did not know how to address the issue. The Asian American man had all the technical competence and human capital needed to accomplish his complex work efforts. Yet his human capital did not translate into being recognized for his contribution
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to the success of the product, and he did not know how to make sense of the experience. He was not aware of how to translate his contribution into social capital in his work environment that differed from his own cultural context. Social capital theory suggests that what is critical to an individual’s ability to be successful in an organization is not their skills alone, but the social networks that are established through which necessary communication occurs to make these skills known to others (For example, see Rob Cross and Andrew Parker’s The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations)1. The more people who know you and your work, the more social capital and mobility you have in an organization. Wayne Baker, who writes extensively about engaging social capital in achieving success, explains the distinction between human capital and social capital by saying, “If you think of human capital as what you know (the sum of your own knowledge, skills, and experience), then access to social capital depends on who you know—the size, quality, and diversity of your personal and business networks.”2 Coming from a culture of meritocracy that rewards technical competency, the Asian American man did not realize the importance of managing his social capital and did not know how to communicate in a way that would lead to the recognition for his work. What the Asian American man in the story struggled with can be explained through a framework for understanding social capital. Table 6.1 shows this framework and the relationship between human capital versus social capital.
Table 6.1
Understanding Social Capital* Unknown to Others
Known to You Hidden Area Your abilities not recognized by others Your Human Capital Unknown to You
Unknown Potential Unconscious
Known to Others Area of Congruence Your abilities recognized by others Your Social Capital Blind Spots Stereotypes/ Misunderstandings
Source: J. Luft and H. Ingham, “The Johari Window, a Graphic Model of Interpersonal Awareness,” Proceedings of the Western Training Laboratory in Group Development (Los Angeles: UCLA, 1955). *Note: The dimensions in this table were adopted from the Johari Window Model.
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To become aware of social capital and how it is formed, it is important to first understand how we as people make sense of relationships and the difference between how we know ourselves versus knowing others. In the context of work, there are aspects of your own capabilities and also perceptions that others have of you that can either be unknown or known to you, as well as unknown or known to others.3 If you have a capability that is known to you but not known to others, then this is a hidden area that causes your abilities to go unrecognized and it also leaves others without information for how to best leverage your skills. If there are capabilities that you have that are unknown even to you, then these are areas for growth and potential that you are not aware of. If these capabilities remain unknown to you, your human capital is decreased. However, if your abilities are known to you and known to others, then these are areas of congruence where your skills can be recognized and leveraged. This understanding also provides a way for others to act upon your capabilities leading to new opportunities, increasing your social capital. There are also perceptions of you that are known to others but are not known to you. These are blind spots that may create challenges for growth, especially if these perceptions are misperceptions that could potentially reduce the area for congruence. These blind spots can be caused by stereotypes and can create misunderstandings. These blind spots decrease your social capital. To build social capital, what is needed is to expand your area of congruence with others on your skills and capabilities. If your human capital is only known to you, then it will not translate into social capital that provides opportunities for career growth. To make what is known to you known to others, you need to take steps to disclose your capabilities. Communication needs to happen in order to achieve this disclosure. We discussed earlier with the core elements of invisible leadership that many Asian Americans lead through “doing” versus leading through showmanship. This focus on “doing” the work, however, does not mean that no communication is necessary. With no communication, no social capital will be built, and you also keep relevant information from your leadership that they need in order to do their job. Rather than seeing communication with your own leadership as boasting about individual accomplishments, what is important is for Asian Americans to understand is the concept of “managing up” and providing the relevant
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information needed for your leadership to communicate on your behalf to those who are more senior than them. Although the work can “speak for itself,” there is also a balance with making sure that there is “speak” involved, and that you are supporting your own leadership who is as much part of the team as those who may report to you. Seeing the inclusion of your leadership as part of your team and as your responsibility to include is important to achieving the balance between focusing on the work and also making sure that relevant information is provided to those who need it in order to be successful in their jobs. Communication can also be important in terms of developing your own unknown potential. One important skill to gain to decrease the amount of unknown potential you have is to develop “mindfulness.” Mindfulness means having the ability to assess yourself in any given situation and raising your level of awareness of the role you play and what you contribute to your experience. This raised level of awareness can be achieved through understanding the different inputs that are affecting your experience, including the perceptions that others have. These perceptions that others have can be gained through communication and through requesting feedback. Although these conversations may at times be uncomfortable, they are critical to developing trust among your team. If your team members know that you are open to their input and their feedback, then they in turn will be able to take a more collaborative approach with you. You will also gain perspective on yourself that will better inform what actions you can take to increase your social capital. Table 6.2 provides a framework through which to
Table 6.2
Increasing Your Social Capital* Unknown to Others
Unknown To Self Reduce through Mindfulness
➡
Reduce Hidden Area through Disclosure to Others
➡
Known to Self
Known to Others Expand Area of Congruence to Expand Social Capital Reduce Blind Spots through Feedback from Others
Source: Luft and Ingham, “The Johari Window.” *Note: Dimensions in this table were adopted from Johari Window model.
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understand how to expand the area of congruence and increase your social capital. To help expand your area of congruence, it is important to understand how to manage perceptions. One way in which to make sense of how perceptions affect your social capital is through the concept of “impression management.” Impression management is the “goal-directed activity of presenting information in order to influence the impressions formed by others.” Research shows that effective impression management is positively associated with promoting social relationships with people in your work environment who can enable upward mobility.4 Research also shows that Asian Americans practice less self-disclosure and communicate less in their relationships with their supervisors. This lack of communication can be interpreted as an unwillingness to communicate, which can create frustration for leaders who need information from their direct reports in order to effectively do their jobs. Our own research from the pulse survey of Asian Americans shows that only a little over half of our respondents said they meet with their supervisors regularly. Although this does not necessarily speak of the quality of the communications that they do have, it does support for the research on impression management that says that Asian Americans may not be fully utilizing opportunities to communicate and to inform their leadership and are instead relying on a “job-focused” impression management tactic. There are three different impression management tactics used by employees that have varying levels of self-disclosure: “job-focused,” “self-focused,” and “supervisor-focused” styles.5 Employees who use “job-focused” tactics engage in behaviors focused on the tactical tasks at hand in order to create a positive impression. They rely on working hard, doing a good job, and having that work speak for itself. Those who use “self-focused” tactics rely on speaking often with their supervisor and highlighting their individual accomplishments and challenges that were overcome in order to complete their work. Those who engage in “supervisor-focused” tactics focused on the improving the relationship with the supervisor, such as taking an interest in the supervisor’s personal life, and doing personal favors for the supervisor.6 The amount of self-disclosure and boss-focused impression management were found to be positively associated with good supervisor-subordinate relationships. The more self-disclosure, the stronger the relationship is.
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Katherine Xin’s study shows that Asian Americans tend to use more job-focused impression management tactics in comparison with their white American counterparts. In a follow-up study conducted by one of the authors of this book (Tojo Thatchenkery) in 2001, it was found that among the 144 Asian American managers interviewed for this study, many had an aversion to the self-focused and supervisor-focused impression management tactics.7 The self-focused style seemed unprofessional showing a lack of humility, and the supervisor-focused style was seen as encouraging nepotism. Similar opinions and frustration can be found in the interview results we shared earlier, and some of that frustration can come from the fact that what creates social capital for Asian Americans within Asian American communities does not necessarily translate into gaining social capital at work. In the story provided earlier about the Asian American man in a Fortune 500 company, it could be said that the Asian American man was also more job focused in his tactics, and he thought his work should speak for itself. This man then struggled to understand how to stay true to his cultural values of working hard and contributing to the collective context, when those around him instead recognized the individual who utilized self-focused impression management tactics. In a diverse work environment, what is often difficult to understand for those who are not in the minority is the struggle and frustration it can cause to have the values of your work environment be different from those of your own cultural values. To act any differently from the cultural values that make up one’s identity would be to deny a part of yourself that shapes so much of who you are. In a story from a graduate-level course on culture, students were asked to draw a diagram with “self” in the center and write in the factors that define who they are in the circles surrounding it. The closer to the center the factor was, the more it shaped who that person was. Every minority student included his or her race somewhere in the surrounding circles. The white American students in contrast listed qualities such as “runner,” “parent,” “reader,” and so on. None listed white American within the circles that shaped who they were (figure 6.1). This story shows how differently each one of us sees and experience our world and our workplace differently, depending on cultural factors that influence our values that guide how we interact with others and complete our work. While minorities struggle to balance their ethnic
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HIGHLIGHTING INVISIBLE STRENGTHS Example: Non-minority Student Identity Circle
Example: Minority Student Identity Circle
Self
Self
Parent
87
Parent
Engineer
African American
Play Piano
Accountant
Figure 6.1 Non-minority Student Identity Circle and Minority Student Identity Circle.
identity with the demands of work, it can be hard for those not in the minority to fully sense how these challenges impact minorities’ behavior at work. In the 1994 documentary film The Color of Fear by director Lee Mun Hwa, men of different races explore the topic of racism. One white American man cannot understand why the minority men define themselves in the context of their ethnicity. He denies the existence of inequalities as he defines himself not as white American, but as simply a man. He says that any man has equal opportunity to gain success in the United States, and that he sees each person as separate individuals, not as their ethnic background.8 What the white man in this film does not acknowledge is that he does not feel a strong need to define himself as white American because the predominant cultural context he lives in is his own. There is no reason to question as he does not have to navigate two different existences as the other minority men do. The minority men discuss how they have a cultural context shared within their ethnic communities, and when entering into the dominant culture, it becomes difficult to fully engage as what is important in their cultural context may be interpreted differently by the predominant culture. To overcome these difficulties, what is within the control of each individual is to find ways to engage in impression management tactics that may at first seem at odds with cultural values, without feeling as though you are giving up the cultural values that are important to you to
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identify with. In order to do so, it is important to step back and understand the positives that these other tactics have to offer even within the context of your own cultural values. To say that Asian Americans are entirely job focused would be inaccurate. There are many examples of Asian Americans who have been very successful in building social networks and utilizing their social capital. Tony Hsieh for example built his network of relationships through friendships formed in college. It was a natural progression for him to continue these relationships and for him to create a network of talent through his friends and friends of friends, and creating his own “family” to build companies. Despite the high visibility he now has, Hsieh maintained his core value of “Be Humble” because he was able to interpret the skills needed for success at that level into a context that fit with his own values. Ultimately, it is not necessarily one impression management tactic that will provide long-term success. It is developing a balance of these tactics and, if there are ones that seem at odds with your values, to reframe and reinterpret them in a way that does fit within these values. For example, the self-focused and job-focused impression management tactics may seem at odds with the core elements of invisible leadership. Let’s take then the core element of collaboration from invisible leadership. Collaboration cannot occur without providing input and information from your own unique perspective to contribute to the collective context. A self-focused tactic allows you to contribute to the whole the knowledge that you gained in doing the work that you do. A self-focused tactic then does not need to mean that you are taking individual credit and only communicating what you accomplish, but instead it can be a way to contribute to the bigger picture by adding in your piece of the puzzle. Without this context, your leaders would be without what could be crucial information for informing decisions that are being made at their level. Similarly, supervisor-focused tactics can be engaged with the same approach you may take in order to support your team and focus on the collective. It simply means seeing your supervisor as part of that collective context and community. By doing so, you can also help your own leadership shape their perspective on developing talent for the long term and seeing leadership at all levels of the organization. In addition to what you can do as an individual in influencing change in your organization, you can also value different ways of leading since
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the views on leadership are shifting as can be seen in the information provided in the Invisible Leadership chapter. As the workplace becomes more and more driven by a “creative economy” the need for change away from more individualistic styles of leadership is becoming more and more apparent. The leader of the “creative economy” is one that is not just about creating repeated solutions with a factory mind-set of compliance, but one of collaboration that most effectively supports creativity and innovation. What this means is that if you can make your values relevant and provide contributions to support this change in your organization, you can leverage the values that may be posing challenges for you today to become an asset for tomorrow. In writing about a “creative economy,” Richard Florida discusses the importance not only of human capital, but of creative capital.9 He says that an important driver of creative capital is tolerance and the ability to incorporate diverse capabilities and talent into work. The idea of the value of diversity is nothing new; however, the practical application of how to best incorporate diverse perspectives can be challenging as each individual’s situation can be different. The values that have been described as part of invisible leadership—collaboration, long-term focus, and rewarding the whole—supports the development of this creative capital. Daniel Pink also notes the shift in how consumers are seeking creativity in even our everyday household items. We as consumers are willing to pay a bit more for products associated with design or with stories that resonate with our sense of aesthetics or humanity. As an example, droves of people line up for hours to get the latest iPhone; other more practical phones without the design and interface of an iPhone have not resulted in the same kind of following. If we see that a product is cute and pink and has a pink ribbon for breast cancer research, we are likely to pay more money. Or using Pink’s example,10 picking up even a toilet brush at Target, we may go for the designer version versus the ugly looking one that may work just as effectively. By saying that we bought something from “tar-jay,” we are at once trendy yet also smart about shopping and paying less for something that still looks good, even if that item scrubs our toilets. Richard Florida describes this as the “creative economy” that will be driven by a new “creative workforce.” The market is no longer calling for standardization and factory workers, nor is it looking for the knowledge worker who regurgitates information that can be found so
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readily through the internet. We are now in an age where all things being equal, we choose what we think most meets our needs, including what is pleasing to the eye and mind and what we perceive to elevate our quality of life. This trend can also be seen in terms of what we pay attention to in the world of management; words such as employee engagement, talent management, work/life balance. Meeting the basic needs for survival no longer fits the bill to address the market drivers of today’s creative and increasingly global economy. If the core elements of invisible leadership resonates with you as it has for many of the Asian Americans we surveyed and interviewed, then you have a unique value proposition to provide to your organization. Successful examples of invisible leadership such as Indra Nooyi, Andrea Jung, and Tony Hsieh show that the ability to utilize these core elements to transform leadership into one of collaboration, long-term focus, and rewarding the whole. The goal of providing this framework for invisible leadership is ultimately to make it visible so that Asian Americans and Asians in Western countries can be recognized and recognize for themselves that they have these capabilities inherent in their cultural values. What may pose a challenge with the glass ceiling today can become the positive attribute for developing the creative workforce for tomorrow. To do so, Asians and Asian Americans will have to learn to highlight their invisible strengths so that they can be seen to balance and to positively contribute to changing individualistic leadership as it is today in much of the United States and in the Western world.
Activities for Career Management What follows are a series of activities that can help to reduce the hidden areas and blind spots that we discussed earlier in this chapter to increase your social capital. The first activity helps to make known to yourself what your priorities are for your career, which will increase your mindfulness and self-awareness to your own needs for how you want to direct your career management. Once you have defined your priorities and understand where you are and where you want to be, the next step is to reduce your hidden area to others and reduce your blind spots through feedback from others. In addition to receiving feedback
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from others, you can leverage this increased awareness of your own capabilities to then understand the motivations of others. Building a collective context and understanding is a critical component to making your team successful and in the contributions you can make at work. These activities, however, may require a significant change on your part. Expanding your area of congruence also means growth and disclosure that may mean overcoming a lot of discussion that may create discomfort. In continuing to support your own growth and the growth of others, we also introduce in the last activity the concept of Appreciative Intelligence®. Increasing your capacity of Appreciative Intelligence will be important in maintaining your resilience through these changes (Table 6.3).
1. Defining Your Priorities What does success look like to you taking into consideration every aspect of your life? Draw a circle and create sections for every part of your life that’s important to you. Where are you today? Where do you hope to be three years from now? Ten years from now? Define how you want your life balance to look in the future with each of these aspects that you have determined is important. Figures 6.2A and B are Increasing Your Social Capital with Appreciative Intelligence® Unknown to Others
Reduce through Mindfulness
➡
Unknown to Self
➡
Reduce Hidden Area through Disclosure to Others
➡
Known to Self
Known to Others Expand Area of Congruence to Expand Social Capital ➡
Table 6.3
Reduce Blind Spots through Feedback from Others
Appreciative Intelligence Supports These Activities Source: Luft and Ingham, “The Johari Window.” *Note: Dimensions in this table were adopted from Johari Window model.
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Marriage/Family Fun Job Interests
Figure 6.2 A Current Life Balance Scenario.
Future: Where I’d like to be in X years Marriage/Family Fun Career Interests
Figure 6.2 B Future Life Balance Scenario.
examples for how you may be able to chart your current state and your future state that you are striving toward.
2. Getting Feedback As discussed earlier, what can help to increase your social capital is to decrease the blind spots you may have regarding how others perceive you and to dispel any misperceptions there may be. In order to decrease these blind spots, it is important to get feedback from those around you. This includes people you work directly with to understand yourself within the context of your work, and then also to gain feedback from those who are further along in their careers who can help you navigate any challenges and questions you may be facing. At the end of this chapter, we provide suggested reading. You can use the framework
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suggested in one of these books, Difficult Conversations, to help you through any conversations that you think may be particularly sensitive or challenging. The final chapter, Strategies for Organizations, of this book provides a practical step-by-step guide on how to approach and to learn from a difficult feedback discussion. • Reducing blind spots in your work: Asking for feedback can be a very sensitive conversation. You will need to commit to the other person that you will be a willing listener and that you won’t hold what he or she says against him or her. Not everyone can articulate what they see, and so you will also have to show patience and ask for examples to help you understand in what situations their feedback applies. If you are uncomfortable with the idea of initiating a conversation for feedback, you can always practice first in a safe environment. Ask a friend or a family member outside of work first and see how you react to what they have to say. Keep in mind that you should not be reactive, and if you feel yourself becoming defensive then take a moment to reflect and to compose yourself rather than lash out at the other person. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have to ask for feedback in a formal setting. If you choose a colleague with whom you have developed a trusting relationship, then you can bring up the conversation very naturally as you walk together to get coffee or to pick up lunch. You should also consider asking a colleague with whom you do not have a close relationship, as he or she may be able to provide you with more objective feedback. If your colleague seems hesitant to answer the questions you’re asking, then offer to give him or her time to think about it and always be very appreciative of his or her help when he or she responds.
Questions you can ask to request feedback: a. If someone asked you what positive contributions I’ve made to the team and to our work, what would you say? b. If someone asked you what I don’t do enough of, what would you say? c. What are your observations on how I interact with leadership? Would you say that I act differently with the team members versus with higher levels of leadership? d. What are some of your suggestions on how I may be able to improve relationships that I may not be effective in today?
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Finding a mentor: Not everyone is comfortable with the concept of “networking.” When placed in an artificial environment where you have to start a conversation with someone simply because he or she is a senior leader, it may feel forced and uncomfortable. You will need to figure out for yourself what approach works best for you. Going to happy hours and shooting the breeze with executives may not work for you, and not everyone has the knack for starting conversations with a group of complete strangers. That does not mean that you don’t have the ability to network. A different way to think about networking is that you are expanding your group of trusted advisors from whom you seek input and collaborate with. In other words, you’re finding more people that you can rely on to be there for you as you will be for them. This reciprocation is what makes for authentic and long-lasting relationships. Developing this relationship takes time, and you will need a starting point. Do your homework and find a leader in your organization who you can relate to and who shares a common interest. It could be a professional development–related interest, such as a book that you recently read that they also took an interest in, or perhaps a personal interest such as having gone to the same college or university. If you’ve found that the issues laid out in this book for Asian Americans particularly resonates with you, you could join your Asian American affinity group and find a leader who may have experienced similar challenges. What your mentor can provide is a bigger-picture perspective to fill in the congruence gap. They may have experiences to share that they learned from over the course of their career, or may be able to provide new perspectives in terms of how you can handle different situations. They can also provide insight into how you can address the feedback points raised in the first feedback-collecting activity.
Examples of questions to use in engaging your mentor a. I asked my coworker what positive contributions I make to our team and our work. They said that they appreciate when I do ____, but I don’t see that being recognized by my leadership. I don’t feel comfortable boasting about my accomplishments, but how can I communicate the value I contribute to the team? b. My coworker suggested that I need to do more of _____. I’m not sure how to do that without changing who I am, do you have any experiences where you’ve faced a similar crossroad in your career
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development? What were some of things you thought through in making a change like this work for you? How can I accomplish what I need to in order to succeed without giving up my own values? c. When I asked about how I’m perceived in my interactions with my leadership, I was told _______. I’m not sure what that means. Can you help me understand why this may be important in my career? d. What are some of your suggestions for how I may be able to improve relationships that I may not be effective in today?
3. Building Collective Understanding Building common ground with others and establishing a collective understanding on how we interact to get work done is a critical skill to have in leading a team. Where we often face conflict with the people we work with is when we have different expectations or when we have differing perspectives on how to accomplish the work or how we should interact in order to get the work done. One activity that can be done in establishing this common ground is to do the exercise mentioned earlier in the chapter with the identity circles, and instead of using “self,” ask people to complete it based on what is most important to them in their work. What this could look like can be found in figure 6.3. Example: Job-focused Work Value Circle
Example: Self-focused Work Value Circle
Work
Work
Passion for the mission
Influence
Working Hard
Relationships
Meritocracy
Promotion
Figure 6.3
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Job-focused Work Value Circle and Self-focused Work Value Circle.
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Figure 6.3 shows an example of someone who may be more job focused and an example of someone who may be more self-focused in their impression management tactics and their expectation of what they want to gain out of the work. By making these motivations transparent, each person’s objectives can be leveraged in a way that best keeps them engaged in their work and can balance different tactics across the team. For example, for the job-focused team member, they would be most motivated by work that allows them to feel that they are contributing to the overall mission of the organization and to know that their hard work is recognized. For the self-focused team member, they may be best leveraged in positions where relationship management is important, such as a liaison role, where they can be leveraged across multiple teams and work streams and have visibility. What can also be an output for making these motivations transparent is the opportunity to give and receive feedback. Each approach provided in the example above has strengths and weaknesses, and it is important to understand what each of those are in order to have a cohesive framework for how the team will work together to leverage the strengths of each team member. This feedback discussion should also serve to be helpful to each person as it makes him or her aware of where he or she can best perform while providing him or her with a development opportunity to better balance his or her own skills and capabilities. Once this collective understanding is established, then an operating model can also be developed for how each team member can best interact with the other in order to create a high-performing team.
4. Reframing for the Positive: Appreciative Intelligence It is important in career management to learn to manage your own “burn out.” Being stretched in terms of how you prioritize and make decisions regarding your future, understanding how you are viewed by others, and then to also communicate with others to build common ground are all activities that may take up a significant amount of your time and energy. What is important to keep in mind especially if you face challenges in completing these career management activities is that there is always a way to reframe for the positive allowing you to be resilient in facing change. To reframe for the positive, you will need to leverage your Appreciative Intelligence. Appreciative Intelligence is the cognitive ability existing in
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everyone that can be tapped into to set the stage to engage the kind of intelligence that leads to creative thinking. Appreciative Intelligence allows us to see new opportunities and possibilities where there seem to be insurmountable challenges. The presence of Appreciative Intelligence is evidenced by three key capabilities11: 1. Reframing 2. Appreciating the positive 3. Seeing how the future unfolds from the present.
These three capabilities lead to four qualities that are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Persistence Conviction that one’s actions matter Tolerance for uncertainty Irrepressible Resilience.
Engaging your Appreciative Intelligence will enable you to envision and to see the long-term benefits of a situation, where others may not. For example, rather than solving a “problem,” Appreciative Intelligence would tell us that the problem only exists because we see it as one. Take for example two individuals fulfilling the same role responsibilities with the same level of competency (skill level, years of experience, academic background, etc.). When faced with challenging issues to resolve, one sees it as a problem that is being dumped into his or her lap and acts as though they are being deeply troubled by having to fix this issue. The other is excited by the issue because it creates an opportunity for them to design, to deliver, and to own a solution. Which person becomes more successful in the long term? The second individual has the ability to “see the mighty oak in the acorn.” The issue doesn’t bother them because they see the larger benefit to resolving the issue. Not only are they providing a solution, but they are getting an opportunity to be innovative, igniting their passion for their work. Engaging your Appreciative Intelligence can be as simple as asking yourself, is there a different lens through which I can see myself and this issue that I may be struggling with? Is it an issue or is it an opportunity? What are the long-term benefits that can be generated from working through this and by finding a solution? By continuing to grow and to foster your Appreciative Intelligence, you will be better
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positioned to increase your ability to make positive contributions to your work, as you will be seen as the person who has the vision and the creativity to identify innovative solutions. In a world that will be led by a creative workforce in the future, this ability will be a critical asset. For more information and for exercises on how to grow your Appreciative Intelligence, you can refer the book Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn by Thatchenkery and Metzker. You can also search for information on Appreciative Inquiry, which was conceptualized by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva, professors at Case Western Reserve University.12
Suggested Reading In addition to the activities provided, we also have a brief list of references that will help fuel your thoughts and help you reflect on developing your own authentic leadership style. Beyond these books, there are many others that we have referenced throughout the different chapters of this book that provide diverse perspectives leadership. Some provide new concepts that help frame how you wish to approach leadership and others written by those who are senior leaders themselves. The books listed below mostly fall in the first category to help inform the development of your own approach. These are just a few sample books that can get you started, and we have chosen these also because they support the core elements of invisible leadership that we discuss throughout this book. Leadership Without Easy Answers by Ronald Heifetz (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994)—This book argues that leaders should distinguish between routine technical problems, which are typically solved through expertise, and adaptive problems, which require comfort with ambiguity and thinking outside the box. A leader who is adaptive should be open to recognizing contributions from both visible and quiet employees. Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie (Viking Penguin, 1998)—Just for fun and to fuel your creativity to see things in a new way. Creating Leaderful Organizations by Joseph A. Raelin (BerrettKohler, 2003)—This book provides a number of different models to leverage leadership from every level of the organization.
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The Dance of Change by Peter Senge (Doubleday, 1999)—This book provides many practical activities to support organization change that can be used on an individual and team level as well. Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen (Penguin Books, 1999)—This book is an easy read that can support you in giving and receiving feedback. The Leadership Engine by Noel Tichy with Eli Cohen (HarperCollins, 1997, 2001)—This book provides information on how to develop a teachable point of view and leaders at all levels. The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company by Ram Charan, Steve Drotter., and Jim Noel (Jossey-Bass, 2011). This book discusses how to “grow” leaders from within the company as opposed to going out and hiring “star” CEOs or managers. A pipeline and careful succession planning is needed to leverage the best leadership talent from within. Relational Being: Beyond Self and Community by Kenneth Gergen. (Oxford University Press. 2009).
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Chapter 7 Invisible Minority The Story of the Asian and Asian American Glass Ceiling
First coined in 1986 in the Wall Street Journal, the metaphor of the glass ceiling is a widely accepted term used to describe the unseen barriers that systemically keep certain groups of individuals from upward mobility within organizations. The concept of the glass ceiling belongs not only to the United States where the term was first coined in reference to women in the corporate world, but it is used globally as a core concept to describe the challenges of upward mobility in a workforce. The metaphor of the glass ceiling has resonance because it provides those who experience the glass ceiling with an image to provide to those who do not. It illustrates the invisibility of the challenges that certain groups of individuals face in trying to reach the top of an organization. What the glass ceiling does not do is account for the differences in how these limitations are experienced among varying ethnic groups. The glass ceiling focuses our attention upward, yet if everyone is looking up when do we look around to acknowledge what others are experiencing? What we may lose sight of in the discussion of glass ceiling is the diversity within diversity, and the understanding that not all groups experience the glass ceiling the same way. Although it is commonly accepted that certain diversity groups experience the glass ceiling, Asian Americans do not receive this acknowledgment quite as readily.
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Research shows that there are challenges that are unique to the Asian American experience, yet their challenges are not widely discussed in the diversity dialogue. For example, one of the authors of this book worked in the Human Resources (HR) department of an elite private day school in a major metropolitan area in the United States. As part of her ongoing interest and support for diversity initiatives, she participated in a cross-organizational diversity advisory group madeup of school administrators and teachers. In one of the meetings of this group, the need to increase diversity of the student body and faculty at the school was discussed. African American and Latino issues were highlighted, and the question of what could make the school more inviting to this population drove the focus for diversity initiatives for that year. The author paused and questioned, “What are we doing for the Asian American students?” The response she received was surprising, “Oh we have enough of them. We’re doing fine with the Asian population in the school.” Because the school was perceived to “have enough of them,” it was accepted without question from anyone else that no further support was needed. Later, the author came to find out that the Asian student organization was seeking a faculty advisor. The only possible advisor was a Caucasian administrator at the school, who spent many years studying about China and its history and language. Although academically knowledgeable of Chinese language and culture, the administrator admitted that he was not well equipped to coach these students in navigating and balancing the cultures of their origin and the more dominant culture of their school life. In this example, an opportunity was missed to provide the Asian American student body with the support they needed. Their needs were unseen and remained invisible because of a perception that they were fine—there were “enough of them.”
Asian American Glass Ceiling According to the Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity1 the “Asian” category is defined as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for
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example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.”2 Per the latest federal data,3 there are approximately 16.6 million AAPI’s (Asian American and Pacific Islander) residents in the United States, which adds up to about 5.4 percent of U.S. population. In a Gallup poll 30–31 percent of AAPI’s surveyed reported incidents of employment discrimination, the largest of any group, with African American constituting the second largest at 26 percent. In the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders’ interim report from 2001, Asian Americans are referred to as “Missing in History,” or MIH.4 The history of Asian Americans in the United States is not widely known. Organizationally, this absence of awareness of Asian American issues can be translated as “Missing in Mobility,” or MIM.5 There is a systemic challenge to reach senior levels of organizations across local and federal governments, private sector, and educational institutions; yet, the mental models held of Asians in these countries perpetuate the perception that Asians have “made it,” and hence they are not considered in diversity initiatives designed to support the needs of minorities. What causes those who are well-meaning in their diversity initiatives to disregard Asian Americans as a minority? Does the perception that “we have enough of them” necessarily mean that Asian Americans do not need support and visibility for their issues? Does representation in educational attainment necessarily mean that Asian Americans do not face similar challenges as other minorities? Have Asians Americans “made it” and are Asian American issues essentially nonissues that may be brushed aside in diversity initiatives? The 2003 national survey of college graduate data shows high educational attainment by Asian Americans. Xie and Goyette (2004) report that 53 percent of native-born Asian Americans complete college, compared to 30 percent among whites.6 Table 7.1 shows that there are unpredictable and unexplainable disparities between whites and Asian Americans of different levels of assimilation regarding annual earnings. Yet, the table shows interesting facts about Asian Americans of different educational and acculturation levels. For example, American born Asian Americans (AA-NB) are almost five times more likely to hold professional degrees in comparison to Asian Americans who did their high school in a foreign
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Table 7.1 Educational Attainment and Mean Annual Earnings from Descriptive Statistics for Men in 2003
BA MA PhD Professional Degree
Whites
AA-NB
AA-1.5
AA-1.25
AA-1.0
63.8 23.6 3.9 8.7
59.8 22.2 3.6 14.4
62.7 23.7 4 9.7
21.3 54 21.8 2.9
66.1 18.3 5.8 9.8
Source: These numbers are based on the authors’ computation using the National Survey of College Graduates data 2003. Legend for National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG) classification code Table 7.1: (1) Nativeborn Asian Americans (AA-NB) who were born in the United States and completed all their education in the United States; (2) 1.5-generation Asian Americans (AA-1.5) who are foreign born but completed all education from high school in United States;(3) 1.25-generation Asian Americans (AA-1.25) who completed their education up to high school in a foreign country and obtained their highest degree in the United States; (4) First generation immigrants who came to the United States as mature adults and completed all of their schooling overseas (AA-1.0).
country and obtained rest of the credentials in the United States (AA-1.25). Another interesting observation is that American-born Asian Americans (AA-NB) and first-generation Asian Americans who immigrated to the United States as mature adults having completed all education in a foreign country (AA-1.0) earn less than whites. At the same time, foreign-born Asian Americans who completed all education in the United States including high school and those who came after high school (AA-1.5 and AA-1.25) earn more than the whites. Finally, the overall Asian American mean annual salary is still less as compared to the whites. There are other interesting observations in the table as well, most of which suggest that culture and perception play a significant part in earning capacity of Asian Americans despite superior educational attainment. Table 7.2 shows the percentage of Asian American men based on the country of origin. In AA-1.0 category men of Indian origin is 41.3 percent compared to Chinese 12.7 percent and Filipino 22.3 percent. But in the AA-1.25 category the Chinese have an upper edge with 34.6 percent closely followed by the Indians (33.8 percent). In AA-1.5 category, men of Vietnamese with 26.6 percent is top the group followed by Koreans with 18.5 percent. The 2005 U.S. Census Bureau data shows that high educational attainment by Asian Americans (49 percent with bachelor’s degrees
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Table 7.2 Ethnic Group Based on Country of Birth from Descriptive Statistics for Men in 2003 Country of Birth
AA-1.5
AA-1.25
AA-1.0
Chinese Asian Indians Korean Filipino/a Japanese Vietnamese Other Asians
25% 9.9% 18.5% 10% 4.5% 26.6% 5.5%
34.6% 33.8% 6.3% 3.5% 2.1% 11% 8.8%
12.7% 41.3% 7.1% 22.3% 3.6% 3.9% 9.1%
Source: These numbers are based on the authors’ computation using the National Survey of College Graduates data 2003.
Table 7.3 Income in 2005 by Educational Attainment Year-Round Full-Time Workers, Both Sexes, 25+ Years of Age Both Sexes, 25+ Non-Hispanic White Asian
Mean Income Mean Income
Bachelor’s degree
Master’s degree
Professional degree
$72,429 $63,044
$88,316 $83,563
$150,570 $111,607
Source: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/education/cps2006.html. Table 8. Retrieved on January 13, 2008
or higher according to the 2005 U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey), does not necessarily translate into equality with their income (see table 7.3). Table 7.3 shows that despite achieving the same level of education, there is a significant difference between the return on investment on education for Asian Americans and non-Hispanic white Americans. Such a conclusion was made 20 years ago based on a series of studies, suggesting that the Asian American story has not changed much in the last two decades. Research by Cabezas and Kawaguchi, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and Wong showed that Asian Americans’ return on investment on education was significantly less than that of European Americans. Barringer, Takeuchi, and Xenos found that Indian Americans and Chinese American college graduates received an increase of $1,297 and $1,936 respectively, while for Caucasian American graduates, the increase— $4,349—was significantly higher.7
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The invisibility of Asian American issues can also be seen in the absence of this topic in academic journals. To illustrate, during the last thirteen years (between January 1997 and 2010), the four journals of the Academy of Management published 88 articles with the term “diversity” in its title. This is despite the fact that nine divisions and interest groups of the Academy of Management include diversity topics in their domain statements.8 Out of those 88 diversity journal articles a miniscule 4 dealt with Asian American diversity. Between 1999 and 2007, an average of 67 papers (total of 601) was presented each year at the Gender and Diversity division of the Academy. A mere 2.16% (a total of 13) of the total papers presented was about Asian Americans diversity. This extremely low focus on Asian American diversity cannot be assumed to be a result of deliberate exclusion from the gatekeepers of the Academy. On the contrary, the likelihood is that only a small number of submissions might have been made on Asian American diversity issues. What is the reason for such a possible low rate of submission, especially considering that many of the top business schools in the United States have a significant number of Asian American faculty members (in some cases over 25 percent of the faculty pool)? Is it because Asian Americans are not perceived as a minority, even though they are only 5.4 percent of the U.S. population? Are Asian Americans an invisible minority? In 1999 in one of the most affluent and populous counties in a major metropolitan area in the United States, a newly appointed police chief announced his initiative for diversity recruiting. The police chief said that more minorities were needed in the police force to reflect the diverse population in the county and to best serve them. He made a commitment to actively recruit more minorities—African Americans and Latinos. Interestingly, the largest minority group in the county, Asian Americans was not even mentioned. They were completely absent from the police chief’s diversity initiative. While absent from a plan to increase minority presence, in this same county there is not a single Asian American member in its board of supervisors, the highest level of leadership in the local government. Yet, 14 percent of the homes were owned by Asian Americans in this county. Asian Americans have become at once absent from discussions of minority issues while at the same time, face underrepresentation in leadership roles. A representative voice and a voice of advocacy for Asian Americans are missing from
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the diversity dialogue and from the executive table. Asian Americans have become the invisible minority. In addition to these shared challenges that exist across the different levels of organizations, various obstacles exist for Asian Americans for upward mobility. An analysis of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)’s EEOC-1 Survey data over the period of 1998– 2008 can be found in figures 7.1 through 7.3. Figure 7.2 shows the total private sector employment by race/ethnic group over this period of time, and figure 7.3 shows that Asian Americans represent the largest minority group in the category of Professionals with a steady increase over this period of time. Figure 7.4 shows that in comparison to the growth experienced over this decade in the Professionals workforce, Asian Americans have the lowest increase in the category of Officials and Managers among all race/ethnic groups shown. This data suggest that the commonly held notion that Asian Americans have “made it” in 35,000,000 30,000,000
Total Employed
25,000,000 20,000,000 15,000,000 10,000,000 5,000,000 0 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Year White
Black
Hispanic
Asian
Figure 7.1 Total Private Sector Employment by Race/Ethnic Group, 1998– 2008. Source: Data pulled from EEOC Job Patterns statistics site: http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/ jobpat/jobpat.html. Retrieved on January 13, 2008
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8,000,000 7,000,000
Total Employed
6,000,000 5,000,000 4,000,000 3,000,000 2,000,000 1,000,000 0 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Year White
Hispanic
Black
Asian
Figure 7.2 Private Sector Professionals by Race/Ethnic Group, 1998–2008. Source: Data pulled from EEOC Job Patterns statistics site: http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/ jobpat/jobpat.html. Retrieved on January 13, 2008 5,000,000 4,500,000
Total Employed
4,000,000 3,500,000 3,000,000 2,500,000 2,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000 500,000 0 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Year White
Black
Hispanic
Asian
Figure 7.3 Private Sector Officials and Managers by Race/Ethnic Group, 1998– 2008. Source: Data pulled from EEOC Job Patterns statistics site: http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/ jobpat/jobpat.html. Retrieved on January 13, 2008
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INVISIBLE MINORITY 4%
109
4%
3%
WHITE BLACK HISPANIC ASIAN AMERICAN
89%
Figure 7.4 EEOC Private Industry Data for Senior Level Officials and Managers by Ethnic Group, 2008.
America is a misperception. Although Asian Americans have increasing representation in the general Professionals category, their ability for upward mobility looks to be flatlined over this period of time. In addition, the 2008 EEOC data9 show that Asian Americans make up 11 percent of the Professionals workforce yet only 5 percent of the total Mid-Level Officials and Managers are Asian American. Only 4 percent are Senior Level Officials and Managers. In comparison, white Americans represent 76 percent of the Professionals workforce, yet make up 81 percent of Mid-Level Officials and Managers and 89 percent of Senior Level Officials and Managers. African Americans and Latinos represent 8 percent and 5 percent of the Professionals workforce respectively, and also represent 7 percent each of the Mid-Level Officials and Managers and 4 percent each of Senior Level Officials and Managers. This comparison may indicate that although Asian Americans make up a large percentage of the Professionals workforce among minorities, they do not have equivalent representation at the leadership level (figures 7.4 and 7.5). Clearly, these data show a significant drop between the percentage of Asian Americans who make up the Professionals workforce and who are able to be promoted to a manager level. A recent report by the EEOC on “Diversity in the Finance Industry” (using EEOC-1 data from 2003)10 also suggests that there is a large
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8% WHITE BLACK HISPANIC ASIAN AMERICAN
76%
Figure 7.5 EEOC Private Industry Data for Professional Workforce by Ethnic Group, 2008. 5% 7% 7%
WHITE BLACK HISPANIC ASIAN AMERICAN
81%
Figure 7.6 EEOC Private Industry Data for Mid-Level Officials and Managers by Ethnic Group, 2008.
discrepancy between the percent of Asians employed in the Finance Industry and those who hold positions as Officials and Managers. Table 7.4 shows the total number of employees in the finance industry from the EEOC report, and the overall distribution for Officials
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111
Sector Wise Percent of All Jobs Percent of All Jobs
Subsector
Total Employees Officials and Managers Professionals
Insurance Securities Banking/Credit Central Banking Funds Total
1,305,821 358,009 1,370,674 41,580 60,548 3,136,632
15.07% 19.44% 19.50% 19.75% 20.62% 17.67%
13.1
Percent
14 12 10 8 6 4
31.66% 31.93% 19.62% 20.07% 26.01% 26.16%
8.1
7.9
7.8 6.4 4.9
4.3 2.8
5.1
2.8
2 0 Central Banking
Banking/ Credit
Securities
Insurance
Funds
Subsector Officials and Managers
Professionals
Figure 7.7 Percentage of Asian Officials and Managers and Professionals by Subsector.
and Managers, and Professionals. Figure 7.8 illustrates the difference between Asians employed as Professionals and Asians employed as Officials and Managers in the Finance Industry. The subsequent charts (figures 7.9 and 7.10) show that in comparison to their African American and Latino counterparts, Asian Americans in this industry face significant challenges in achieving positions of Officials and Managers.11 The “Corporate Woman” column of the Wall Street Journal article mentioned earlier, explains that “there seemed to be an invisible—but impenetrable—barrier between women and the executive suite, preventing them from reaching the highest levels of the business world regardless of their accomplishments or merits;” and the Department of Labor defines the “glass ceiling” as “those artificial barriers based
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Percent
14 12
9.7
10 8 6
6.8
9 7
7
7.1
6.4 5.1
4.4
4 2 0 Central Banking
Banking/ Credit
Securities
Insurance
Funds
Subsector Officials and Managers
Professionals
Figure 7.8 Percentage of African American Officials and Managers and Professionals by Subsector. 7 6
5.8 5.1 5.2
5
Percent
5
4.4
3.9
4 2.9
3
3.3
3.7
3.1
2 1 0 Central Banking
Banking/ Credit
Securities
Insurance
Funds
Subsector Officials and Managers
Professionals
Figure 7.9 Percentage of Hispanic Officials and Managers and Professionals by Subsector.
on attitudinal or organizational basis that prevent qualified minority men and women of all races from advancing in their organization into executive level positions.”12 In 1991, the Glass Ceiling Act established the bipartisan 21 member Glass Ceiling Commission, which produced research findings and a final report of its recommendations in 1995.
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White Woman Black Man Hispanic Man Black Woman Asian Man Asian Woman Hispanic Woman 0
1
2 3 Reporting levels
4
5
Figure 7.10 Highest Ranking Woman and/or Minority Reporting Levels Removed from CEO. Source: “The Glass Ceiling Initiative: Are There Cracks In The Ceiling?” U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Employment Standards Administration, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, Washington, D.C., June 1997. http://www.dol.gov/esa/ media/reports/ofccp/newgc.htm. Retrieved on January 13, 2008.
Following the Glass Ceiling Commission’s work, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs continued the work of the glass-ceiling initiative, and produced a report in 1997 called “Are there Cracks in the Ceiling?” In this report the following two charts, using fiscal year 1993 and 1994 data, were provided regarding the continuing challenges for minorities and women in reaching mobility beyond the glass ceiling (figures 7.10–7.11). The charts are based on data collected from 53 corporate management reviews conducted through 500 plus interviews with company officials and managers. Figure 7.10 shows the number of reporting levels that stand between the CEO and the highest-ranking woman and/or minority. This chart shows that Asian men and Asian women are the most removed from the CEO level other than Hispanic woman. Asian women also are the farthest down in salary rank other than Hispanic woman (1 being the highest paid employee). Although more recent information from the glass-ceiling initiative is not available, other data show that the glass ceiling for Asian Americans still exists across government offices, educational institutions, and corporations. In addition to these examples, according to the EEOC’s “Annual Report on the Federal Workforce,” in fiscal year 2008, Asian Americans
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White Woman Hispanic Man Asian Man Black Man Black Woman Asian Woman Hispanic Woman 0
50
100 150 Salary Rank
200
250
Figure 7.11 Highest Ranking Woman and/or Minority: Average Salary Ranking within Company, 1993–1994. Table 7.5
Senior Pay Level (SPL) Representation FY 2008
Total SPL Work Force Hispanic or Latino White Black or African American Asian Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander American Indian/Alaska Native
Number
% of SPL
20,047 738 17, 471 1,363 811 8 154
3.62 85.61 6.68 3.97 0.04 .75
Source: “Annual Report on the Federal Workforce Fiscal Year 2008,” EEOC. http://archive. eeoc.gov/federal/fsp2008/index.html. Retrieved on April 12, 2010.
represented 5.9 percent of the federal government workforce, yet only 3.97 percent were in the Senior Pay Level Representation category (Table 7.5). According to the AAPI work group report to the chair of the EEOC (2007 data), out of the 2.6 million individuals employed in federal sector, 5.9 percent are AAPI. Although Asian and Pacific Americans (APAs) comprised 4 percent of the population (2007 data), 10 percent of the nation scientists were APAs at that time. The study shows (Table 7.6) that 24 percent of the Asian Americans hold white-collar job and 14 percent are scientific or technical
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INVISIBLE MINORITY Table 7.6
115
Category Wise Workforce Percentage
White-Collar worker Blue-Collar worker Manager Service worker Healthcare worker Scientific/Technical professional Business Professional Other professional Others
NH White
Asian
Pacific Islanders
26.8 16 11.3 10.1 7 5.7 4.7 9.1 9.4
24.1 11.3 9.7 12.6 9.9 13.9 5.9 6.7 6
27.1 18.8 6.2 16.1 5.7 3.1 2.6 7.6 12.7
Source: http://www.eeoc.gov/federal/reports/aapi.html—AAPI work group report to the chair of the EEOC, p. 4.
Table 7.7
AAPI Federal Workforce—Ten-Year Trend 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
Overall Senior Pay* GSR** FSW+ OPS++ 2000CLF
4.71 1.98 3.97 4.65 6.31
4.95 2.1 4.01 4.63 6.76
5.11 2.14 4.08 4.71 6.7
5.22 2.25 4.14 4.6 6.85 3.8
5.32 2.49 4.24 4.62 7.04 3.8
5.45 5.54 2.7 2.96 4.39 4.43 4.75 4.5 7.12 7.29 3.8 3.8
5.79 5.94 3.18 3.39 4.6 4.9 4.73 4.75 7.49 7.76 3.8 3.8
6.06 3.73 5.03 4.76 7.86 3.8
Source: EEOC’s Annual report on the Federal workforce—FY 2006, appendix III, Table A1. http:// www.eeoc.gov/federal/reports/aapi.html, p. 9. Note: *Senior pay includes pay grades above GS-15 or equivalents in the other pay systems. **General schedule and related pay system. + Federal wage grade pay system. ++ Other pay system includes September 30, 2006 agency data as reported in CPDF and all employees of The Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and the United States Postal Service (USPS), but does not include data for intelligence gathering.
professionals. Table 7.7 shows the participation rate of AAPI’s in different pay categories. From this snap shot, it is clear that AAPI’s do not maintain their share of senior pay positions when compared to their participation in the total workforce. The AAPI work group found that there were indications of glass ceiling at many of the agencies reviewed, since many of them had a significant number of Asians and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
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NHOPIs in its permanent workforce and in the pipeline grades that lead to the SES (Senior Executive Service) ranks of an agency, but had few or no Asians or NHOPIs participating in its SES ranks.13 In higher education, similar trends can be found where the percentage of those in managerial positions does not reflect the overall Asian employee population. According to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, in 2005, Asian employees madeup 4.8 percent of employees at public four-year colleges and universities, yet only 2.6 percent were counted in the numbers for managerial positions.14 The 2007 Corporate Board Report Card from the Committee of 100 also provides insight into glass-ceiling challenges for Asian Americans in corporations. The Committee of 100 is a national organization that produces an annual Corporate Board Report Card (since 2004) by studying the representation of Asians and Asian Americans in the boards of U.S. Fortune 500 companies relative to their representative population in the United States. According to their findings in 2007, Asian Americans held only 1.5 percent of Fortune 500 corporate board seats.15 What is perhaps the clearest illustration of the glass ceiling for Asian Americans can be seen in figure 7.12 from the 80/20 Initiative. Figure 7.12 (utilizing EEOC data from 2000 to 2002) shows that Asian
Chance relative to national average
1.4 1.2 1
National average chance to management for all three categories
0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 Asian Ams.
Whites
Private Industry
Blacks Universities
Hispanics
Women
Federal Gov
Figure 7.12 Chance to Rise to Management Relative to National Average, 2000–2002. Source: http://www.80-20initiative.net/news/preselect2008attachmentA.asp. Retrieved on November 15, 2007. Updated on February 28, 2010
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Americans face significant limitations for upward mobility in comparison to other minority groups. The 80/20 Initiative is a national nonpartisan political action committee dedicated to equal opportunity for Asian Americans and validated the calculations used for this analysis with a senior EEOC official. As seen in the examples above, although Asian Americans continue to face challenges to gain acceptance at the highest levels of leadership, these issues do not surface because they are often absent from organization-wide discussions and initiatives on minority issues. This absence from leadership positions and the pervasive lack of understanding of the specific challenges facing Asian Americans in the United States makes them invisible in organizations and “Missing in Mobility.” Research also shows that despite the perception of Asian Americans issues as nonissues, this group continues to feel the effects of racism and require support just as any other minority group does. In 2006, 254 Asian American men and women (with an average age of 19.9 years old) participated in a study conducted at San Francisco State University on racism. The study utilized the Racial and Life Experiences Scale (RALES) measuring the respondents’ experiences with the following types of racism: 1. Vicarious Racism—perceived racism directed at other Asian Americans 2. Direct Racism—perceived racism directed at oneself 3. Collective Racism—perceived racism directed at one’s racial group as a whole 4. Daily Life Experiences—perceived racism perceived through racial microaggression such as being treated disrespectfully or rudely.16 The table 7.8 shows that very large percentages of this Asian American population experienced some form of racism according to this study.17 Table 7.8
Types of Racism
% who perceived this type of racism in at least once or twice in the last 5 years
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Vicarious
Direct
Collective
99%
90%
85%
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Also, 98 percent of the participants perceived Daily Life Experiences of racism on at least one occasion in the past year. Despite the experiences that Asian Americans face as a minority group in the United States, the mental models through which they are perceived have left Asian Americans without the visibility needed to address these issues.
Asians in the United Kingdom and Canada In Canada the Asians fall under the category of visible minorities. “Visible minorities” refer to “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in color” as defined in the Employment Equity Act (1995). The term visible minorities was suggested by the Canada’s Supreme Court judge Rosalie Abella in her Royal Commission report, Equality in Employment (1984). Within the visible minorities classification, there are two types, Canadian born and foreign born. In 2001 Japanese showed the largest portion of Canadian born (65 percent) followed by Blacks (45 percent), South Asians (29 percent), Chinese (25 percent), Arabs and west Asians (21 percent), Latin Americans (20 percent), and Koreans (17 percent).18 The proportion of visible minority immigrants (foreign-born visible minority) among all immigrants in Canada has increased from 52 percent to 65 percent and to 73 percent in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s respectively. In 2001, the foreign-born population in Canada amounted to 18 percent of the total population compared to 22 percent in Australia and 11 percent in the United States, the two countries similar to Canada in immigration. In 1996, visible minorities represented 10.3 percent of the employment equity related work force. According to Canadian Labor Congress, their representation in professional, intermediate sales and services occupations were 10.5 percent. Both males and females and especially females were underrepresented in more senior and better paying occupations.19 While analyzing the occupational status by racial age group of 25 to 64 in the case of visible minority (Canadian born), (Table 7.9) it is significant to note that there is a decrease in senior level and middle manager (skill level IV) from 12.1 in 1991 to 10.2 in 1996, and in the
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10.2% 22.2% 7.3% 9.3% 8.6% 14.7% 10.7% 7.5% 9.6%
1991 12.1% 22.1% 7.6% 11.1% 9.1% 12.6% 9.7% 7.6% 8.1%
Year
Senior and Middle Manager (Skill Level IV) Professional (Skill Level IV) Semiprofessional and Technical (Skill level III) Supervisors-Foreman/women Administrative and Senior Clerk Sales/Service—Skilled Craft/ Trades (SLIII) Clerical Workers (SLII) Sales and Service (SLII) Semiskilled Manual (SL II) Sales/Service—Other Manual Workers (SL-1) 11.9% 10.3% 14.3% 14.5%
11.5%
7.2%
14.7% 5.2%
10.3%
1991
11.7% 11.5% 15.2% 14.9%
11.1%
6.7%
15.3% 4.9%
8.8%
1996
Visible Minority (FB)
11% 10.3% 11.5% 9.7%
12.7%
13.4%
14.7% 5.8%
10.9%
1991
11.5% 10.9% 11.2% 10%
12.7%
11.9%
16% 5.9%
10%
1996
Non-RG (CB)
Source: http://atwork.settlement.org/downloads/Unequal_Access.pdf. Retrieved on December 18, 2010, pp. 20–21.
1996
Visible Minority (CB)
Occupational Status by Racial Groups (Age 25–64,1991–1996)
Levels
Table 7.9
8.3% 9.2% 11.3% 11.5%
14.6%
11.9%
15.3% 5.4%
12.5%
1991
8.7% 10.1% 10.9% 10.9%
13.9%
10.8%
17.5% 5.7%
11.6%
1996
Non-RG (FB)
6.3% 12.8% 15% 22.9%
13.2%
7.9%
9.4% 6.3%
6.3%
1991
8.6% 11.2% 13.8% 19.7
15%
6.9%
11.1% 6.8%
6.9%
1996
Aboriginal People
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case of visible minority (foreign-born) the values are 10.3 in 1991 and 8.8 in 1996. From the rate of visible minority in Canadian born and foreign born it is likely to have a glass ceiling in these levels. In the United Kingdom the total percentage of Asian labor is 4.55 percent. Figure 7.13 shows the sector wise spilt up of Asian labor as percentage of the total labor. Out of the 4.55 percent, 1.46 percent is working in public administration, education, and health. The next major area is banking, finance, and insurance. As per the study the number of ethnic minority directors in 2004 was 27 in 19 FTSE companies. When we look at the percentage of all FTSE 100 directorships, the percentage is very low as 2.3. The number of Indian/Pakistani/U.K. Asian directors the number is only 7. This shows that there is not enough representation in the top leadership positions and glass ceiling prevails in the United Kingdom also for the Asians. In 2006 out of the ethnic minority group, Indians dominated the percentage of ethnic minority work age population with 22 percent (see Table 7.11).
Construction, 0.10 Other Services, 0.12 Transport and Communication, 0.27 Manufacturing, 0.43
Public Admin, Education and Health, 1.46
Distribution retail and Restaurants, 0.88
Banking Finance and Insurance, 1.13
Figure 7.13 Sectorwise Breakup of Asian Labor Percentage of Total Labor. Source: Prepared by the authors. See appendix 2 for reference and calculation. The number of Asians in the top leadership position of companies, according to these statistics, is very few. Table 7.10 shows the summary of the study in 2004.
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Table 7.10 Summary of Finding from Carnfield Study Year Companies with Ethnic Minority Directors Ethnic Minority Directors (all) % of all FTSE 100 Directorships Ethnic Minority CEO’s Ethnic Minority Executive Directors % of All FTSE 100 Executive Directorship (including executive chairman) Female Ethnic Minority Directors Far Eastern Directors India/Pakistani/U.K. Asian Directors Black Directors Other Diversity Number of ftse 100 Directors Who Are Female (at 30-04-2004) Number of FTSE 100 Director Who Are Non-u.k. Citizens (best effort basis) Number of FTSE 100 Directors Stating International Experience in Their Biographies
2004
2001
19 27 2.3% 1(Sarin) 7 1.5%
17 26 2.2% 2 9 1.8%
3 10 7 6 (4 US,1 SA)
2 8 8 3 ( 2 US,1 SA)
100
75
326 (28%)
Not gathered
625(54%)
Not gathered
Source: Val Singh, Report on Diversity of FTSE 100 Directors, July 2004. p. 12
Table 7.11
Basic Population Statistics Working Age Population (000s)
Indian Others Pakistani Black African Black Caribbean Other Asian Mixed Bangladeshi Chinese Other Black Ethnic minorities
796 549 499 432 361 272 265 179 166 35 3554
% of Ethnic Minority working age WA population 22 15 14 12 10 8 7 5 5 1
Source: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/buscommissionreport.pdf. Annex 8. Retrieved on December 22, 2010.
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Statistics about the organizational mobility of Asian Americans and Asians in Canada and the United Kingdom present a somber picture. It is no different at the societal level either. Politically, the community is least influential in the United States despite being the largest minority as home owners in many urban locations. We have presented convincing data in various chapters about the overwhelming invisibility experienced by Asian Americans and Asians in many segments of the society. Yet, there is a gradual but slow awareness emerging about their contributions in society and organizations. Asian Americans’ outstanding contributions in Silicon Valley have gone mostly unnoticed. But there are more Asian American legislative aids in the Capitol Hill, the seat of political power in the United States today than any other time. There are more Asian American public prosecutors at the federal and state level today than ten years ago. For the first time, the U.S. Labor Dept. has agreed in writing to enforce Executive Order 11246, which will benefit an estimated 3 million Asian Americans in private industries, universities, federal and state governments, according to a recent release of the 80/20 Initiative, a political action committee (PAC).20 If successfully enforced, in the best-case scenario, the number of Asian American managers/administrators will double in about ten years.21 Similar hopeful developments may be seen in the works in Canada and the United Kingdom. Economic and social entrepreneurship among Asians is on the rise in both countries, according to popular media reports. A few Indian and Chinese companies have bought brand name industries in the United Kingdom such as the Tata Motors purchase of the well-known brand Jaguar. Such spike in media attention has led to at least a temporary increase in raising society’s awareness of the leadership contributions of Asians in the United Kingdom and Canada, however miniscule its long-term impact might be.
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Chapter 8 Invisible Ceiling
The data provided in chapter 7, Invisible Minority, show that Asians and Asian Americans in other Western countries face unique challenges for upward mobility in the workplace. Perceptions have formed over time that Asians and Asian Americans have “made it;” however, when looking at the trends for upward mobility of Asian Americans in the workforce, representation at the most senior leadership level drops as compared to their representation in the general workforce. What could be contributing to this phenomenon? The difficulty in raising awareness of this glass-ceiling issue is due partly because of commonly held perceptions of Asians and Asian Americans. These perceptions form from a number of mental models that have developed over time and have become widely accepted and engrained in the way Asians and Asian Americans are viewed, even by Asians and Asian Americans themselves. These mental models generalize the successes of Asians and Asian Americans and leave their specific challenges unseen. Because these deeply engrained mental models keep these issues out of sight, even Asians and Asian Americans may not be aware of this invisible ceiling until they hit it. What do we mean by mental models? Mental models provide a framework or a point of reference that allow us to make sense of our experiences. Mental models create a certain pattern and meaning, tying different ideas together so that we can form conclusions about the world around us.1 A mental model can be a metaphor or other points of reference or processes that resonate with individuals and help them come to
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terms with what they observe,2 for example, in Images of Organization Gareth Morgan describes several different metaphors used as mental models for how different organizations work, such as organizations as machines, culture, or of transformation.3 All these models are rooted in certain observations about an organization, yet the metaphor may not take into account the additional layers of complexity of what may be occurring in the organization. We often apply mental models without understanding that we are doing so, and without an awareness of their limitations. Peter Senge, a well-known thinker in organization development, defines mental models in organizations as “deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behavior.”4 Mental models apply generalizations to make sense of the unfamiliar. In the context of diversity in the workplace, perception is often reality, and if individuals are perceived to possess certain characteristics because of their ethnicity, mental models can negatively impact individuals. Although mental models may help us put structure around what is ambiguous, they can also lead to applying stereotypes and overgeneralizations. If we are not aware that we are applying a mental model, it may also mean that we accept the overgeneralization as the truth, which, in turn, keeps us from seeing beyond what we choose to within the assumption that we have already made. These mental models that form into stereotypes are harmful because they then become pervasive throughout a system as a shared concept. Systems thinking is a term used by Senge and others to explain interdependencies that exist throughout an organization, helping to see how individual thoughts and actions contribute to a whole and affect others within the organization. The collective assumptions that are made in shared mental models can be harmful because they can impose unconscious limitations on individuals who are perceived in a certain way by those within the system that have the most influence for change. For Asian Americans, the mental models that cause the invisibility discussed throughout this book can have a significant negative effect on mobility issues. Based on their study of the “model minority myth,” Chou and Feagin say that “the Asian American experience with racial hostility and discrimination is also very negative and largely untold,
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and such an untold experience is indeed a very harmful invisibility.”5 Throughout their study, they highlight the ways in which this invisibility manifests itself in subtle as well as more overt forms of racism toward Asian Americans. Including the model minority, three mental models that drive this invisibility can be found throughout Asian American studies: 1. The model minority 2. The middle minority 3. The forever foreigner. These commonly held mental models in the United States as well as other Western countries form the perception that Asian American and Asian issues are nonissues. Each mental model pushes Asian American issues outside of the diversity dialogue by creating the perception that Asian Americans are either a nonminority or they are so foreign that they are non-American. Although some of these perceptions may seem outdated in 2011, it is important to understand the root of these mental models because they still have a hold in the system of thinking that has formed around Asian Americans. The history of the United States has been built upon waves of immigrants seeking opportunity and the potential for a better life; those who move to the United States to chase the “American Dream.” In an environment where opportunity exists but may not be available to all, a mental model that positions certain groups as the model, or example to follow, reinforces the separation from the majority and creates a distinction from other minorities. If Asian Americans are the “model” then the assumption is that they are the example because they have achieved the level of success expected for a minority. There is also an assumption that minorities are still separate from the successes expected of white Americans. The model minority perception leads to the positioning of Asian Americans in the middle where they have yet to gain full acceptance from the majority, yet are seen as separate from other minorities and are pitted against them in a culture of competition. Adding to this separation, Asian Americans are often seen through a lens of the forever foreigner because the history of Asian Americans in the United States is not well known. Despite the fact that Asian Americans have been in the United States since the 1800s,
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an assumption exists that Asian Americans continue to be “foreigners” and have stronger ties to their country of origin than to the United States. Ironically, the country of origin for many Asian Americans is the United States because their parents or grandparents were born in the United States. Such experiences of misperceptions and stereotypes are not limited to the United States. For example, Eleanor Nesbitt, a professor of religion and education at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, describes in a chapter in Knut Jacobsen and S. J. Raj’s6 edited volume “Invisible Diaspora” the experiences of South Asian Christians in Europe and North America. In one story she shares from the north of England, parents in a Catholic school expressed their concerns about an influx of “Muslim” pupils into the school to their school principal. These assumptions were made simply because of the way these students looked. These “Muslims” in the story were, in fact, Catholics from a South Indian background. These parents applied a stereotype that students of South Asian descent must be Muslim and that Christians in the United Kingdom looked a certain way. According to Nesbitt, the Christian faith was established in South India nearly two thousand years ago, centuries before the first Christian missionaries reached many European countries. Christians in India alone outnumber Sikhs worldwide, which is another commonly associated religion with South Asians.7 The general population in the United Kingdom is not aware that their country is home to thousands of Christians having roots from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, leading to misperceptions and the kind of behavior found from the parents in the story about the Catholic school. Similarly, Barton points out that “Asian Christian” is an ambiguous term for the typical British because they believe that Asians could have any religion other than Christianity.8 Beyond the statistics and data shared in earlier chapters the model minority, middle minority, and forever foreigner mental models provide a framework for how we can understand the system of thinking that has formed over time of Asians and Asian Americans. All three mental models emphasize and reinforce the perception that Asians are on the outside; on the outside not only of the white majority but also of other minorities. Asian Americans are positioned in between where they do not possess the majority voice, and also do not have access to the voice of advocacy for minorities.
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The Model Minority In much of Asian American Studies, the model minority concept is characterized as a myth or a stereotype that has negative effects on Asian Americans.9 In this book, we refer to it as a mental model to highlight that this perception is very much a part of a system of thinking. Therefore, even those with good intentions to value diversity, those who work in the area of diversity, and, perhaps, even Asian Americans may see through this lens without realizing it. In a story shared in chapter 7, Invisible Minority, well-meaning representatives that were part of a diversity advocacy group skipped over the issues for the Asian American student population because they perceived that “we have enough of them.” Yet Asian Americans feel the effects of racism, and without the support and outlet needed to work through these issues, they are left without a way to understand what they are experiencing and without an outlet for working through those issues. If the glass ceiling for Asian Americans remains invisible and there continues to be a lack of awareness for these issues, then the invisible ceiling may become a self-perpetuating phenomenon. If Asian Americans themselves are not able to see that their struggles are part of systemic mental models, there may be a self-selection process that causes Asian Americans to view themselves as not being management material. If faced with repeated discouragement with career advancement at work, they may self-select themselves out of potential leadership positions. Or they may choose a different paradigm within which to work, such as choosing to be small business owners including professional practice such as the large number of medical doctors in the United States who own their own practice. We found this trend in some of our survey respondents who owned their own small businesses. This inclination toward entrepreneurship can also be found particularly in areas like Silicon Valley where the technology industry lended itself to entrepreneurship. Despite working hard and having good education, if Asian Americans see others advancing ahead of themselves, then they may determine that advancement in large corporations or other organizations is not for them. Most references in Asian American Studies attribute the beginnings of the “model minority” perception to the 1960s, interestingly enough
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around the same time as the Civil Rights Movement and in Asian American history, the Asian American Movement. As cited in many sources that have researched the “model minority” perception, in 1966, William Petersen published an article called “Success Story: JapaneseAmerican Style” in the New York Times, and later that year published another article in the U.S. News and World Report called “Success Story of One Minority Group in the United States,” which was about Chinese Americans.10 Although the “model minority” perception seems at first glance to highlight the successes of Asian Americans, the danger of this mental model is twofold: (1) it presents an image of Asian Americans as having “made it,” and essentially taking them out of consideration when considering minority issues and challenges11 and (2) it undermines the efforts of advocacy for other minority groups. The question that the model minority perception also raises is that if Asian Americans have “made it,” why can’t others? One quote from the 1966 U.S. News and World Report articles by William Petersen says, “At a time when it is being proposed that hundreds of billions be spent to uplift Negroes and other minorities, the nation’s 300,000 ChineseAmericans are moving ahead on their own, with no help from anyone else.”12 Asian Americans were used to undercut the efforts of civil rights activists in the 1960s, despite the participation of Asian Americans in the Asian American Movement. Rather than highlighting Asian American political activism, a stereotype of the hard working and wellbehaved Asian American emerged. If other minorities were to just play by the rules, then they too could attain the American Dream. The challenge for Asian Americans is an overgeneralized perception that they have succeeded in becoming the model of success and therefore don’t need anymore help. The unfortunate result is that Asian American issues go unseen. The Educational Testing Service conducted a study that shows that because of the perception that all Asian American are “doing okay” Asian American students do not receive counseling services that they may need.13 There is an assumption made that somehow Asian American issues are a nonissue and the lack of visibility too is immaterial. This difficulty to find support can be seen in a broader context as well. Filmmaker Gene Cajayon spent eight years in the production process and two years on a self-distribution campaign for his film The Debut about a Filipino American family that discussed issues faced by this community. As chronicled
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on the movie’s official website, “While responses to the writing [in the screenplay] is strong, no one [was] actually interested in making the movie because the predominantly Asian cast precludes major white actors from starring in the film.” Despite the challenges the film faced in gaining support, the film eventually grossed over $1.8 million at the box office proving that there was, in fact, a need that the film addressed to have the Filipino American community story and experience acknowledged and recognized. In his article, William Petersen praises Japanese Americans and cites high levels of education as one of their factors for success. Looking back on 1966 when this article was written, if Japanese Americans were so successful then, where are they now? There has been very few Japanese American leaders in corporate America or government agencies. Despite being named the model minority, Asian Americans have not fully “made it” and are caught in the middle of white Americans and other minorities.14 This mental model is called the middle minority. The middle minority perception and experience are equally valid in Canada and the United Kingdom. In Canada, the term “visible minorities” is used to describe people of Asian ethnicity who live in Canada along with other ethnic minorities. As pointed out by John Samuel,15 there are two segments of these visible minorities, one that is highly skilled and educated with well-paying jobs. They include professionals such as doctors, pharmacists, nurses, physiotherapists, architects, engineers, and consultants. The second segment consists of the relatively low skilled and low paying “dead-end” jobs.16 Even in the high-skilled segment, visible minorities earn less than comparably skilled white Canadians. The Conference Board of Canada’s analysis of relative pay across minorities is useful here. According to them17 the annual compounded output rate of growth in Canada and in the corresponding gross domestic product (GDP) averaged approximately 3 percent from 1992 to 2001. Of this, roughly 1 percent was due to growth in the quantity of labor. According to the Conference Board, the visible minorities who comprised about 11percent of the labor force contributed about third of this 1 percent, which is a disproportionately large contribution. The remaining 89 percent of Canadians contributed the remaining two thirds.18 Interestingly, this noticeable gap in labor market performance took place, “even though visible minorities were more likely to be university-educated than non-
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visible minorities and the educational advantage of foreign-born visible minorities had increased.”19 Such statistics suggest that the visible minorities are the model minorities in Canada though the ethnic composition includes minorities who are non-Asians. The composition of visible minorities given in figure 8.1 by the Conference Board of Canada—An Employers Guide, 2005 is based on Statistics Canada data and was the latest we could find.20 The middle minority perception has found its way in the United Kingdom as well. For example, in a story called, “How Sikhs and Hindus became the bedrock of middle Britain,” the United Kingdom’s leading newspaper provides a narrative on how the Sikhs and Hindus have integrated to become “British.” Underlying the analysis are the subtle assumptions that Sikhs and Hindus work hard and are a “model minority”21 According to researcher Rich,22 Britain’s conservative party leveraged the professed achievement of this model minority to help in the elections at that time. “There is no doubt that such a modelminority vision has been the central ideology driving force behind 20 years of conservative strategy to attract Asian electoral support.”23 Rich
There Are Majorities within Minorities More than a quarter of the visible minority population in Canada is Chinese. South Asians and Blacks comprise almost 40 percent of all visible minorities in Canada. Largest Visible Minority Percent of All Groups in Canada Total Individuals Visible Minorities* Chinese 1,029,395 25.8 South Asians 917,075 23.0 Blacks 662,210 16.6 Arabs and West Asians 303,965 7.6 Latin Americans 216,975 5.4 Koreans 100,660 2.5 Japanese 73,315 1.8 Source: Statistics Canada. *Note: Table includes only selected visible minority groups. Percentages, therefore, do not add up to 100.
Figure 8.1 There Are Majorities within Minorities. Source: Employees Guide, Conference Board of Canada, 2005.
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notes that shortly after becoming party leader in 1997, William Hague evoked the model minority image of Asian community as having “made it” in the United Kingdom just like the conservative party had. “The Asian community has a lot in common with the Conservative Party. You believe strongly in family life; so do we. You believe in working hard and living in a safe community and that is exactly what we believe in.”24 However, Shamit Saggar points out that there is significant weakness in the taken-for-granted view about the political importance of the model minority argument, because it “no longer adequately describes the cross-party and cross-ideological commitment to these issues and values.”25
The Middle Minority The perception of Asian Americans as the model minority enabled the positioning of Asian Americans as the “middle minority.” In her study of the glass-ceiling effect experienced by Asian Americans, Deborah Woo explains the “middle minority” phenomenon by pointing out that while the “model minority thesis symbolically pits Asian Americans against other groups, middle-man minority theory suggests that they are structurally situated in ways that leave the ‘middle man’ . . . open to certain forms of intergroup hostility.”26 The middle minority places Asian Americans in a position for comparison and makes them a scapegoat for frustrations felt by other minorities. An example is the 1992 Los Angeles riots, where violence and outrage broke out when four white officers were acquitted of beating an African American motorist, Rodney King. One of the hardest hit communities was the Korean American community in south central Los Angeles that suffered $400 million of damage to some 2,000 Koreanowned businesses.27 In their book about the model minority, Chou and Feagin share one Asian American woman’s story, where she conveys that Asian Americans in her hometown are “stuck in the middle” and that they have no clear identity.28 She explains how other minorities perceive Asian Americans to “have it better” than they do and position them closer to white Americans, yet white Americans see a distinct difference between themselves and Asian Americans.29
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Organizationally, the challenge for Asian Americans in being placed as the middle minority is that this mental model creates a divide between minorities, and creates a dynamic where there may be a simple disregard for Asian Americans or may even escalate to hostility as seen in the Los Angeles riots. Yet visibility for Asian American issues is also hindered as the middle minority perception creates the mental model of a diversity hierarchy, where Asian Americans are placed in between white Americans and other minorities. In such hierarchical categorizations, only those on top and bottom get the attention (and blame). The middle becomes invisible partly because addressing issues at the top and bottom is a perpetual process driven by organizational politics and is never finished. Caught in such organizational power dynamics Asian Americans are placed outside of minority groups and beyond the realm of gaining acceptance in the broader context of the organizational hierarchies. Similar to the Korean Americans who were caught in the middle of the Los Angeles riots, Asians in other Western countries have also found niche businesses and existence positions between different racial groups. According to McEvoy and Hafeez (2009), “Ethnic niches have their limitations however. The size of the minorities served, is very small compared with the overall British market, even when some minorities are rapidly growing. Moreover some minorities are poor, as evidenced by their unemployment and economic activity rates, which also constrains the value of a protected market.”30 In these circumstances the key to expansion and prosperity is “breakout,” the entry into serving mainstream markets.31 In many ways this approach to expansion is similar to the middle minority in the United States according to Edna Bonacich.32 It is a strategy followed by Korean Americans in the example provided earlier, and by each of the ethnic minorities in Britain with a higher than average share of self-employment. In addition, Bangladeshis and Chinese have dispersed geographically in order to serve the general population. Many Indians operate convenience stores selling newspapers, cigarettes, alcohol, and foods in predominantly white residential areas, especially those localities within easy traveling distance of Indian population concentrations. This proximity allows the retailer to retain access to community life while serving noncommunity markets.33 Similar dynamics exist in Canada, and other Western countries though what constitutes the top and bottom are somewhat
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different outside the U.S. context. Asians, though a small minority in the Netherlands, are still perceived as a successful group not needing much economically and therefore forgotten. In the United Kingdom, however, Indian and Chinese ethnicities are more visible and yet the middle minority. The Canadian context is almost identical to the United States.
Forever Foreigner In Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites?: The Asian Ethnic Experience Today, Mia Tuan articulates that wherever Asian Americans go, the ethnic identity follows them.34 She points out that Asian American cultural experience emerges not from a common cultural tradition, but through a common experience of racialization. She uses the example of the Ito-D’Amato incident, where former U.S. senator D’Amato ridiculed well-known California judge Ito about his Japanese heritage during the O.J, Simpsons’ trials in 1995. On Don Imus’s show in 1995, D’Amato said in a mock accent: “Judge Ito loves the limelight” and went on to call him “little Judge Ito.” By using the mock accent, senator evoked the forever foreigner image for Judge Ito whose grandparents were born in the United States. The senator later apologized in the Senate Chamber. Ronald Takaki, a well-established historian in multicultural studies, also tells a story with a theme that can be found throughout the writings of Asian Americans in his book, A Different Mirror. In this story, Takaki gets into a taxi on his way to a conference on multiculturalism in Norfolk, and the driver asks, “How long have you been in this country?” In response, Takaki answers “All my life,” and explains that his grandfather came to the United States in 1880.35 In his book, Yellow: Race in American Beyond Black and White, on race relations in the United States, Frank Wu discusses the “perpetual foreigner” experience of Asian Americans by discussing his response to the question he receives frequently of “where are you from?” To which his response is, “I was born in Cleveland and grew up in Detroit.”36 Beyond day-to-day experiences, Asian Americans also experience the forever foreigner mental model in the workplace. One survey respondent shares a story where
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false assumptions were made about his or her ability to speak English. The respondent spoke fluent English with a mid-Western accent, yet when they entered into the elevator at work, another employee took one look at him or her and spoke with a mimicked Asian accent. The employee made a false assumption about the survey respondent’s abilities to communicate and to speak English simply because of the perception he associated with Asian Americans as being foreign. These stories illustrate how Asian Americans are seen as having a stronger association with their country of origin than with being American. The question of “where are you from?” shows the mental model that Asian Americans can face even in the workplace where they are not completely “American.” What implications does the forever foreigner mental model have for Asian Americans seeking to build a life in the United States and for Asian immigrants in other Western countries? In chapter 9, Seeing the Ceiling, we discuss the history of exclusion and legislation that forced Asian immigrants into a marginalized existence by denying the right to citizenship, denying the right to own land, and by enacting antimiscegenation laws. The climate in the United States at that time for Asian Americans was one of a perceived “yellow peril” or threat to the white majority.37 The forever foreigner mental model helped to reinforce this perception and justify the need for these discriminatory laws. Although these laws have since changed, the mental model of the forever foreigner still has implications today. As this mental model has woven into our systemic thinking, forever foreigner continues to keep Asian Americans positioned as the “other” or in a position that perpetuates their invisibility. Beyond the legislation that was enacted as a reinforcement of the forever foreigner mental model, the dangers of this mental model can be found in significant historical events. For example, during World War II, Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps because of the perceived association with the enemy country of Japan. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, ordering the mass relocation of all Japanese Americans regardless of their American citizenship status and regardless of the fact that they were multiple generations in to their residence in the United States. No evidence was ever found of Japanese American disloyalty to the United States.38 Another example can be found in the killing of Vincent Chin
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in 1982. Despite being Chinese American, Chin was killed by autoworkers who believed he was Japanese, blaming him for the layoffs in the automobile industry.39 In a more recent example, the first victim of a hate crime after September 11, 2001, in the United States was a Sikh convenience store clerk who was mistaken for the Taliban because he was wearing a turban. Although these are extreme examples, they illustrate what can result from this view of Asian Americans. In an organizational context, the forever foreigner mind-set can create challenges for Asian Americans in more subtle ways, impacting the ability for Asian Americans to gain social capital and subsequently the visibility needed to attain leadership positions and organizational mobility. If Asian American issues are nonissues, and they have “made it” in the United States, then why have there been no Asian American presidents and not even a candidate who has been given viable consideration for the position? Despite their long-standing presence in the United States, Asian Americans continue to have limited access to positions at the highest leadership level. If we honestly ask ourselves who we see when we think of an American president, do we immediately see an Asian American? If not, then it is clear who we associated with being an “American” and who don’t.
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Chapter 9 Seeing the Ceiling “Our” Story: Who Are Asian Americans?
Both authors of this book have conducted workshops or seminars on the glass-ceiling issues raised in this book. In one such workshop, senior-level managers were asked to serve on a panel and share thoughts with junior team members about how they progressed in their careers and reached the level that they had. The session first started with an overview of glass-ceiling issues, and then leaders talked about their own experiences, what they did in order to reach their level, and what they saw in store for themselves in working to get to the next more senior level. When reflecting on how the glass-ceiling issues discussed resonated with them, some leaders agreed with the information presented while others did not. In a discussion such as this where individuals were asked to reflect on their own experience, inevitably, the question of Asian American identity comes up. The participants represented a broad range of countries of origin such as Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Indian, and so on—all these participants chose to attend the event with a shared understanding that they were considered to be “Asian American.” Yet when faced with the challenge of making sense of glass-ceiling issues that may or may not apply in their individual context, the participants struggled with the notion that there is a shared Asian American identity. Voices of disparity arose: “I actually don’t consider myself Asian American, I think of myself as Korean American.” “I’m of Indian descent, and I honestly don’t think
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of myself as being Asian at all. When someone says Asian American, I think of East Asians like Chinese people.” As this story reflects, at times, Asian Americans themselves do not recognize themselves within a collective context. Some see themselves separate from the challenges that are mentioned in this book. Then why talk about “Asian Americans?” Who are Asian Americans? If those who are considered “Asian American” do not believe that there is a glass ceiling or that there is even such a thing as a category for “Asian Americans” then what is the use of talking about their challenges? In the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) 2008 AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Work Group report, Asian Americans are defined as “Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, South Asians (Indians, Pakistani, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Nepalese, and Burmese), Pacific Islanders Southeast Asians (Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodians, Laotians, Hmong, Mien) as well as Indonesians and Malaysians.”1 The Work Group goes on to note that the diverse groups that fall under the term “Asian American” makes it difficult to provide a full description. Despite clear differences among these groups, these “Asian Americans” are grouped together in diversity discussions. Is this lumping together of all these unique groups of people simply for lack of a better category? Do “Asian Americans” share anything in common or does this term exist for the convenience of those who seek to define it? Given these questions for Asian Americans, these same questions could be raised for other diversity groups as well. For example, although the common mainstream understanding of African American experience is that there is a shared common history in the United States that defines the unique challenges that African Americans face, there are newer waves of immigration for groups that do not trace their roots back to slavery. The general public tends to use the term “African American” loosely to include those who trace their ethnic origins back to countries in the Caribbean and other parts of the world, yet the individuals within these groups may not consider themselves “African American.” Still, there is a shared sense of challenges that these groups face because of the way they are perceived and treated even today. The complexities that come with understanding diversity can be seen in research findings on organizational diversity as well. David
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Harrison and Katherine Klein characterize the state of diversity research as “difficult to understand and difficult to synthesize.”2 As they point out, diversity literature is very scattered with much of it addressing within-unit differences in demographic variables guided by vastly diverse sets of theoretical stances,3 even when there is no explicit consensus definition of diversity. “Researchers use a variety of labels, often interchangeably, to refer to diversity, including dispersion, heterogeneity, dissimilarity, disagreement, divergence, variation, and inequality, or their opposites, including homogeneity, similarity, agreement, consensus, convergence, and equality.”4 Lacking a theoretical common ground, it is no surprise that organizations, more often than not, struggle to frame a working definition of diversity. The 2007 State of Workplace Diversity Management Report—a study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the American Institute for Managing Diversity Inc. (AIMD)—finds that three out of four organizations did not have an “official” definition of diversity and those that had one, admitted to having only a very broad definition. In a majority of these organizations, diversity is as an important factor that is identified as influencing workplace productivity. Yet it is a concept that is seldom well defined, adequately understood, or applied.5 Organizations in the United States spend billions of dollars on diversity programs. Despite the efforts and resources spend, these programs fail to reap benefits from the diverse workforce as these programs are often designed “to comply with regulatory or legal requirements, to signal to potential applicants that their differences are no barrier to entrance, or to minimize conflict between employees from separate demographic groups.”6 Indeed the effect of diversity in the workplace is more complex than what these programs aim for. To further confound the already messy issue of diversity, recent trends in immigration have given rise to “super diversity.” Using Britain as an example, Steven Vertovec defines the term super diversity as a framework “. . . to underline a level and kind of complexity surpassing anything the country [Britain] has previously experienced. Such a condition is distinguished by a dynamic interplay of variables among an increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified immigrants who have arrived over the last decade.”7 Steven
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Vertovec stresses that super diversity has distinct set of dimensions that create additional challenges to policy and research on diversity. It is, therefore, no longer sufficient to understand or frame diversity in terms of ethnic groups alone. Instead, it is necessary to bear in mind the “conjunction” and “interplay” of ethnicity with other variables that include, according to Vertovec, immigration status, labor market experiences, gender, and age. Neither are these additional variables nor are their interactions with each other the highlight of the term super diversity; but “it is the emergence of their scale, historical and policy-produced multiple configuration and mutual conditioning that now calls for conceptual distinction” to allow a multidimensional perspective on diversity.8 Despite the above challenges, it is necessary to start with a workable conceptualization of diversity, and we use the one provided by the same authors—diversity as the distribution of differences among the members of a unit with respect to a common attribute, X, such as tenure, ethnicity, conscientiousness, task-attitude, or pay.9 More practically, Myrtle Bell and Daphne Berry define diversity as “real or perceived differences among people with regard to race, ethnicity, sex, religion, age, physical and mental ability, sexual orientation, work and family status, weight and appearance that affect their interaction and relationships.”10 These differences may be tied to personal identities and often originating out of historical disparities in the treatment such groups.11 According to Deborah Litvin, a number of these individual factors—such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, and so on.—are inherited and therefore constitute a “permanent or core” dimension of diversity that have a “lifelong impact on behavior and attitudes.”12 However, there are other factors—such as educational background, geographic location, work experience, marital status, and so on—that “people acquire, discard or modify throughout their lives” therefore and are secondary dimensions of diversity.13 However, none of the above conceptualizations of diversity are suitable enough to reconcile the within-group dissimilarities that arise out of the forces of history, as noted earlier in this chapter, for example, in the case of Asian Americans or African Americans. Within such diversity groups, although the distinct differences between countries of origin are significant—and each group’s experience has its own uniqueness that should be acknowledged—there
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is a shared history of experience that provides a deeper connection among Asian Americans than being grouped together for simplicity’s sake. Deborah Litvin views the label “Asian American” as an outcome of sociopolitical forces. According to her , although this category is “hardly ‘obvious’ or ‘natural’ but is clearly a pragmatic and historical response to political pressures.”14 The Asian American term is believed to have originated in the 1960s. Similar experiences faced in this decade as a result of the Vietnam War brought the disparate groups of Japanese-, Chinese-, and Korean-Americans together to give rise to a common Asian American identity.15 Thus, this Asian Americans, though disparate according to their inherited primary dimension of diversity, became a unified group through the political history they shared and acquired in the United States: their secondary dimension of diversity.
Is There a Shared Asian American History? Asian American history is not common knowledge and is typically seen as a niche topic that does not tend to find acknowledgment in mainstream studies of American history. The challenge for many Asian Americans in understanding “our story” is that this story often goes untold. Imagine picking up a book that is meant to explain the history of the country in which you have grown up. You are searching and searching for a part of history that reflects where you’ve come from, yet you can’t seem to find yourself reflected anywhere. You feel unseen, as though you and the experiences you know others like you share does not exist. This invisibility is a common theme shared among Asian Americans, and it is this pervasive invisibility that permeates throughout organizations. Missing in History or MIH when translated into an organizational context could also be called “Missing in Mobility” or MIM.16 To understand the binding force in the Asian American story, it is important to establish an understanding of the Asian American experience in the United States. This chapter provides an overview of that story to establish the foundation of understanding of the Asian American story. This shared story goes as far back as the earliest motivations for the immigration of Asians to the United States. Subsequent legislation
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that controlled Asian immigration into the United States also affected these groups in similar ways, and the treatment of these groups once in the United States creates this shared experience, whether directly or indirectly affecting different groups. Despite targeting immigrants of specific countries of origin, early legislation and court rulings, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which terminated the immigration of Chinese into the United States, or the ruling of the court case Takao Ozawa v. U.S., declaring that Japanese immigrants were ineligible for naturalized citizenship eventually led to other Asian minority groups receiving similar treatment. For example, after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, other Asian immigrants were sought out and brought to the United States as laborers. As large waves of Japanese immigrants established themselves in the United States, the Gentlemen’s Agreement was negotiated with Japan in 1907 to stop the immigration of Japanese men to the United States due to the feeling of an impending threat from this group of immigrants.17 Also, in the Takao v. U.S. ruling in 1922, the very same Supreme Court justice who ruled that Japanese immigrants were not eligible for U.S. citizenship denied Bhagat Singh Thind’s claim to citizenship in 1923 for the reason that he was determined to be “Asian” and “non-white.”18 In addition, many laws were in place to ensure that Asian immigrants could not own land, establish families, or networks of communities in the United States. Laws established during early Chinese immigration forbid Chinese laborers from bringing their wives and families from China, from owning land, from living in certain areas, and from intermarrying with white Americans.19 Japanese laborers experienced similar, yet slightly different challenges, which led to the immigration of Japanese “picture brides” who moved to the United States for arranged marriages with grooms in the United States. Filipinos also routinely faced challenges with antimiscegenation laws despite their legal status as residents of a U.S. territory.20 With these laws of discrimination early in Asian American history, Asian immigrants were forced into niche existences, and the now tourist attractions of China towns, K-towns, and other Asian-centric areas in the United States were once a means for survival in a culture of exclusion. It is this shared history of exclusion through which Asians in the United States remain resilient, and this understanding establishes
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the foundation to build a community among these groups and increase visibility for their shared issues. Despite the significance of this history of exclusion in establishing the shared experience among Asian Americans, this history is not widely known. A typical American is likely to know of the history of slavery in the United States, yet may not be as familiar with the different legislations mentioned here unless they took a specific Asian American Studies class. In much of the literature written about Asian Americans, regardless of whether the work is about literature, psychology, history, or sociology, there is a consistent overview of Asian American history that is first presented. This phenomenon has been coined “Missing in History” or MIH. “Missing in History” or MIH is the term used in the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders’ interim report from 2001 to characterize Asian Americans. Asian Americans have a rich story of resilience in the U.S. historical landscape; however, this history is not widely understood and typically receives treatment as a niche topic. This unseen story affects Asian American identity, and it becomes more difficult for these groups to find resonance with each other.
History of Asian Immigration to the United States Given the diversity that makes up Asian Americans, multiple books could be written to capture each group’s separate history and evolution in the United States. What is included in this overview of Asian American history is an attempt to highlight major events in legislation that although targeted toward specific groups, affected Asian Americans as a whole and represents the history of how Asian Americans were treated in the United States. After presenting the history of Asian Americans in the United States, we present the experience of the Asian community in the neighboring country of Canada. The history of Canadian Asians runs parallel to that in the United States. We also look at the history of Asian immigration to the United Kingdom to highlight that certain themes resonate as crosscutting global currents in the history of Asian immigration to the Western hemisphere.
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The earliest wave of Asian immigration happened in the late 1800s, when Chinese laborers were “imported” into Hawaii to work in sugarcane fields.21 Well-known Asian American Studies historian Ronald Takaki uses the term “imported,” as Asian laborers immigrating to the United States were treated just as any other item on a list of orders. One such list itemized orders for “Fertilizer” then “Filipinos” another list read, “. . . bolts, bonemeal (three hundred tons), and Chinese laborers (forty men).”22 The earliest Asian immigrants were treated as commodities with their humanity made to be invisible. After the Gold Rush of the 1800s, Chinese laborers also immigrated to California, working as cheap labor for mining, railroad construction, farming, and so on. This wave of immigration continued until prejudice and racial antagonism led to the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.23 Chinese were thought to be threats to white racial purity, similar to the treatment of African Americans in the United States during this time. At the California state’s constitutional convention of 1878, participants were warned that Chinese immigrants were “despicable . . . mongrel[s] of the most detestable that has ever afflicted the earth,” which led to laws prohibiting the issuance of a license of marriage of a white person with a “negro, mulatto, or Mongolian.”24 After the Chinese Exclusion Act, immigration of Japanese, Filipino, Indian, and Korean workers increased to replace the loss of these Chinese laborers. Similar trends can be found in the treatment of other Asian immigrants. Hotel door signs read, “Positively no Filipinos allowed.”25 A Japanese immigrant is quoted saying, “We try hard to be American but Americans always say you always Japanese. . . . Irish become American . . . Italians become Americans . . . but Japanese can never be anything but Jap.”26 Magazines warned of a “Hindoo invasion” in reference to Indian immigration, and coined the term “Yellow Peril” to describe the immigration of Asian immigrant workers.27 Treated as commodities to meet the needs of hard manual labor, Asian immigrants asserted their humanity and worked to respond to this treatment of exclusion, and as they did, laws shifted to limit Asian immigration. Shortly after the Chinese Exclusion Act, additional laws passed in the early 1900s that caused much of Asian immigration to come to a halt, including the Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1907–1908 that ended Japanese immigration, the Asiatic Barred Zone (South Asia including India, Burma, Thailand, and the Malay States) provision of the
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Immigration Act of 1917, and the Immigration Act of 1924.28 After 1924, only Filipinos as citizens of a U.S. colony were able to immigrate to the United States and became the third largest Asian population in the United States, after Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans. In the 1940s, as China helped the United States as an ally in the Pacific War, the immigration restriction toward Chinese immigrants was loosened. The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed and the Magnuson Act of 1943 was enacted allowing Chinese immigrants to obtain U.S. citizenship. The 1940s were also the time when immigration quotas were applied to Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Korean, and Japanese immigration. A large percentage of immigration to the United States from Asian countries in the 1940s and 1950s comprised of wives of U.S. servicemen.29 During this time of limited immigration, Asian immigrants who established themselves in the United States lived a fractured existence of survival. As mentioned earlier, Alien Land laws were passed excluding Asian immigrants from owning land or from obtaining U.S. citizenship. First-generation Asian immigrants often relied on their children or second generation who were citizens to build their life. Yet even though this second generation was born into the United States and life in the United States was all they knew, it still was not enough to afford them full rights as U.S. citizens. One clear example can be seen in the mass relocation of Japanese Americans who were sent to internment camps during World War II for fear of loyalty to the enemy—Japan. Despite being sent into these camps by their country of citizenship, many second-generation Japanese Americans volunteered for military service, the most well-known being the Hundredth Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat team composed of only Japanese Americans. The 442nd earned 18,143 individual decorations suffering 9,486 casualties including 600 deaths.30 Although these Japanese Americans sacrificed much to establish their loyalty to the United States, assistance was not provided to transition back into society once released from internment camps. Quoting President Roosevelt, historian Ronald Takaki describes their predicament by explaining that, “finally they could leave the internment camps, but the President wanted them ‘scattered,’ for they should not be permitted to ‘discombobulate’ American society.”31 Through these experiences of survival, Asian American also learned the importance of coming together for activism. Filipinos and Japanese
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American plantation laborers in Hawaii joined together in 1946 to strike to receive fairer wages. On the mainland, the Japanese American Citizens League also worked to fight the Alien Land laws and for the right of Asian immigrants who established residency in the United States to receive citizenship. Post World War II also brought an increase in Chinese, Filipino, and Indian immigration as the U.S. claims to democracy forced the country to face racial discrimination in its immigration policies. Then in 1952 Congress approved immigration from the “Asian-Pacific Triangle.” The subsequent rise of the Civil Rights Movement further influenced immigration policies to undo exclusionary practices in U.S. immigration laws.32 In 1965, U.S. immigration law changed due to the military, political, and economic connection to Asian countries, and a large influx of Asian immigration from across the continent vastly expanded the Asian American population. Major groups included in this wave of immigration were Koreans, Indians, and Vietnamese, but also Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Cambodians, and Laotians across major cities in the United States.33 The developments in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s also initiated the start of the Asian American Movement. As part of this Asian American Movement in the late 1960s, Asian American activists participated in the Third World Strikes to gain acceptance for Ethnic Studies programs for racial-minority groups at San Francisco State as well as University of California Berkeley, and subsequently continued the efforts to define a new field of study—AAS or Asian American Studies in the 1970s.34 Legitimizing the study of Asian American issues was an opportunity to gain visibility for Asian Americans as a minority and to spread awareness for their particular challenges. Yet despite these efforts across the United States, according to the higher education reference manual Petersons35 only 24 colleges and universities offer an Asian American Studies major today, most of which do not offer graduate-level courses. What does this history tell us? Clearly, Asian Americans experienced their share of racial discrimination and exclusion and worked throughout the years to overcome the challenges. Yet what explains the invisibility of these issues? What does it tell us about such a limited setting for providing this knowledge and telling this history? Perhaps the answer can be found in the story told about the panel discussion shared at the very beginning of this chapter. The story of Asian Americans is
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so pervasively invisible, that those who are the recipients of that history are not even aware of this rich context. The resilience that can be found in the shared Asian American experience is a source for how the glass ceiling can be addressed. One such example can be seen in a student who took steps to ensure that his story could be told.
The Binding Force: Active Resilience When you get lemons, make lemonade. More than 20 years after the Asian American Movement, demonstrations were held at a well-known university in the Washington, DC area to establish an Asian American Studies program. One Asian American student who participated in this student-led initiative tells how he felt during a sit-in demonstration. As people walked past him and his fellow demonstrators, he could see the confusion and skepticism cross their faces. Why is this guy sitting there? What is Asian American Studies and why would we need that? He felt the general lack of support from the campus community and resistance toward this change. After all, what do Asian Americans have to complain about? Don’t we have enough of them? Haven’t they achieved the American Dream? The student-led initiative was eventually successful, and today, this major university offers an Asian American Studies undergraduate certificate and undergraduate minor. This result was not accomplished, however, without first having to establish the need for a program to educate and to provide awareness for Asian American issues. Later, this same individual would go on to start an Asian American networking group for the local Washington, DC office of a large consulting company. At the time in the early 2000s, a local Asian American networking group had formed in the west coast office in California, yet on the east coast, no groups had formed. With encouragement from the group in the west coast, a small group of Asian Americans met to create a charter for the DC office Asian American networking group. The senior executive responsible for diversity initiatives caught wind of the group, and one day paid a surprise visit to one of their meetings. He had skepticism over what this group was doing and questioned why there was a need for a group just for Asian Americans. Once he sat down in
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the meeting, heard what the group had to say, and saw the legitimacy of the group through reading their charter, the senior executive became supportive. The first local Asian American networking group on the east coast was formed, but only after making the case to legitimize the need for this group. The story of the shared pervasive invisibility of Asian American issues is one that is still searching for a voice. It is one that is hidden in the mental models held in organizations. This pervasive invisibility keeps the lack of Asian Americans in leadership positions hidden, and at the same time, the absence of Asian Americans at the leadership level perpetuates the pervasive invisibility as there is not a voice to raise the issue at the executive table. The first step to find this voice is to see the ceiling and all the history that contributes to it. From the Naturalization Law of 1790, which barred Asian Americans from gaining U.S. citizenship until 1952, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which racially discriminated against Chinese immigration into the United States, to the challenges of mobility that continue today in organizations, Asian Americans have shown their persistence.36 As new waves of Asian immigration entered into the United States, the ability to innovate and to reinvent what it means to be Asian American has grown uninterrupted. To see beyond the glass ceiling may also mean seeing the Asian American story in a new way to find that it is filled with examples of resilience, a key ingredient to finding success in the face of adversity.
History of Asian Immigration to Canada The history of Asian immigration to Canada is one that is fraught with discrimination and racial apathy. The earliest of the Asian immigrants were Chinese laborers who arrived in Canada in the late eighteenth century with the British explorer John Meares. Meares brought them to Vancouver from the Portuguese colony of Macao.37 Following this episode, even though some Chinese migrants came over to Canada after the gold mines of California were no longer fertile, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that the real wave of Chinese immigration to Canada ensued. In 1860, laborers directly from the mainland of China
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arrived to British Columbia, and the story of Chinese Canadians began with the birth of the first Chinese Canadian baby in 1861. Around much the same time, between late eighteenth and early nineteenth century the first of the Japanese workers arrived in British Columbia. While the Japanese worked mostly as fishermen and lumbermen and helped settle parts of Canada, the Chinese laborers, however, were brought over to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. South Asian immigration to Canada started much later than the Chinese or the Japanese, and the earliest of the South Asians did not arrive in Canada till the twentieth century. Despite this time gap, Asians of all ethnic origin received similar racial and social hostility in Canada.38 The early wave of Chinese and Japanese immigrants to Canada lived in extreme squalid conditions and often fell prey to diseases like small pox and cholera. Further, the Chinese workers working on the railroad had some of the most dangerous working conditions negotiating hostile British Columbia terrain and unstable machineries and explosives. An estimated 700 workers died as a result of work-related accidents. Yet the Chinese workers were paid only as much as one-third to half the wage given to the white Canadian workers. And this wage disparity became the norm for the Chinese immigrant workers in Canada in the following decades; a trend that persisted as late as the 1930s.39 In the period between that the Canadian Pacific Railway was being built, an estimated 15,000 to 17,000 Chinese laborers and workers were brought over to Canada mainly from the coastal provinces of Guangdong and Fujian in China. While many of them came freely to escape the burden of extreme poverty in China, many others were kidnapped and brought over forcibly. In the beginning, the Chinese immigrant laborers were welcomed by the Canadians as they provided a cheap source of labor, so much so that in 1861 a Victoria newspaper heralded the arrival of the Chinese immigrants by noting: We have plenty of room for many thousands of Chinamen. There can be no shadow of a doubt but their industry enables them to add very largely to our own revenues.40
A similar mood was echoed through the treatment meted out to the Chinese immigrants by the common and rich Canadians who hired them to do household chores and other sundry work. Having a Chinese
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house help became a status symbol during these times. However, this atmosphere of tolerance and acceptance quickly changed to become hostile as the need for cheap laborers withered with the work for the Canadian railroad nearing completion in 1885. Since most of the Chinese laborers did not make enough money to pay for their return to their homeland, they wanted to stay back in Canada. The common people as well as trade unions and politicians in Canada put up stiff opposition against the Chinese immigrant workers staying back in their country on the grounds that the Chinese were not only taking jobs away from the Canadians, but also had a dubious character, were unclean, and therefore hosts to dangerous diseases. As a result of this public distrust and discontent against the Chinese railroad workers, the Canadian federal government passed the Chinese Immigration Act in 1885.41 According to this law a Chinese entering Canada had to a pay a “head tax” of $50. No other ethnic or racial groups were required to pay such a tax. The sole purpose of this discriminatory tax was to keep Chinese immigration at bay and also had the effect of preventing the families of the Chinese workers, who stayed back, from joining them in Canada. The Chinese head tax was increased many times in the later years, and in 1903 this tax was as high as $500 per person. Despite this steep penalty, Chinese immigration to Canada did not completely end as cheap labor particularly in the railways was still needed. Concurrent to the Chinese head tax, the Canadian government also entered into “unofficial” agreements with the U.S. and Japanese governments to control and limit the flow of the Japanese arriving to Canada. As a result of these agreements a maximum of 450 individuals of Japanese origin could enter Canada in a year. Around the same time the earliest of the South Asian immigrants started arriving in Canada. Majority of the South Asians worked in the sawmill industry, and by 1908 there were an estimated 5,000 South Asians in Canada.42 In the same year, the Canadian government passed a legislation to limit the number of South Asians, which almost halted their immigration to Canada and in the next almost three decades less than a 100 South Asians were allowed to enter the country.43 In 1903, Asian businesses in Vancouver were looted and rioted against: the rioters were mainly out-of-work white men who claimed that these Asians and Orientals were responsible for their joblessness.
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Undercurrents of such racial tension pervaded the “mainstream” white Canadian society, particularly after World War I and made its voice heard at the level of the federal government. Between the years 1918 and mid-1920s, Canada entered into recession and deeming the head tax not quite sufficient to check the flow of Chinese immigrants, the federal government passed the Chinese Exclusion Law in 1923. The Chinese Canadians were also debarred from voting in Canada in 1923. In the spirit of the social antagonism against the Chinese immigrants, the Chinese Exclusion Law that decreed a ban on any immigration from China was harshly imposed. In the next decade as World War II broke out, the Japanese Canadian community became the focus of exclusionary laws in Canada. Japanese Canadians were declared as “enemy aliens” and were held in internment camps in the interiors of British Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba. A further harsh measure was taken against the Japanese Canadians: between the years of 1943 and 1946, the federal government sold off their land and possession. After the war, the Japanese Canadians were given the option to either return to Japan or resettle in the remote locations east of the Rocky Mountains. After World War II, Canada also became a signatory to the United Nations charter for human rights and the Chinese Exclusion Act was in direct contradiction of the principles of this charter. The Chinese Exclusion Act ban was lifted in 1947— more than two decades later after it was enacted and four years after the United States repealed a similar Act. But till then only 15 Chinese had been allowed to enter Canada bearing testimony to the degree of harshness at which this law was imposed. In the same year, the Chinese got back their right to vote in Canada. A number of other anti-Chinese laws were also repealed concurrently. The Japanese Canadians got their voting rights back too, after the Chinese Canadians. The restrictions against South Asian immigration were also made liberal after the war.44 In the face of severe and discriminatory laws against them, the Chinese Canadians came together to show their resilience as a community. In 1922 the School Board of Victoria allowed the Chinese Canadian students to rejoin the public school system after a School Board decree had put them in a separate school created only for them. The reentry was won by the Chinese Canadian community after they had been protesting for about a year against the said decision. On July 1, 1923, the day the Canadian
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government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Chinese Canadians protested the passage of that law by keeping their businesses closed and by not participating in the Dominion Day celebrations. Furthermore, the Chinese immigrants’ entrepreneurial spirit meant that they created and established many family-owned businesses that also created employment opportunities to the Chinese. Many Chinese immigrant resistant and advocacy groups were also formed. The president of one such group, the Vancouver Chinese Benevolent Association, made recurrent pleas to the Canadian government to repeal the discriminatory laws and reminded them that his “. . . appeal is that the Chinese Canadian may have his family with him—a complete family, not one part in Canada and the other part in Hong Kong or China.”45 Not surprisingly, most of the Chinese who immigrated to Canada in the 1950s were the wives and families of the Chinese settled in Canada. The story of Chinese Canadian resilience bore its sweetest fruit when Douglas Jung from Vancouver was elected to the Canadian Parliament in 1957and in turn ensured the Chinese Canadians a political voice at the highest order of government. A few other notable instances of Chinese Canadian political and legal representation were created when Margaret Gee became the first Chinese Canadian woman lawyer to join the bar in 1955 and Bob Wong and David Lam respectively became the first Chinese Canadian cabinet minister in the Ontario Liberal government in the late 1980s and the first Chinese Canadian lieutenant governor of British Columbia in 1988. Much later, Vivienne Poy—the first Chinese Canadian to be appointed to the Senate in 1999—paid her tribute to the story of Chinese Canadian struggle against discrimination. In her inaugural speech she mentioned: [D]uring the Depression, the Chinese in Alberta received relief payments of $1.12 a week, less than half the amount paid to the rest of the population in need,” she said. “Despite that, many prairie farming families owed their lives to the credits given to them by the Chinese store owners in their purchase of daily necessities during those difficult years.46
Despite the above successes, it was not until 1967 when Canada introduced a point system to screen immigrant application that it started treating people of Chinese origin aspiring to immigrate to Canada at par with any other ethnic community group. The point system also
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allowed reentry of the people of Japanese origin who were until then debarred from entering Canada. The 1962 and 1967 liberalization of the immigration system also had its effect on the South Asians who now started arriving in Canada from all parts of South Asia.47 A few years later in 1970 further change in the immigration system allowed Canada to receive an estimated 70,000 Vietnamese refugees fleeing the communist regime in their homeland. Also, with the point system the story of the Asian immigration to China changed with now wealthy entrepreneurs from Hong Kong entering Canada since the decade of 1970s onwards. The common thread, nonetheless, that bound the earlier with the later stories of Chinese immigration is the chord of racial tension. Despite this commonality, Chinese Canadian political voices champion the case for not only Asian Canadians but also the need for diversity in Canada. Accordingly David Lam, who served as the lieutenant governor in British Columbia for six years argued: One of the best things that will ever happen to Canada. . . . Those talents, education and experience represent billions of dollars of time and investment. We get all that plus the entrepreneurial spirit and the capital,” Lam said. “We should learn to celebrate the differences, rather than merely tolerating the differences. We can turn diversity into enrichment and perplexities into strength.48
As can be seen in the stories provided regarding Asian immigration to Canada, much of this history parallels that of Asian Americans. This shared experience shows similar motivations and similar challenges faced by Asians in Canada. Even across the borders that separates these two North American countries, the Asian experience in these two Western countries reflects one of exclusion through legislative action and also of the resilience of Asian Canadians in the face of adversity.
History of Asian Immigration to the United Kingdom Asians in the United Kingdom are a diverse multiethnic group as they are in other Western countries; however, before presenting the story of the group, context should be provided for what is meant by the term
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“British Asian.” To the common inhabitants of the United Kingdom , British Asian specifically refers to people of South Asian heritage and includes Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis and also Sri Lankans, Nepalese, and Maldivians. In the same token the term British Asians generally does not include the East Asians, for example those of Chinese, Korean, or Japanese descent. This differentiation is a theme that also made its way in to the official categories for ethnic groupings in the British Census that includes separate categories for Asians and Chinese. Although ethnicities that would be considered Asian American do not fall under common label in the United Kingdom, the experience that these separately defined groups had as immigrants converges to tell a common story. The initial waves of South Asian immigration to Britain started from the Indian subcontinent in the early seventeenth century, with the establishment of the trading business named The East India Company in the Indian subcontinent. Most of these early immigrants who arrived in Britain from the Indian subcontinent came over either for the purpose of education or training or as slaves and servants to the British high class and aristocracy. From the eighteenth century onward the merchant class started arriving from India and following the first War of Indian Independence in 1857, many more Indians came over from the Indian aristocratic circle for diplomatic purposes and petition against the British hegemony in India.49 After World War II and the independence of India and Pakistan, the wave of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent constituted mainly young single males. Many of these young males served as unskilled workers to fill up the labor shortage that arose out of the war. A later wave of immigrants of Indian origin entered Britain after the expulsion of the Indian Diaspora from Uganda and other east African countries in the late twentieth century. Although many of the refugees of Indian origin from Africa already held a British passport, the British government was less than forthcoming in admitting them to the country. Although their ethnic origin was Indian, because of their immigration from Africa, these Asian immigrants were considered “blacks.” The overall mood toward increasing South Asian immigration, from the Indian subcontinent as well as the extended South Asian Diaspora elsewhere, is aptly captured in the 1946 account of one settler:
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When I first arrived the local people generally didn’t like us blacks. Once I remember being confronted by a white man telling me “you blacks are good for nothing. You come over here, take our jobs and we don’t like you.” I told him that it was my country too, I had fought for it and if we had been late in getting to the battlefront this country would have been in the hands of the Germans. I told him not to give me any trouble as I had sacrificed a lot for this country. The man apologized at the end saying he didn’t know.50
The earliest instances of Chinese settlement in Britain came later— much later than the South Asians—in the early nineteenth century when the East India Company brought over Chinese sailors employed in the company and settled them in east London. Following this induction, the number of Chinese immigrants in Britain increased slowly but steadily over the years; and by 1911—the year in which the Republic of China was established—the British Census recorded 1,319 British Chinese and another 4,595 sailors and seamen of Chinese origin in Britain.51 With the number of Chinese in Britain rising, stiff opposition, particularly by the trade union groups, compelled the British government to give up the idea to bring over hundreds of thousands of Chinese as cheap laborers to Britain. In addition, it was not until the late twentieth century that a real influx in the number of Chinese, arriving mainly from Hong Kong is recorded. The wave of immigrants arriving in Britain in the twentieth century prompted the enactment of the Alien Restriction Act in 1905 that had a variety of anti-immigrant clauses. This Act impacted all Asians, including the Chinese and the Indians, alike. By the mid- to late-twentieth century, the large number of Asian and Black immigration from the commonwealth countries gave rise to steep resentment against immigration among the native white population. This antipathy toward immigration quickly turned into social unrest in the decade of 1960s. As a result the government passed the Commonwealth Immigrant Act on July 1, 1962, with the aim to restrict the number of immigrants from the commonwealth countries. Again the provision of this Act, according to which workers from the commonwealth countries had to hold “vouchers” to either enter or settle in Britain, impacted all in the Asian community similarly. With the Commonwealth Immigrant Act failing to deliver the desired outcome of restricting immigration
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to Britain, a harsher law was enacted with the Immigration Act of 1971 and “ . . . the effect of the new legislation was to bring new permanent primary migration . . . to the United Kingdom finally to a halt.”52 Furthermore, as the earlier immigration-restricting laws had already limited the number of Asian immigrants in Britain, an additional effect of this later law was felt on the dependents of earlier settlers. Similar restrictive pieces of legislation were continually enacted by the British government in the subsequent decade that further reduced the number of Asian immigration to Britain.53 The story provided for Asian immigration to the United Kingdom also reflects similar treatment as Asian immigrants to Canada and the United Kingdom. There is some variation of experience particularly with the story in the United Kingdom; however, similarities can be found in the legislative action taken against them and the ways in which these immigrants were initially seen as a threat and kept from gaining full acceptance into society. By understanding the history behind the origins of Asian Americans and Asians in the United Kingdom and Canada, we can see trends for how Asians are perceived across Western countries. What does this mean for today’s Asian and Asian American experience? Knowing this history of similar experiences allow us to have an increased level of awareness and understanding of where the glass-ceiling issues for Asian Americans and Asians in other Western countries come from. Although there may not be as many examples of blatant racism and legislation that continues to exclude Asians in these societies, subtle forms of exclusion can continue to exist. By understanding this collective history, Asian Americans and Asians in Western countries are better equipped to understand our story and to see the ceiling that often remains invisible. We have already provided in chapter 6, Highlighting Invisible Strengths, what individuals can do to better manage their careers. In the following chapter on Strategies for Organizations we provide information for organizations on what can be done to help identify when there are invisible issues that need to be addressed and to help organizations in seeing the ceiling.
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Chapter 10 Strategies for Organizations
As we come close to concluding our analysis of invisible leadership, we wonder if a senior executive of an organization reading this book will ask, “what can my organization do to address the issue of potential invisibility of a very talented segment of my employee population?” We hope that many will. Asking the right question is the best starting point. Yet, our experience suggests that a significant group of senior leaders assume that it is up to the employees to learn to be visible. A Chief Information Officer (CIO) of a large IT services company shared with us that if he were to spend time identifying invisible leaders, he won’t have time to run his company. He was merely sharing what many in the C-suite will see as a consensus—that in the hectic organizational life where time is a precious commodity, seeking to “unearth” quiet leaders is not a high priority. “If you can’t bring visibility to yourself, how can you bring visibility to your company?” asked the same CIO. Another senior Human Resource (HR) executive in a global conglomerate pointed out to us that there are also lost professional development and career growth opportunities for Asian Americans and Asians when they don’t do the “right thing” and attain the visibility necessary to be seen as leaders in their companies. While there is much pragmatism in the above logic of “be visible,” on deeper analysis, we see significant lost opportunities for a senior leader who might adopt such an approach. As we have shown throughout this book, the success of hundreds of companies in the Silicon Valley is a perfect example of valuing invisible leadership. If it turned out that only
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the visible leaders in those IT companies could be heard or valued, a good part of the innovation that came about from Silicon Valley would have been lost. It was all right to be a quiet leader there. As long as you had good ideas and relevant expertise, there was a process in place that would build on them for the benefit of the whole organization. How can other organizations do the same? That is, create a strategy that would allow them to reach out to the quiet leaders and build on their input for the greater benefit of the organization? Such an approach will have to come from a deeper understanding of what leadership is, recognizing that there are multiple styles of leadership, and that no one style is superior to the other. We also believe that there is a business case for doing so—that is, the strategies for recognizing quiet leaders is not about something an organization needs to do out of a “high ground” or “moral ground.” It is the right thing to do because doing so will make your organization agile, flexible, and capable of continuous innovation. In this chapter we will focus on exactly those strategies for organizations to leverage invisible leadership. While we recognize that there won’t be a universal list of strategies, we have attempted to list several from which an organization may choose those that make sense.
1. Reframing Core Values and Rethinking Mental Models A recent study by Grant, Gino, and Hofman1 provides a very encouraging opening for coming up with strategies for leveraging the talents of introverted leaders. The study is described in detail here to demonstrate how the differences between visible extraverted leadership versus invisible introverted leadership unfolded in the experiment. In the second part of their research on introverted and extraverted leaders’ relative effectiveness, 163 college students in a Southeastern university introductory organizational behavior class participated in a study where they were told that they would be leading a group of four members to fold as many T-shirts as possible in ten minutes.2 Each group (there were 56) comprised of a leader, two followers, and two undergraduate male research assistant confederates who posed as followers (in addition to the two students who played the same role).
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The two confederate assistants were careful to fold the same number of T-shirts in every session as a way of controlling this variable. To create conditions of extraversion and introversion, half of the groups were read a high extraversion narrative and the other half a low extraversion (high introversion) oriented description. The two descriptions come close to the way visible and invisible leadership is understood. To create the high extraversion context, the text read: “Scientific research now shows that behaving in an extraverted manner is the key to success as a leader. Like John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jack Welch, great leaders are extraverted: their behavior is bold, talkative, and assertive. This enables them to communicate a strong, dominant vision that inspires followers to deliver results.”3 The text that they read also summarized findings of a metaanalysis concluding that “extraversion is the most important trait of leaders and effective leadership.”4 Participants were also shown other examples of this style, asked to think of instances when they used this style effectively, and write a paragraph about it. In the low extraversion condition, the text for the evidence of introverted style contributing to leadership effectiveness read: “Scientific research now shows that behaving in an introverted manner is the key to success as a leader. Like Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, and Socrates, great leaders are introverted: their behavior is quiet, shy, and reserved. This enables them to empower their people to deliver results.”5 The text also showed studies showing the negative consequences of a leadership style based on high extraversion and the potential positive outcomes that may arise from less extraverted (or high introverted) leadership qualities.6 Here too, participants reflected on a time when they had used a less extraverted leadership and effectively led a group “by acting quiet, shy, and reserved” and wrote a paragraph capturing the experience. Soon after the beginning of the session, two other experimental conditions were introduced. The first was passive and in the second the confederates approached the leaders in the group and said, “I have a friend from Japan who has a faster way. It might take a minute or two to teach it, but do we want to try it?” The method was featured on a YouTube video titled “how to fold a T-shirt in two seconds.”7 The goal was to see the possible difference between extroverted and introverted leaders toward this proactive suggestion. Results showed that the participants practicing introverted leadership style were significantly more open to
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listening to the input for using the new Japanese method than the group practicing high extraverted style. In other words, when employees show initiative or want to provide input for organizational success, leaders showing a quiet leadership style may be able to make better use of such proactivity and employee involvement. The study also showed that in an environment where the employee population is rather passive and not engaged, a quiet leadership style does not have much of an advantage. When combined with the various studies that show that empowerment and employee engagement are critical factors for strategic success, the value placed on invisible leadership further enhances. We wanted to use the strong findings from this study as additional encouragement for leaders having second thoughts about the value of invisible leadership. We believe that a reframing of invisible leadership as a style that too has value is a big step in the right direction. Such reframing will have to start at the top and communicated across the organization through examples. An approach that values both visible and invisible leadership style is more likely to succeed than one that elevates only one of them. A CEO may show his or her faith in an inclusive leadership style by listening more to his or her own senior leadership team, by showing a sense of reflection and openness to their input, and actively seeking out those leaders who may be introverted. Over a period of time, his or her own team may show similar styles to those whom they manage. In short, the trend begins at the top and trickles down the hierarchy. This is a win-win situation because the visible and invisible leaders get recognized in such an approach. A senior leader in a global organization we interviewed initially thought it was up to his staff to be visible and make sure their views get heard. But by the time the interview finished an hour later, he was convinced of the need for a reframing regarding what gets recognized as good leadership qualities in his organization. The turning point came when he became aware of the extent of innovative ideas and creativity that might have got lost and did not reach him because the people who had those were not natural extraverts or visible leaders. He felt that as a global entity operating in every continent, his organization must be attuned to differences in leadership style and realized how little of that was evident based on what he has seen. Reflecting more on this theme, the senior executive could think of specific instances where he could
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have been more intentional in reaching out to the introverted leaders in his own team.
2. Reconstituting Affinity Groups as Learning Communities or Communities of Practice (Cop) with a New Purpose Senior leaders of all organizations we had interviewed mentioned that their organizations have affinity group and other networking opportunities for each major ethnic group. However, our experience shows that most of these affinity groups are more about socializing and less about sharing work experiences and best practices. It is typical for an Asian American affinity group to organize an annual Asian and Pacific American Heritage Month celebration where a keynote speech is delivered, Asian food served, and cultural artifacts of Asia displayed followed by a cultural show from one or two representative Asian countries. Such events become a spectacle about Asia to rest of the organization and serve primarily to solidify the forever foreigner stereotype. We believe that a visible reconstituting of affinity groups with a new goal will be a good strategy to leverage quiet leadership across the organization. Specifically, we suggest the following: 1. Top management should proactively encourage membership in affinity groups by mentioning the importance of such networks as a support and knowledge sharing entity. Occasional participation in affinity groups by senior executives is likely to be perceived as evidence of commitment by leadership as well as a motivator to participate in them by Asian American employees. The ambivalence around affinity groups can be reduced if top leadership sends clear messages about their importance. 2. Reconstitute the mission of affinity groups as learning communities or Communities of Practice (CoP) so that they become a platform for sharing best practices pertaining to career advancement, professional development, and leadership styles. CoPs have become standard forums for efficient knowledge sharing in organizations.8 During the interviews with the
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senior executives it became clear that some of them had used affinity groups early in their career. Looking back at those experiences they thought that there were many opportunities to get the voices of Asian Americans heard, had they been more intentional. The responses from the 250 survey respondents also point to ambivalence about affinity groups. Some loved it and others thought it was a waste of time. Overall, our analysis point to a missed opportunity in affinity groups based on how they are used now. 3. The newly constituted CoPs for Asian Americans should meet once in two months or once a quarter, and bring both visible and invisible leaders to a dialogue about the relative strengths and liabilities of their respective styles. Such CoPs should be patronized by leaders of all ethnicities and from all segments of the organization. Such story telling, which is a tool used in CoPs,9 is highly effective in bringing together specific information about what has worked for others during their professional development. Terms like World Café too have become popular to signify the informal nature of such communities of practice.10 They have been found highly productive in many areas of organizational life and therefore extending the application to affinity groups is a logically sound pragmatic step.
3. Creating Leadership Development Programs Focusing on Multiple Styles of Leadership and Individual Strengths Every senior leader we interviewed talked about the importance of leadership development programs in their professional growth. One of the insights common to many of our interviewees was the realization that the leadership development programs that they had gone through during their career had focused exclusively on visible leadership. The term “visible” was never used; however, that was the mental model they described behind all leadership development programs they had attended, both in-house and elsewhere. As one of them pointed out:
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It never occurred to me to question the underlying assumption behind what was presented as leadership or by implication, good leadership. I recall leaving the two day training feeling that I needed to be more assertive, should show more initiative, network more, talk about myself, in short, be seen by others. This seems very similar to what you have described to me as visible leadership. I must admit that taking initiatives and talking about my accomplishments to others have helped me in my career, but looking back I can see that I was clueless about what I was buying into.
When asked what he would do today if he were to be in charge of the leadership development program of his company, he said he would be much less certain about the value of any particular style. The same senior executive said: I will like to present a range of styles, including your visible and invisible, have a discussion about what has worked for them (the participants), and make a special point about American values and mental models behind leadership. My company has a presence in Europe and we sell globally, so I would like to make them (the participants) familiar with quiet leadership as well.
Organizations stand to gain significant leverage by promoting invisible leadership. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, internet search engine giant Google’s cofounders, are invisible leaders. They have built a culture within Google, based on the engineer as the leader mental model, signifying that content or substance is more important than appearance or visibility. Their style is in direct contrast to Steve Jobs, the legendary CEO of Apple, Inc. who is one of the most visible business leaders in the world today. These two examples from Silicon Valley bellwether companies—known for both leadership in innovation and in profitability—show that both visible and invisible leadership styles are effective. One is not superior to the other. Yet, most leadership program focus only on the visible leadership style. An inclusive leadership development program should have both conceptual strength and practical appeal. It should show in rich detail the various elements of quiet leadership in addition to the other types of leadership. Specifically, we recommend focusing on the following components of quiet leadership: (1) Collaboration with the subsets of
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(a) driving toward consensus, (b) teamwork, and (c) leading through facilitation and listening versus directing; (2) Long-term focus with the subsets of (a) developing leaders at all levels, (b) managing to the future versus managing to “get it done,” and (c) substance driven by looking for long-term benefit versus surface driven instant gratification; and (3) Rewarding the whole with the subsets of (a) recognizing the team, not just the individual, and (b) emphasizing meritocracy rather than a “star” leadership structure. Once the conceptual model is articulated and illustrated, the leadership training program should move on to the experiential component that should have three parts: 1. Case studies on invisible/quiet leadership that may have to be developed based on interviews of quiet leaders such as Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Inc.; Timothy Cook, the newly appointed acting CEO of Apple, Inc. in Steve Jobs’ absence; Scott Forstall, senior VP of iPhone Software Engineering & Platform Experience; and Ronald Johnson, senior VP of Retail, all of Apple. The list should be expanded to include quiet leaders from other industries, nonprofit, and governmental agencies, such as Peter Rouse, former interim chief of staff to President Barack Obama. 2. Experiential activities to develop the competencies of quiet leadership, such as listening to others, being reflective, and reframing. 3. Measurement instruments for quiet leadership that should be developed using the components outlined in this book. Since invisible leadership has not been a type of leadership that HR or leadership development centers within organizations have focused on, not much exist to point to as good models. The ideas outlined throughout this book should be useful in designing a leadership development program that includes invisible leadership.
4. Focusing on All Three Levels to Leverage Invisible Leadership There are three levels of leadership associated with large scale organizations11:
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1. Strategic level 2. Tactical level 3. Operational level. Strategic level is for long-term and crucial decision making, whereas the operational level serves to support the tactical level by providing direction for activities on a day-to-day basis in all operational areas. The visibility question applies to all three levels. Most of the examples of visible and quiet leaders discussed in management literature or media come from the strategic level, such as those of CEOs and founders. However, the role played by invisible leaders at the operational and tactical level is equally important. Invisible leaders are extremely task focused at the operational level trying to make sure everything works smoothly. When the operation or the product line goes flawlessly, very few people notice the people behind it. For quiet leaders this is an unusual challenge since the intensity of the task keeps them occupied providing very little time for seeking visibility even if they want it. At the tactical level too, quiet leaders face natural hurdles. At the tactical level, complexity increases and the project management skills become more important. Paying attention to the processes becomes a critical competence. As organizations have become highly dependent on technology, a significant part of tactical leadership is now process driven and mediated by knowledge management and collaborative technology tools. Due to the
Strategic Level Tactical Level
Operational Level
Figure 10.1 Leadership at Three Levels. Source: Roger Kaufman, Jerry Herman, and Kathi Watters, Educational Planning: Strategic, Tactical, and Operational (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002).
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model minority perception, Asian Americans are perceived to be the “natural fit” in this area. The performance bar is set high for Asian Americans in this arena due to this stereotype. As a result, exceptional performance by them is seen as business as usual or normal. Not much recognition is granted when a complex project ends on time or when a new technology is implemented organization-wide without a hitch. At the strategic level, visibility is comparatively easier to attain thanks to the context in which the leadership is expressed. Leaders at this level are constantly in communication with employees, shareholders, media, and other stakeholders. For this reason, a certain amount of visibility comes prepackaged with the strategic level. The visible leaders make the best use of it and achieve additional limelight. Even invisible leaders receive some visibility because they are at the strategic level but far less than the charismatic leaders. Strategies for organizations for leveraging invisible leaders should focus on all three levels, and not just the strategic one. Given the strong demand for the right talent at all levels, a sound corporate diversity strategy should use a planned approach so as to use all of its human capital to gain and maintain a competitive advantage in the global market place.12 Invisible leaders are present in all organizations and when diversity as a policy is implemented, it will pave the way to have more diverse leadership styles across the organization. The Xerox Research Centre of Canada (XRCC) and Leger Marketing once conducted a nationwide survey of 1,000 working Canadians and found that 77 percent of them believe that cultural diversity “creates a stronger Canadian business landscape” and “contributes to business success.”13 With such a strong positive attitude toward diversity, Canadian organizations may be poised to embrace diversity in leadership styles too. Developing a strategy for diversity in leadership styles is crucial. As mentioned earlier, since invisible leadership was never one that was sought to be enhanced, we are not aware of any written strategy to leverage it. However, we found templates that may be useful from other areas of diversity strategy. For example, The Annual Report of Conference Board of Canada lists several strategies for enhancing diversity in Canadian organizations.14 Some of the practices can be appropriated for leveraging invisible leadership.
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5. Breaking with Tradition The tradition in leadership development is to leverage visible styles and elevate charisma as a desirable quality. A breaking with this tradition is necessary to leverage invisible leadership. It may be called a strategy in order to highlight the dramatic changes necessary to focus on quiet leadership. While we do not have examples of breaking tradition regarding leadership styles, at least one example from Montreal’s police department regarding hiring of minorities shows the “breaking with tradition” aspect we discuss here. In 2002, the Service de police de la ville de Montreal (SPVM) decided to increase the diversity of its police force. Realizing that the traditional approaches will not work, they decided to make the process more proactive. They created posters with snappy captions such as “the police is after you” and “the police is watching you” and had them posted in areas with strong minority concentration. Other efforts included sponsoring soccer matches in areas with heavy minority population, organizing conferences with visible minorities’ community association, and placing catchy advertisements on TV and radio. The outcomes were very encouraging: recruiting 11.8 percent of new employees from visible minorities against a target of 10 percent. In the recently released updated version of The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company, Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter, and James Noel discuss the critical role of what is already implied in the title.15 They demonstrate that we can’t “buy” leaders but have to “grow” them through the ranks of operational, tactical, and strategic. They advise against going after “stars” and instead, promote an approach of looking within for talent. Organizations should seek invisible leaders who have creative ideas, solid business acumen, and smart strategic vision.
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Epilogue A Conversation between Keimei and Her Nephew Evan
In chapter 6, Highlighting Invisible Strengths, we introduce the concept of Appreciative Intelligence and how developing your Appreciative Intelligence can enhance your abilities in invisible leadership. One activity suggested in Thatchenkery and Metzker’s book is to talk with a child in order to practice reframing conversations for positive possibilities.1 The thought behind this activity is to practice changing the way we talk in conversations such as what a child wants to be when he or she grows up. The activity provides ways to encourage creativity and innovation in the conversation by not limiting what the child comes up with for his or her future. Instead, the conversation allows for the child to think through all possibilities and to then support him or her in coming up with concrete ideas of his or her own for accomplishing these potential goals. By practicing with a child, you are more patient and tolerant of ideas that may seem unrealistic or without tactical structure for implementation. The idea is that by learning to leverage this patience and by taking a facilitator role versus a directing role, it provides you with the ability to do the same in your workplace or in any other context. Rather than immediately shooting down ideas, it helps you to consider ideas first, and then ask questions to support the development of the idea further to lead to concrete actions or to a concept that could be actionable. Below is a conversation that one of the authors of this book, Keimei, had with her four-year old nephew, Evan, in looking up at the night
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sky. Although started as a conversation to help Evan, Keimei found that she had a lot to learn from her young nephew. What she gained from this conversation was not only a fresh perspective on how to consider infinite possibilities, but also a good metaphor for how to think about invisible leadership. Keimei: What do you want to be when you grow up Evan? Evan: Buzz Lightyear! Keimei: What does Buzz Lightyear do that you want to do? Evan: Look at the sky Aunty, I want to travel through space! Keimei: That’s so cool Evan. Which star in the sky do you want to visit? Evan: Well Aunty, those aren’t all stars. There are also planets, the moon, the sun, and all those things work together to make the sky look so pretty and to make sure we don’t float away. Keimei: Wow Evan. You know a lot. So everyone plays their part to make the solar system work and to keep us all grounded, huh? Evan: Yeah! Did you know too Aunty that it takes lots and lots of years for the light of the stars to reach us? Some stars we see in sky took a long time to reach us, and some stars we can’t even see yet. Keimei: So you’re saying the light of the stars were invisible at first, but now we’re getting the benefit of them? Evan: Yeah. That’s why I want to be Buzz Lightyear. That way I can find the stars and planets that we still haven’t seen so we can know about them. Keimei: That’s great Evan. So you’re going to make the invisible visible? Evan: Yeah!
While organizational dynamics are different from stars in the solar system, the metaphor of systems thinking relates to what’s discussed in the conversation above. Organizations and the role of teams and people dynamics we use to operate them are not so different from the way Evan describes the solar system. Each person has to play his or her part and contribute to the collective in order for people to work together effectively and to keep each other grounded in accomplishing the objective of the team. As we discussed throughout this book, there are also contributions of those we can see and those we can’t at first glance. Our goal in communicating all that we have in this book
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is ultimately to help all of us seek out those contributions that are going unseen to make the invisible visible. By doing so, the individuals who are making these contributions and the organizations that can leverage these contributions will benefit. Rather than seeing one star in the sky, it is important to see the value of each star, planet, sun, and the full context of the organization to have the long-term vision needed to lead in this global economy. Increasingly, views on leadership share the simple perspective of Keimei’s four-year-old nephew. It is each leader’s job from all levels of the organization to ensure that they seek out all the stars and their contributions even for those that are going unseen. We encourage every person who picks up this book to gain new perspectives on their organization or on themselves by talking with their colleagues and talking with those that they do not interact with every day. Or maybe even talk with a child and see what he or she has to say. You may be surprised at what you can learn from the future Buzz Lightyear.
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Appendices
Appendix 1 Asian American Leadership Survey Questions 1. There are times when I feel that I have been treated unfairly at work because of my ethnic background. (Rate Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree) 2. I feel comfortable sharing my opinions and providing input into discussions related to my work with my coworkers and managers. (Rate Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree) 3. Please select the statement that most closely represents how you feel about your career growth: • I am satisfied with my career growth. • I have been bypassed a few times and others have got ahead of me. • I have been bypassed many times. • I feel stuck in my career. 4. The top three qualities necessary for career success and professional growth in my workplace (Please choose from the qualities below and rank 1, 2, and 3 to identify the top 3): • Being visible • Charisma • Working hard • Having connections (social networks) • Knowing how to promote myself • Having mentors • Producing bottomline results • Being a team player
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• Helping others look good • Having the technical knowledge to do the work • Social skills • Loyalty to company. 5. The values that are most important to me in a work environment are shared by my coworkers and managers. (i.e., they share my same work ethic, they value teamwork, they like to have fun at work, etc.) (Rate Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree) 6. I feel that my contributions are recognized by my managers. (Rate Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree) 7. If my contributions are not recognized by managers, I will: • Meet with my supervisor and ask to correct the situation • Meet with my supervisor/HR and lodge a complaint • Move on with my work and not let it affect my performance • Work harder to get noticed next time. 8. I belong to associations or affinity groups within my organization specific to my ethnic roots (e.g., Asian American Forum, Chinese American Network, Indian American) (Answer Yes or No) 9. The best approach that describes my efforts to advance my career at my workplace is to • Work hard • Let others know about the results I have produced • Know the right people who can help me advance my career • Take on leadership roles in projects and be visible • Play safe and do not bring too much attention to myself • Be patient for my turn for promotion. 10. I meet with my supervisor • Regularly/Often • Sometimes • Rarely • Never. 11. I know what I need to do to progress in my career. (Rate Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree) 12. My manager has a good understanding of any issues or challenges I’ve overcome to complete my work. (Rate Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree)
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13. I am given opportunities to help me progress in my career. (Rate Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree) 14. I have mentors and role models at my work to help me with my career goals. (Rate Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree)
Appendix 2 Interview Questions for Asian American Leaders 1. Please tell me about your career path and what experiences led you to the position that you currently hold? 2. Do you think your cultural background influences your working style? 3. Have you faced any unique challenges in your career that you think may be directly or indirectly related to your cultural background? 4. Have you been able to find effective mentors in your career? 5. How have you developed your leadership style throughout your career? 6. What characteristic is most important to you in the leaders that you admire? 7. What would you say have been critical success factors for you in your career? 8. When faced with a challenging problem, what is your first step in coming up with a solution? 9. How do you interact with those who report to you to determine and to act on solutions? 10. How do you handle recognition when successes are achieved at work?
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Notes
CHAPTER 1 1. Adam Grant, Francesca Gino, and David Hofman, Reversing the Extraverted Leadership Advantage: The Role of Employee Proactivity (Academy of Management Journal, vol. 54, no. 3, 2011, forthcoming issue). 2. Joe Palca, “Collaboration Beats Smarts in Group Problem Solving,” NPR Online, September 30, 2010. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story .php?storyId=130247631. Retrieved on October 3, 2010. 3. Palca, “Collaboration Beats Smarts in Group Problem Solving.”
CHAPTER 3 1. Palca, “Collaboration Beats Smarts in Group Problem Solving.” 2. Nelson Mandela, The Long Walk to Freedom: An Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (New York: Little Brown and Company, 1995). 3. Grant, Gino, and Hofman, Reversing the Extraverted Leadership Advantage. 4. Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999). 5. David C. Thomas and Kerr Inkson, People Skills for Global Business: Cultural Intelligence (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003), p. 20. 6. AnnaLee Saxenian, Silicon Valley’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs. Working Paper 15 (San Diego, CA: The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, 2000). 7. AnnaLee Saxenian, The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
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CHAPTER 4 1. Geert Hofstede and Gert Jan Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005), pp. 3–4. 2. Hofstede and Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations, p. 10. 3. Karl E. Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995), p. 6. 4. Hofstede and Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations, p. 78. 5. Richard Lewis, When Cultures Collide: Leading across Cultures (Boston: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2006). 6. Lewis, When Cultures Collide, p. 179. 7. Thomas and Inkson, Cultural Intelligence, p. 127. 8. Hofstede and Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations, p. 20. 9. Ronald Heifetz, Leadership without Easy Answers (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 16. 10. Heifetz, Leadership without Easy Answers, p. 13. 11. Ibid., p. 14. 12. Ibid., p. 15. 13. Mary Belenky, Blythe Clinchy, Nancy Goldberger, and Jill Tarule, Women’s Way of Knowing (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1986), p. 102. 14. Belenky (et al.), Women’s Way of Knowing, p. 104. 15. Ibid., p. 113. 16. “1st Inauguration speech by Barack Obama,” www.bartleby.com. Retrieved on January 22, 2008. 17. “1st Inauguration speech by George W. Bush,” www.bartleby.com. Retrieved on January 22, 2008. 18. Bernie Becker and Ben White, “Lehman Managers Portrayed as Irresponsible,” New York Times, October 7, 2008, p. B1. 19. Becker and White, “Lehman Managers Portrayed as Irresponsible,” p. B1. 20. Warren Bennis, “The Challenges of Leadership in the Modern World: Introduction to the Special Issue,” American Psychologist, January 2007, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 2–5. 21. Warren G. Bennis and Patricia Biederman, Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1997). 22. Warren G. Bennis, An Invented Life: Reflections on Leadership and Change (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. 160. 23. Lois P. Frankel, See Jane Lead: 99 Ways for Women to Take Charge at Work (New York: Warner Business Books, 2007). 24. Kenneth Roldan and Gary Stern, Minority Rules: Turn Your Ethnicity into a Competitive Edge (New York: HarperBusiness Books, 2006).
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25. David Thomas and John Gabarro, Breaking Through: The Making of Minority Executives in Corporate America (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999). 26. Jennifer Kahnweiler, The Introverted Leader: Building on Your Quiet Strength (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009). 27. Juana Bordas, Salsa, Soul and Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2007). 28. Ibid., p. 18. 29. Harry Mercer, Right Leadership: The Most Inspirational Leaders Are Invisible Heroes (Bloomington, IN: Trafford Publishing, 2007). 30. David Rock, Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2006). 31. Joseph Badaracco, Leading Quietly (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002). 32. Joseph Raelin, Creating Leaderful Organizations (San Francisco: BerrettKoehler, 2003). 33. Craig Pearce and Jay Conger (eds.), Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003). 34. Janet Cox, Leadership without a Leader: An Exploratory Study of Collaborative Leadership. (Doctoral Dissertation, Capella University, 2009). 35. Jonathan T. Clark, Developing Collaborative Leadership: A Study Of Organizational Change Toward Greater Collaboration And Shared Leadership (Doctoral Dissertation, Antioch University, 2008). 36. Peter Cappelli, Harbir Singh, Jitendra Singh, and Michael Useem, “Are Indian Business Leaders Different?” India Knowledge@Wharton, November 01, 2007. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article .cfm?articleid=4238#. Retrieved on December 20, 2010. 37. Ibid.
CHAPTER 5 1. “Introverts: The Best Leaders for Proactive Employees,” Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6494.html. Retrieved on November 16, 2010. p. 1. 2. Barbara Frankel, “PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi ‘I am a Walking Example of Diversity,’ ” Diversity Inc. Magazine, Special Career Advice Issue, May 2008, p. 42. 3. J. Alex Tarquinio, “Selling Beauty on a Global Scale,” New York Times Online, October 31, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/01
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4.
5.
6. 7.
8.
9. 10. 11.
12. 13.
14. 15.
16. 17.
18.
NOTES /business/01interview.html?_r=1&ref=andrea_jung. Retrieved on October 31, 2010. “Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Delivering Happiness,” FORA.tv, May 26, 2010. http://fora.tv/2010/05/26/Zappos_CEO_Tony_Hsieh_Delivering _Happiness#fullprogram. Retrieved on December 12, 2010. Claire Grinton, “Pepsi Refresh Everything Vs. Coke’s Live Positively: Which Soda Wins the War? (POLL),” Huffington Post Online, February 17, 2010. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/17/pepsis-refresh -everything_n_464712.html. Retrieved on October 18, 2010. http://www.avonvoices.com. Retrieved on January 3, 2011. “Personal Struggles with Balancing Work and Family,” eClips@ Cornell.edu, youtube.com, August 29, 2009. http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=RGgTPWsj1AY. Retrieved on October 18, 2010. “Managing a Global Enterprise: Andrea Jung, CEO of Avon,” View from the Top Series, Stanford Business School, November 17, 2009. http://www.you tube.com/watch?v=_RjAfqKf Wlw. Retrieved on October 31, 2010. “Inside Zappos, Episode 8: New Years Party,” http://blogs.zappos .com/?page=2. Retrieved on December 30, 2010. Frankel, “PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi,” p. 38. Michael Useem, “America’s Best Leaders: Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo CEO,” U.S. News and World Report Online, November 19, 2008. http://politics .usnews.com/news/best-leaders/articles/2008/11/19/americas-best -leaders-indra-nooyi-pepsico-ceo.html?PageNr=2. Retrieved on October 18, 2010. Frankel, “PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi,” p. 38. Diane Bullock, “Most Influential CEOs: PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi Pushes for People Power, Diversity,” Minyanville.com, May 28, 2010. http://www .minyanville.com/special-features/articles/influential-ceos-pepsi-indra -nooyi-indian/5/28/2010/id/28099. Retrieved on October 18, 2010. Frankel, “PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi,” p. 40. “Conversation with Indra Nooyi,” Yale School of Management Leaders Forum Lecture Series. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-msw7mJPF6A. Retrieved on October 24, 2010. “Personal Struggles with Balancing Work and Family.” “Pepsi’s Indra Nooyi on CEO Stardom,” Wall Street Journal Online, June 11, 2008. http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/pepsis-indra-nooyi -on-ceo-stardom/3xglkkr5. Retrieved on October 18, 2010. “The Top 50 Women in World Business,” Financial Times Woman at the Top, November 16, 2010. http://womenatthetop.ft.com/articles/women -top/396bb974-f182-11df-8609-00144feab49a. Retrieved on December 30, 2010.
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19. “Indra Nooyi States United States and PepsiCo are Both Incredible Meritrocracies,”
[email protected], youtube.com, August 29, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGgTPWsj1AY. Retrieved on October 18, 2010. 20. Useem, “America’s Best Leaders.” 21. “Conversation with Indra Nooyi.” 22. “Indra Nooyi’s Graduation Remarks,” Bloomberg Business Week Online. May 15, 2005. http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2005 /nf20050520_9852.htm. Retrieved on October 18, 2010. 23. Leslie Wayne and Kenneth N. Gilpin, “Avon Calls On A Man To Lead It; Female Cosmetics Executives Passed Over For Top Post,” New York Times Online, December 12, 1997. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/12/business /avon-calls-man-lead-it-female-cosmetics-executives-passed-over-for-top -post.html. Retrieved on October 31, 2010. 24. “Managing a Global Enterprise.” 25. Dana Canedy, “Opportunity Re-Knocks at Avon; Passed Over Before, a Woman Is Named Chief Executive,” The New York Times Online, November 5, 1999. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/05/business/ opportunity-re-knocks-avon-passed-over-before-woman-named-chief -executive.html?ref=andrea_jung. Retrieved on October 31, 2010. 26. Stanford Business School View from the Top Series, youtube.com, November 17, 2009. 27. Ibid. 28. “Our Values and Principles: The Avon Values,” http://www.avoncompany .com/CorporateCitizenship/corporateresponsibility/whatwestandfor/values .html. Retrieved on October 31, 2010. 29. Stanford Business School View from the Top Series, youtube.com, November 17, 2009. 30. “Our Values and Principles.” 31. “Zappos Family Core Value #10: Be Humble,” http://about.zappos.com/our -unique-culture/zappos-core-values/be-humble. Retrieved on December 12, 2010. 32. Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. Kindle edition (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2010). pp. 868–872. 33. Hsieh, Delivering Happiness, pp. 191–197. 34. Ibid., pp. 2388–2389. 35. “Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Delivering Happiness.” 36. Hsieh, Delivering Happiness, pp. 2217–2243. 37. Ibid., pp. 2268–2271. 38. “Zappos Family Core Values.” 39. Hsieh, Delivering Happiness, pp. 2636–2639.
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40. Tojo Thatchenkery, Scientists and Engineers in the Emerging Economies: Trends in India and Implications for US Policy. Paper presentation at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Twenty-Eight Annual Research Conference, November 2–4, 2006, Madison, WI. 41. Sruthi Thatchenkery and Naoru Koizumi, “Lab Coats versus Business Suits: A Study of Career Preferences Among Indian Adolescents,” Career Development International, 2010, vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 524–543.
CHAPTER 6 1. Rob Cross and Andrew Parker, The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004). 2. Wayne Baker, Achieving Success through Social Capital: Tapping the Hidden Resources in Your Personal and Business Networks (San Francisco: JoseyBass, 2000), pp. 1–2. 3. Luft and Ingham, “The Johari Window.” 4. M. Wakabayashi, G. B. Graen, M.R. Graen, and M.G. Graen, “Japanese Management Progress: Mobility into Middle Management,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 1988, vol. 73, pp. 217–227. 5. S. J. Wayne and G. R. Ferris, “Influence Tactics, Affect, and Exchange Quality in Supervisor-Subordinate Interactions: A Laboratory Experiment and Field Study,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 1990, vol. 75, pp. 487–499. 6. S. J. Wayne and R. C. Liden, “Effects of Impression Management on Performance Ratings: A Longitudinal Study,” Academy of Management Journal, 1995, vol. 38, pp. 232–260; S. J. Wayne, R. C. Liden, I. K. Graf, and G. R. Ferris, “The Role of Upward Influence Tactics in Human Resource Decisions,” Personnel Psychology, 1997, vol. 50, pp. 979–1006; and Katherine Xin, “Asian American Managers: An Impression Gap? An Investigation of Impression Management and Supervisor-Subordinate Relationships,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, September, 1997, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 335–355. 7. Tojo Thatchenkery, Strategies for Addressing Asian Pacific American Glass Ceiling: An Analysis of the Voices of the ‘‘Invisible’’ Minority in Corporate America and Federal Agencies. Paper presented at the 23rd Annual Research Conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. November 1–3, 2001. Washington, D.C. 8. The Color of Fear. Director: Lee Mun Wah. Performers: David Lee, Roberto Almanzan, David Christensen, Gordon Clay, Victor Lewis, Yutaka Matsumoto, Loren Moye, and Hugh Vasquez. 1994. VHS. April 30, 1994.
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9. Richard Florida, The Flight of the Creative Class (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), pp. 34–36. 10. Daniel H. Pink, A Whole New Mind (New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, Published by the Penguin Group, 2005), p. 34. 11. Tojo Thatchenkery and Carol Metzker, Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn (San Francisco: Berrett-Kohler), pp. 15–16. 12. David Cooperrider and S. Srivastva, “Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life,” Research in Organizational Change and Development, 1987, vol. 1, pp. 129–169.
CHAPTER 7 1. Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity. Retrieved on January 10, 2011. 2. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg_1997standards. Retrieved on January 10, 2011. 3. http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/list/asian-americans-initiative/critical issues.html. Retrieved on January 9, 2011. 4. http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/list/asian-americans-initiative/index .html. Retrieved on December 10, 2010. 5. Thatchenkery, “Strategies for Asian Pacific American Glass Ceiling.” 6. ChangHwan Kim and Authur Sakamoto, “Have Asian American Men Achieved Labour Market Parity with White Men?” American Sociological Review, 2010, vol. 75, no. 6, p. 937. 7. Cliff Cheng and Tojo Thatchenkery, “Why Is There a Lack of Workplace Diversity Research on Asian Americans?” Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences, 1997, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 270–276 (various articles in the special issue); and Thatchenkery, “Strategies for Asian Pacific American Glass Ceiling.” 8. M. P. Bell, Diversity in Organizations (Mason, OH: South Western, 2007). 9. Data pulled from EEOC Job Patterns statistics site: http://www.eeoc.gov /stats/jobpat/jobpat.html. Retrieved on January 13, 2008. 10. “Diversity in the Finance Industry,” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 2006. http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/reports/index .html. Retrieved on January 13, 2008. 11. EEOC, 2006. 12. “The Glass Ceiling Initiative: Are There Cracks In The Ceiling?” U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Employment Standards Administration, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, Washington, D.C., June 1997. http://www.dol.gov/esa/media/reports/ofccp/newgc.htm. Retrieved on January 13, 2008.
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13. http://www.eeoc.gov/federal/reports/aapi.html—AAPI work group report to the chair of the EEOC, p. 29. 14. U.S Department of Education databases, 2006. 15. Nicholas Yoong and Eric Young, “2007 Corporate Board Report Card, A Report On Directors Of Asian Ethnicity On Fortune Boards,” Committee of 100. www.comittee100.org. Retrieved on November 16, 2007. p. 2. 16. Alvin Alvarez, Linda Juang, and Christopher T. Liang, “Asian Americans and Racism: When Bad Things Happen to ‘Model Minorities,” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 2006, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 477–492. 17. Ibid. 18. Statistics Canada (3), 2003. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/start-debut-eng .html. Retrieved on December 10, 2010. 19. Canadian Labor Congress Report (2002) listed in John Samuel and Kogular Basavarajappa, “The Visible Minority Population in Canada: A Review of Numbers, Growth and Labour Issues,” Canadian Studies in Population, 2006, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 241–269. 20. http://www.80-20initiative.net/news/preselect2008_dol_reply1.asp. Retrieved on January 18, 2011. 21. Ibid.
CHAPTER 8 1. Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations. 2. C. Harquail and A. W. King, “We Know More Than We Say: A Typology for Understanding a Manifold Organizational Identity,” Academy of Management Proceedings, 2002. 3. Gareth Morgan, Images of Organization (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006). 4. Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Currency, 1990). 5. Rosalind S. Chou and Joe Feagin, The Myth of the Model Minority Asian Americans Facing Racism (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2008), p. 3. 6. E. Nesbitt, “South Asian Christians in the UK,” in Jacobsen, K. A. and Raj, S. J. (eds.), Invisible Diaspora: The South Asian Christian Diaspora in Europe and North America (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 7. Nesbitt, “South Asian Christians in the UK.” 8. M. Barton, Rejection, Resistance and Resurrection: Speaking out on Racism in the Church (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005).
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9. Kim and Sakamoto, “Have Asian American Men Achieved Labor Market Parity with White Men?” pp. 934–957. 10. Timothy P. Fong, The Contemporary Asian American Experience Beyond the Model Minority (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. 2008), p. 56. 11. Roli Varma, “Asian Americans: Achievements Mask Challenges,” Asian Journal of Social Science, 2004, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 290–307. 12. William Petersen, “Success Story of One Minority in the U.S.,” U.S. News & World Report, December 26, 1966, p. 73. 13. Heather Kim, Diversity among Asian American High School Students. Policy Information Report. (Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service, 1997). 14. Arthur Sakamoto, Kimberly Goyette, and ChangHwan Kim, “Socioeconomic Attainments of Asian Americans,” American Review of Sociology, 2009, vol. 35, pp. 255–276. 15. Samuel, “The Visible Minority Population in Canada,” p. 260. 16. Ibid., p. 260. 17. Petro Antunes, Judith MacBride-King, and Julie Swettenham, Making a Visible Difference: The Contribution of Visible Minorities to Canadian Economic Growth (Ottawa, ON: Conference Board of Canada, 2004). 18. Ibid. 19. Kelly Tran, “Visible Minorities in the Labor Force: 20 Years of Change,” Canadian Social Trends, Statistics Canada-Catalogue no.11-008, Summer, 2004, p. 9. 20. Bente Baklid, Allison Cowan, Judith MacBride-King, and Aretha Mallett, Business Critical: Maximizing the Talents of Visible Minorities—An Employer’s Guide (Ottawa, ON: Conference Board of Canada, 2005), p. 11. 21. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1338395/How-Sikhs-Hindus -bedrock-middle-Britain.html Retrieved on January 13, 2011. 22. P. Rich, “Ethnic Politics and the Conservatives in the Post-Thatcher Era,” as quoted in Shamit Saggar (ed.), “The Political Incorporation of South Asian Elites in Britain,” Journal of International Migration and Immigration, 1998, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 207–226. p. 223. 23. Ibid., 223. 24. Votebank identity, December 29, 1997, India Today as quoted in Shamit Saggar (ed.), “The Political Incorporation of South Asian Elites in Britain,” Journal of International Migration and Immigration, 1998, vol. 2, no. 2, p. 223. 25. Shamit Saggar, “The Political Incorporation of South Asian Elites in Britain,” Journal of International Migration and Immigration, 2001, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 207–226.
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26. Deborah Woo, Glass Ceilings and Asian Americans: The New Face of Workplace Barriers (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2000), p. 208. 27. “The Impact of the Los Angeles Riots on the Korean American Community,” AsiaToday, May 3, 2002. http://www.asiasource.org/news /at_mp_02.cfm?newsid=79441#links, Retrieved on January 13, 2008. 28. Chou and Feagin, The Myth of the Model Minority, p. 125. 29. Ibid. 30. David McEvoy and Khalid Hafeez, “Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship in Britain,” Management & Marketing, 2009, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 59. 31. R. Ward and R. Jenkins, Ethnic Communities in Business, Strategies for Economic Survival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); M. Ram and G. Hillin, “Achieving ‘break-out’: Developing Mainstream Ethnic Minority Business,” Small Business Enterprise and Development, 1994, vol. 1, pp. 15–21; and McEvoy and Hafeez, “Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship in Britain,” pp. 55–64. 32. Edna Bonacich, “A Theory of Middleman Minorities,” American Sociological Review, 1973, vol. 38, pp. 583–594. 33. McEvoy and Hafeez, “Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship in Britain,” pp. 55–64. 34. Mia Tuan, Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites?: The Asian Ethnic Experience Today (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1999). 35. Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror (New York: Little Brown, and Company, 1993) p.1. 36. Frank H. Wu, Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White (New York: Basic Books, 2002), pp. 79–80. 37. Nita Tewari and Alvin Alvarez, Asian American Psychology: Current Perspectives (New York: Taylor and Francis Group, LLC, 2009), p. 211. 38. Takaki, A Different Mirror, pp. 485–486. 39. William Wei, The Asian American Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), p. 132.
CHAPTER 9 1. “Asian American and Pacific Islander Work Group Report to the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. http://www.eeoc.gov/federal/ reports/aapi.html. Retrieved on April 5, 2010. 2. David Harrison and Katherine Klein, “What’s the Difference? Diversity Constructs as Separation, Variety, Or Disparity in Organizations,” The Academy of Management Review, 2007, vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 1199–1228.
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3. Ibid., p. 1200. 4. Ibid., p. 1201. 5. Rebecca Hastings, “SHRM Diversity Report a Call to Action: Majority of Companies Say They Haven’t Defined Diversity,” HR Magazine, April 2008. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3495/is_4_53/ai _n25356160/. Retrieved on August 27, 2010. 6. Katherine J. Klein and David A. Harrison, “On the Diversity of Diversity: Tidy Logic, Messier Realities,” Academic of Management Perspectives, 2007, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 26–33. 7. Steven Vertovec, “Super-Diversity and Its Implications,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, November 2007, vol. 30, no. 6, p. 1024. 8. Ibid., p. 1026. 9. Harrison and Klein, “What’s the Difference? Diversity Constructs as Separation, Variety, Or Disparity in Organizations,” p. 1200. 10. Myrtle Bell and Daphne Berry, “Viewing Diversity through Different Lenses. Avoiding a Few Blind Spots,” Academic of Management Perspectives, 2007, vol. 21, no. 4, p. 21. Originally cited in Bell, Diversity in Organization. 11. Ibid. 12. Deborah R. Litvin, “The Discourse of Diversity: From Biology to Management,” Organization, May 1997, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 187–209. 13. Ibid., p. 200. 14. Ibid., p. 202. 15. M. Omi and H. Winant, Organizational Behavior: A Management Challenge. Second edition (Fort Worth, TX: The Dryden Press, 1994). 16. Tojo Thatchenkery and Cliff Cheng, “Seeing beneath the Surface to Appreciate What ‘Is’: A Call for a Balanced Inquiry and Consciousness Raising Regarding Asian Americans in Organizations,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences, 1997, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 397–406; and Thatchenkery, “Strategies for Asian Pacific American Glass Ceiling.” 17. C.N. Le, Asian American Assimilation: Ethnicity, Immigration, and Socioeconomic Attainment (New York : LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC, 2007), p. 17. 18. Lavina Shankar and Rajini Srikanth (eds.), A Part, Yet Apart: South Asians in Asian America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), p. 206. 19. C.N. Le, Asian American Assimilation, p. 16. 20. Ibid., p. 17. 21. Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore (New York: Penguin Books, 1989). 22. Ibid., p. 25. 23. Pyong Gap Min (ed.), Asian Americans Contemporary Trends and Issues (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006).
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188 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.
37. 38. 39. 40.
41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.
49.
NOTES Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, p. 101. Ibid., p. 177. Ibid., p. 212. Ibid., p. 297. Min, Asian Americans Contemporary Trends and Issues, p. 11. Ibid., pp. 11–14. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, p. 401–402. Ibid., p. 404. Ibid., p. 417. Min, Asian Americans Contemporary Trends and Issues, p. 2. Wei, The Asian American Movement, p. 132. www.petersons.com. Retrieved on January 13, 2008. Chinese Immigration. CBC News Online. Updated on June 10, 2004. http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/china/chinese_immigration.html. Retrieved on August 30, 2010. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Victorian newspaper quoted in “Indepth China: Chinese Immigration,” CBC News Online, Updated on June 10, 2004. http://www.cbc.ca/news /background/china/chinese_immigration.html. Retrieved August 30, 2010. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Lam quoted by Peter Li in Encyclopedia of Canada’s People. Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples was originally created and published by The Multicultural History Society of Ontario, Canada. With their permission, the Simon Fraser University Library has created an online database of the Encyclopedia entries. http://www.multiculturalcanada.ca/mcc/ ecp. Retrieved on January 10, 2011. http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/asian/settling/settling .htm. Retrieved on August 30, 2010. Led by the National Archives of United Kingdom, the Moving Here partnership is a consortium of 30 archives, libraries, and museums that contributed the over 200,000 items on their website, http://www.movinghere.org.uk. Moving Here provides scholarly information regarding immigration to England over the last 200
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50.
51. 52. 53.
189
years. It also allows visitors to the site to publish their own experience of immigration. An immigrant, Mohamed Zaman Khan, quoted in “South Asian Migration Histories Timeline,” http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries /histories/asian/settling/settling.htm. Retrieved on August 30, 2010. Ibid. Ian R. G. Spencer, British Immigration Policy Since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain. (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 143. Ibid., p. 144.
CHAPTER 10 1. Adam Grant, Francesca Gino, and David Hofman. Reversing the Extraverted Leadership Advantage: The Role of Employee Proactivity. Academy of Management Journal, vol. 54, Number 3, 2011. 2. Ibid., p. 23. 3. Ibid., p. 23. 4. Judge et al., 2002, as quoted in Grant, Gino, and Hofman, Reversing the Extraverted Leadership Advantage, p. 773. 5. Ibid., p. 24. 6. Judge et al., 2009 and McCormack and Mellor, 2002 as quoted in Grant, Gino, and Hofman, Reversing the Extraverted Leadership Advantage. 7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An0mFZ3enhM&feature=related. Retrieved on January 10, 2011. 8. Tojo Thatchenkery, Appreciative Sharing of Knowledge: Leveraging Knowledge Management for Strategic Change (Chagrin Falls, OH: Taos Publishing, 2005). Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2008). Noriko Hara, Communities of Practice: Fostering Peer-to-Peer Learning and Informal Knowledge Sharing in the Work Place (New York: Springer, 2008). Hubert Saint-Onge and Debra Wallace, Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage (New York: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2003). 9. David Boje, Storytelling Organizations (Thousand Oaks: CA: Sage Publications, 2008). Stephen Denning, The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005). John Seely Brown, Stephen Denning, Katalina Groh, and Laurence Prusak, Storytelling in Organizations: Why Storytelling Is Transforming
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10.
11. 12.
13.
14. 15.
NOTES 21st Century Organizations and Management (New York: ButterworthHeinemann, 2004). Junita Brown and David Issacs, The World Café: Shaping Our Futures through Conversations That Matter (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2005). See the three levels of leadership at http://leadership.au.af.mil/af/afldm. htm. Retrieved on January 10, 2011. O. C. Richard, “Racial Diversity, Business Strategy, and Firm Performance: a Resource-Based View,” Academy of Management Journal, 2000, vol. 43, pp. 164–177. Xerox Newsroom. Canadians Name Diversity as Key Ingredient. This national survey was conducted by Leger Marketing between July 17 and 31, 2007. Baklid et al., Business Critical, p. 10. Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter, and James Noel, The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company, John Wiley & Sons, 2011).
EPILOGUE 1. Thatchenkery and Metzker, Appreciative, pp. 165–166.
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Authors’ Biographies
Tojo Thatchenkery (Ph.D. Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University) is professor and director of the Organization Development and Knowledge Management program at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia. He is also a member of the NTL Institute of Applied Behavioral Science and the Taos Institute. Thatchenkery has extensive consulting experience in change management, organization development, and knowledge management. Past and current clients include Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, IBM, Fannie Mae, Booz Allen, PNC Bank, Lucent Technologies, General Mills, British Petroleum, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, United States Department of Agriculture, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, United States Environmental Protection Agency, and the Tata Consulting Services (India). His research and consulting also focuses on Asian Americans and organizational mobility. Starting with his special issue of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences on this topic, he is one of the first researchers to analyze the human and social capital dynamics unique to Asian Americans in federal agencies and corporate America. Thatchenkery regularly consults and offers workshops to public and private sector organizations on this topic. Thatchenkery’s recent books include Positive Design and Appreciative Construction: From Sustainable Development to Sustainable Value (2010), Leveraging Global Competitiveness for Organizational Excellence: Management Cases (2010), Appreciative Inquiry and Knowledge Management (2007), Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn (Harvard Business Review 2006 Reading List), and Appreciative Sharing of Knowledge: Leveraging Knowledge Management for Strategic Change (2005). He has also researched contemporary themes such as technological culture and globalization which resulted in another
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AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHIES
book, Information Communication Technology and Economic Development: Learning from the Indian Experience (2006). Thatchenkery’s research has been funded by agencies such as the United States National Science Foundation, U.S. Postal Service, and National Security Agency. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences and the Journal of Organizational Change Management. Thatchenkery is also the book review editor of the Journal of Organizational Change Management. Keimei Sugiyama is an experienced consultant at a large global management consulting company. She has served in various team lead functions for communications, training, stakeholder management, and organizational change work. Her previous experience in several different corporate Human Resource functions, as well as in conducting seminars on career management for Asian Americans, spurred her interest for subsequent research for the Asian American workforce topics covered in this book. She has her bachelor’s degree from Smith College, where she conducted research on Japanese American Internment literature, and has her master’s degree from George Mason University in Organization Development and Knowledge Management. She also presented at the 2008 Academy of Management with Professor Thatchenkery.
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Index
AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander), 11, 12, 103, 114–115, 138 Abilities, 15, 31–32, 53, 57, 77, 82, 83, 89–91, 96–97, 134, 162, 169 Acceptance, 3, 15, 37, 117, 125, 132, 150, 156 Accomplishments, 19, 26, 29, 36, 74 Accomplishments, speaking about, 19–20, 28, 35, 72, 83, 85, 94, 111, 163 Adapting, ability to, 26, 31, 38, 62 Adaptive, leadership and work, 54, 55, 98 Adjusting, to US style, 28, 80 Advancement decisions, 31 Advocacy, 3–4, 8, 34, 106, 126–128, 152 Affinity groups, 9, 19–20, 32–33, 161–162, 174 African Americans, 20, 51, 87, 102–114, 131–144 American Born Asian Americans (AA-NB), 103–104 American Dream, 47, 125, 128, 147 American Institute for Managing Diversity Inc. (AIMD), 139 American Values. See Leadership APA [Asian-Pacific American], 33, 114 Apple Inc., 1, 163–164 Appreciation, 14, 23, 26, 94 Appreciative Intelligence, 91, 96–98, 169
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Articulate, being, 17, 93 Asian American Leadership Survey Questions, 173–174 Asian American Movement, 128, 146, 147 Asian American Studies, 125, 127, 143, 144, 146–147 Asian Indians, 105 Asian-Pacific Triangle, 146 Assumptions, 7, 15, 46, 124–134, 163 Attitudes, 8, 25, 47, 140, 166 Avon, 6, 62–64, 70–72 Awareness, 3, 6, 8, 20, 22, 33–34, 42, 52, 59, 73, 78, 80, 82, 84, 90–91, 103, 122–127, 146–147, 156 Bangladeshis, 132, 138, 146, 154 Behaviors, 8, 11, 43, 45, 47, 48, 50, 85, 124, 126, 140, 159 Belenky, Mary, 48–49 Benefits of Invisible Leadership, 55–78 Blind Spots, 8, 82–84, 90–93 Bordas, Juana, 54 British Census, 154, 155 Canada, 42, 53, 118, 122, 129–130, 143, 148–156, 166 Capabilities. See Abilities Career Advancement, 17–19, 21–31, 54, 127, 161, 173 Career Management, 5, 8, 15, 27, 78–90, 96, 192 Career success, 17–19, 80, 173
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INDEX
Carnegie Mellon University, 2, 26 CEOs, 1, 5, 28, 51–53, 58, 62, 65–66, 68–71, 73, 76–79, 99, 113, 121, 160, 163–165 Challenges, 2, 3–7, 11–12, 14–17, 20, 23, 26–33, 36, 38, 42, 64–65, 70, 82, 86, 127, 152 Change, 4, 5, 17, 52, 57, 62, 65, 67, 75, 88–91, 96, 105, 124, 167 Changing themselves, 28–29, 32, 62, 76–77, 80 Chinese, 9, 33, 38, 102, 104–105, 118, 121–122, 128, 130, 132–133, 135, 137, 138, 141–155 Chinese Canadian, 149, 151–153 Choice, 29, 64, 80 Cisco, 56–57, 117 Citi, 28 Collaboration, 2, 5, 14, 21–22, 30, 34–35, 38, 55–57, 65, 67, 72, 76, 79, 88–90 Collaborative. See Leadership Collaborative groups, 26 Collective Understanding, 51, 95–96 Collectively focused approach, 2, 31 Comfortable, feeling, 12–13, 28, 36, 93–94, 173 Communication, 8, 15, 20, 29, 57, 65, 75, 82–85, 120, 166 Communities of Practice (CoP), 161–162 Competition, 2, 14, 22, 26, 46–47, 51, 68, 125 Conforming, 29 Connected knowing, 48–49, 51–52 Connections, having/social networks, 17–19, 173 Consensus, drive to, 21, 34, 56, 164 Conversations, casual, 32 Conversations, difficult, 84, 93–94 Core elements of Invisible Leadership. See Invisible Leadership Country of Origin, 9, 33–34, 104, 126, 134 Credibility, 32
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Cultural aspects of Asian cultures, 5 Cultural context, 26, 82, 87 Cultural influences, 20, 74 Cultural Intelligence, 31, 47 Cultural values, 13, 17, 26, 28, 30, 33, 34, 36, 39, 42, 61–62, 67, 81, 86–90 Culture, 20, 21, 31, 35, 37, 43–47, 61, 73, 82, 86, 87, 104 Culture, US, 29, 46, 48 Cultures, getting the best from, 27–28 Decorum, 31 Development, Leadership. See Leadership Dhawan, Satish, 41–42 Discrimination, 8, 12, 103, 124, 142, 146, 148, 152 Diversity, 3, 4, 20, 34, 43–45, 54–56, 61–62, 66, 79, 82, 89, 101–109, 121, 124–127, 132, 138–143, 147, 153, 166–167 Doubting game, 49 Duty, 30, 69 Educational Background, 10, 140 Effectiveness, 26, 61, 70, 158–159 Engagement, 8, 74, 90, 160 Entrepreneurship, 38, 54, 58, 127, 153 Environment. See Work Environment Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 107, 138 Ethic. See Work Ethic Ethnic studies programs, 146 Ethnicity, 8–9, 13, 15, 20, 44, 54, 87, 102, 124, 129, 140 Expectations, 11, 74, 95 Extraverted, leaders, 2, 27, 158–160 Facilitative approach, 35 Favoritism, 11 Feedback, 44, 84, 90–96, 99 Filipino, 9, 104, 105, 128, 129, 137, 138, 142, 144–146
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INDEX Focus on “doing,” 2, 5, 18, 21–22, 30–34, 61, 66–68, 74, 77–81, 83 Followers, 54, 159 Forever foreigner perception, 14, 69, 125–126, 133–135, 161 Fortune 500, 66, 81, 86, 116 Gandhi, Mahatma, 42, 159 Gates, Bill, 38, 54 Gender, 33, 45, 70, 106, 140 Glass ceiling, 3, 6–7, 9, 11–12, 25, 45, 62, 70, 74, 81, 90, 101–102, 111–116, 120–123, 127, 131, 137–138, 147–148, 156 Glass Ceiling Commission, 112, 113 Global Economy, 26, 28, 31, 90, 171 Google, 78, 163, 164 Growth, 9–10, 17, 35–39, 63, 73, 75–77, 80–83, 91, 157, 162, 173 Hard work, 13, 17, 19, 29–30, 67 Harvard University, 47, 62, 98 Heifetz, Ronald, 47–48, 54, 98 Hispanic, 105, 107–116 Hofstede, Geert, 43, 46, 47 Hsieh, Tony, 6, 39, 62, 65, 72–76, 88, 90 Humble. See Humility Humility, 72, 75, 78, 81, 86, 88 Identity, 3, 4, 28, 34, 36, 61, 79, 86–87, 95, 131, 133, 137, 141, 143 Immigration, 42, 118, 138–156 Alien Restriction Act in 1905, 155 Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, 142, 144–145, 148, 151–152 Chinese Exclusion Law in 1923, 151 Chinese head tax, 150 Chinese immigrants, 38, 144–155 Commonwealth Immigrant Act, 155 Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1907–1908, 142, 144 Gold Rush of the 1800, 144 Immigration Act of 1917, 145
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Immigration Act of 1924, 145 Indian Diaspora, 154 Naturalization Law of 1790, 148 U.S. Immigration law, 146 Impression management, 8, 31, 36, 85–88 Indian immigrants, 38 Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), 41 Individualistic approach, 2, 6, 17–18, 21, 23, 26, 45, 47–48, 54–55, 66, 72, 89–90 Individually focused rewards, 34 Influencing, 22, 37, 48, 88, 139 Information technology (IT) business, 10, 38 Innovation, 38–39, 41, 76–78, 89, 158, 163, 169 Integrity, 13, 22, 30, 51, 62, 72 Interview Questions for Asian American Leaders, 175 Introverted Leaders, 2, 27, 158–159, 161 Invisible Ceiling, 11, 80, 123–135 Invisible Leadership core elements, 21–22, 34–35, 39, 55–56, 61, 65, 67, 72, 74, 78, 83, 88, 90 See also Leadership Invisible Minority, 3, 6–7, 12, 62, 80–81, 101, 106, 123, 127 Japanese, 9, 46, 105, 118, 128–130, 133–135, 138, 141–142, 144–146, 149–151, 153–154, 160 Japanese culture, 46 Job-focused style, 36 Jobs, Steve, 1, 38, 163–164 Jung, Andrea, 6, 39, 62–76, 90 Jung, Douglas, 152 Kalam, Abdul, 41 Korean, 9, 104, 105, 118, 130, 131–138, 141, 144–146, 154
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INDEX
Latino, 102, 106, 109, 111, 114 See also Hispanic Leadership American values, 29, 163 Collaborative, 56–57 development, 34–35, 56, 63, 162–167 invisible, 2, 5–6, 8, 14, 21–28, 34, 35, 38–39, 41–42, 45, 55, 56–59, 61–62, 65, 67, 71–78, 83, 88–90 Making visible. See Visibility Nelson Mandela on, 25–26 in other countries besides US, 26 quiet, 1, 11, 17, 21–22, 37, 54, 55, 72, 98, 157–167 Shared, 55–57 “star” leadership, 21, 34, 56, 57, 79 in the US, 26 Leading from behind, 25–27, 35 Lewis, Richard, 47 Listening, 29–31, 35, 160, 164 Long Term Focus, 5, 21, 23, 27, 34, 56–58, 65, 67, 72, 76, 79, 88–90, 164–165 Luck, 28, 68, 71 Lyons, Nona, 48 Making decisions, 22, 96 Making noise, 29, 37 Managing to the future, 21, 34, 164 Mandela, Nelson. See Leadership Materialism, 54 McEvoy and Hafeez, 132 Meaning making, 32, 43, 123 Mental models, 14, 81, 103, 118, 123–134, 148, 158, 162–163 Mentoring, 18–20, 33, 37, 70, 78, 94, 173, 175 Meritocracy, 29–31, 34, 56–57, 67–68, 79, 82, 95, 164 Mid-level positions, 9, 109, 110 Mindfulness, 31, 80, 84, 90, 91 Misperceptions, 3, 14, 70, 71, 83, 92, 109, 126
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Missing in History or MIH, 103, 141, 143 Mobility, career, upward and “Missing in Mobility,” 7–8, 19, 21, 59, 71, 82–85, 101, 103, 107, 109, 113, 117, 122–124, 141, 148 Model minority, 3, 4, 11–14, 124–131, 166 Morgan, Gareth, 124 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 41–42 Need to “show,” 1–2, 5, 18, 21, 29, 77, 79 Nepotism, 86 Networking. See Social networks Nooyi, Indra, 5–6, 28, 39, 62, 63, 64, 66–70, 73, 74, 76, 79, 90 Obama, Barack, 51–52, 164 Observing, ability to, 31, 46 Outspoken, being, 1, 16–17, 30, 73 Pandit, Vikdram, 28 PepsiCo, 5–6, 23, 62–64, 66–69 Perceptions, 3, 8, 11, 14, 45, 53, 56, 70, 81, 83–85, 102–104, 117, 123–134 Performance, 2, 4, 11, 12, 16, 38, 49–51, 66–67, 74–75, 166, 174 Personality, 2, 16–17, 47, 57, 65 Pink, Daniel, 89 Politeness, 31 Politics, 22, 67, 68, 79, 132 Power, 22 Professional Background, 10 Progression, career, 34, 38, 67, 137, 173–174 See also Career success, Mobility Promotions, 2, 9, 10, 16, 29, 33, 36, 57, 95, 174 Pulse survey, 7, 25, 32, 33, 61–62, 85 Qualities, leadership, 159–160
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INDEX Qualities, masculine and feminine, 45 Qualities for career success, 17–18 Quality. See Work Quality Quiet Leadership. See Leadership Racism, 87, 117–118, 125, 127, 156 Recognition, 15–17, 21, 28–29, 31, 34, 36, 38, 56, 81, 82, 166, 175 Reframing, 96–97, 158, 160, 164, 169 Relationships, 8, 14–15, 20, 32, 43, 45, 46, 50, 51, 55, 57, 65, 75, 76, 83, 85, 88, 93–96, 140 Reputation, 27, 32, 36, 37, 38, 69 Reserved in work place, 17, 159 Resilience, 57, 91, 97, 143, 147–148, 151–153 Responsibility level, Asian Americans with high, 25 Results delivery, 17, 32, 36–37, 49–50, 62, 159, 173, 174 Rewarding the whole approach, 5, 21, 34, 36 Rewards, 28, 30 Role Models, 19–20, 175 Route 128 area of the East Coast, 38 Satisfaction, 9, 10, 17, 36, 173 Saxenian, Anna Lee, 38 Self-promoting, 17–19, 29, 36 Senge, Peter, 99, 124 Senior level positions, 3, 5, 23, 25, 38, 62, 76, 103, 109, 118, 137 Sensemaking, 43–44 Shared Leadership. See Leadership Showmanship, 1–4, 17, 23, 30, 32–34, 61–66, 74, 79, 83 Silicon Valley, 38–39, 127, 157, 158, 163 Social acceptance, 15 Social capital, 7, 18, 22–23, 43, 81–92, 135 Social intelligence, 43, 57 Social networks, 18, 82, 88, 173 Social skills, 17, 18, 22, 161, 174
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Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 139 South Asian Diaspora, 154 Speaking up. See Voicing Opinions Standing behind, 35 Stanford Business School, 65 Star leadership. See Leadership Stereotypes, 11, 14, 44, 82–83, 124, 126 Strategies, 1, 53, 58, 130, 132, 158, 161, 166–167 Strengths and talents, leaders building team members, 27 Struggles. See Challenges Success, Career, 18–19 Success factors, 26, 28, 45, 76, 175 Supervisors, 11, 12, 14, 15, 19, 20, 33, 55, 85 Support, 2–6, 11, 14, 17, 33–34, 36, 37, 41, 56, 67, 80, 91 Support structure. See Support Sustainability, 2, 27, 57, 67 Systems Thinking, 124, 170 Takaki, Ronald, 133, 144, 145 Talent, 2, 5, 23, 27–28, 34, 46–47, 56, 62–66, 71, 88–90, 153, 157, 158, 166, 167 Tata Group, 57–58 Team building, 26–27, 34–36 Teamwork, 13, 21, 22, 34, 45, 56, 75, 164, 174 Technical ability, 18–19, 57, 81–82, 174 Third World Strikes, 146 Unfair treatment, 12–13, 16, 173 United Kingdom, 42, 78, 118–133, 143, 153–156 United States, 3, 5, 26, 42, 44, 46–49, 51–53, 59, 68–69, 73, 77–78, 87, 90, 101–106, 115–118, 122, 125–128, 132–148, 151
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INDEX
Values, 13–14, 21, 26, 29, 34, 36–38, 42–43, 45, 48, 55–57, 62–78, 158, 163, 174 Vertovec, Steven, 139–140 Vietnamese, 9, 104, 105, 138, 146, 153 Virtual Work, 50 Visibility, being visible, 1, 17–19, 22–23, 27, 31, 32, 36, 37, 45, 50, 71, 98 Voicing Opinions, 12–13, 16–17, 28, 29, 37, 62 Volunteering, 37, 64 Wall Street Journal, 101, 111 Weick, Karl, 43
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Western countries, 3, 5, 6, 26, 46, 59, 80–81, 90, 123, 125, 132, 134, 153, 156 White American, 49–51, 81, 86–87, 105, 109, 125, 129, 131–132, 142 Women, 11, 20, 45, 48, 63, 66, 68, 70–72, 101, 111–113, 116–119, 121 Wooley, Anita, 2 Work Environment, 2, 5, 8, 7, 12–15, 21, 22, 26, 28, 34, 43, 44, 45, 61, 62, 78, 80, 82, 85, 86, 174 Work Ethic, 13–14, 17–18, 30, 174 Work Quality, 14, 17, 36, 37 World War II, 134, 145–146, 151, 154 Zappos, 6, 62–65, 72–76
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