Part 2 of a weekly series entitled, The Bamboo Ceiling: Managing Chinese Employees Beyond Stereotype
By William R.
Dodson
“Chinese would die
before they would lose Face,” a Chinese language teacher once me.
“Face is everything for a Chinese – but especially for a Chinese man. At home, at
work, Face is the most important thing.” Face – or mianzi, in Chinese – is
the result of a millenia’s worth of refinement in China of the expression of
one’s pride and ability.
Scott Seligman in his book Chinese Business Etiquette: A Guide to Protocol, Manners, and Culture in the People’s Republic of China (Warner Books, 1999) describes how Chinese think of Face as “the regard in which they are held by others or the light in which they appear …”
Face can come from
any number of sources: the amount of money one has; one’s socio-economic
status; the number of children, the number of boys, the eldest child being a
son; the beauty of one’s wife; the number of degrees one after one’s name. Face
is a highly contextual construct: the source of a Chinese person’s Face may
have no relevance in another culture. For instance, the number of sons one has
does not carry much weight in Western societies; however, in China, especially
in the countryside where education levels are lower than on the coast, the
matter still carries great weight to this day.
Seligman outlines several ways in which it is very easy for a Chinese to “lose” Face: any sort of public humiliation the person suffers; receiving or giving a direct reply in the negative to a query; even the slightest appearance of ineptitude or ignorance an individual may show. In the West we’re familiar with losing face or saving face; but the Chinese go one better and also “give Face.” You can “give face” to someone by complimenting their actions to them or to others, especially in front of superiors.
During the
two years I taught English to Chinese and helped them with
work-related issues I had to be extremely conscious of when and to which
students I was conferring Face. At times, passive-aggressive behaviour would
surface in and outside the classroom when I had singled-out a student for
praise or to correct a mistake.
Face can also
impact staff professional development and adaptation to the work environment.
Learning new skills and approaches by nature requires an admission of inadequacy.
However, the admission flies in the face of hard-earned mianzi. A
university professor once described a situation in which the
students of a Chinese colleague of his absolutely despised the colleague’s
teaching style. A university review panel censured the Chinese professor for
his authoritarian approach to teaching, which squelched discussion and dialogue
in the classroom during the patronizing monologues. The Chinese professor
shrugged off the criticism, merely saying it was the Chinese way of teaching
and he couldn’t – wouldn’t -- change it.
Western managers
who work with Chinese employees need to be sure during reviews and training
that Face is taken into consideration. Loss of Face is more than mere
embarrassment. It can mean a fundamental shattering of what the Chinese
national holds nearest and dearest in his/her life. It can be a complete
deflation of their self-image. Managers need to communicate corrective measures
in private; indeed, managers should take the utmost pains to keep from the
grapevine any news that would humiliate a Chinese national in light of company
values. Chinese in general are always up to improving themselves; however,
Western managers must take into consideration that Chinese who have immigrated to
the West within the past five years or those who work for Western firms in
China are sensitive to being singled-out for the kind of criticism to which Westerners
are inured.
A loss of Face in
the company can easily translate into a Chinese employee’s loss of motivation
and reduction in productivity. It may even result in passive-aggressive behaviour
that would result in a loss of Face for the Western manager. That’s not to say
Western managers should treat a Chinese delicately. On the contrary, Chinese
employees expect to be treated directly; to do otherwise might be construed as
a loss of Face for the employee. However, managers should facilitate the
employee’s acculturation to social and corporate norms in such a way that the
staff member understands it’s in his best interest to drop the barriers to
communication and to productivity that maintaining Face can create.
The Chinese language teacher had
very strong feelings about the place of mianzi in her life. She told me,
“I don’t care about Face. I don’t learn anything new if I try to keep my
Face.” A personal philosophy from which
we can all learn.
William R. Dodson is Managing Director of Silk Road Advisors,
L.L.C., a management consultancy that develops and positions products and
people for success in international markets. He is the contributing editor on
international business to the American Management Association’s (AMA) MWorld Journal
of Management, and writes the weekly column “The Cultured Business”, found at www.silkrc.com. He is Managing Editor of The China Alert, a
publication of The United States-China Chamber of Commerce. He can be reached at sradvisors@gmail.com or +1 (847)722-7817.
Read other articles in this series at: The Cultured Business.
For further
reading on Face, check out:
Cross-cultural Business Negotiations, Hendon, Hendon and Herbig (Quorum Books, 1996)
"Cross-Cultural Face-Negotiation: An Analytical Overview", by Professor Stella Ting-Toomey, Presented on April 15, 1992.
Stella Ting-Toomey's Face-Negotiation Theory