Part 7 of 8 of a weekly series entitled, The Bamboo
Ceiling: Managing Chinese Employees Beyond Stereotype
By William R. Dodson
“Stupid. You’re
stupid!” my Chinese friend accused me. I hadn’t felt I deserved that sort of
abuse. I had negotiated a transaction in Chinese language and thought I’d
gotten a pretty good deal. My friend persisted in calling me “stupid,” since I
could have received the goods for a tenth the price in Beijing. I was near
hanging up the phone on my friend in exasperation. The friend, confused,
shouted, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I think I’ve made a mistake! In Chinese
we say “shah” to close friends. It means foolish, stupid. I think I used
the wrong English word.” I immediately cooled down once I understood the
cultural and linguistic barrier that had blocked our communication – and
friendship.
One of the reasons Chinese resort to silence in Western companies is the
fear of giving offence. A gaffe of language or culture is a tremendous loss of
Face for the Chinese speaker and – the Chinese feels – for the Western
listener. As we discussed in another part of The Bamboo Ceiling Series, Face is
sometimes more important than money to a Chinese. Chinese will go to great
lengths to protect the Face of others and to preserve his or her own as much as
possible.
The Chinese owner of an accountancy
in America knew one of her Chinese employees wanted to work for an American
company with American managers. The owner advised the employee that she should
“master at least the most basic business vocabulary: words like file, folder,
and staples” before she works for American managers. “Americans will think
you’re stupid,” the owner continued, “if you can’t say these basic things. Or,
if you must be given direction or instruction more than a couple times because
of language, then Americans will also think you’re stupid.” (I knew she didn’t
mean the shah kind of stupid).
“The secret then,” the accountancy
owner counseled the Chinese employee, “is to learn your job the best you can,
do the best job you can, speak the least you can; then leave the company with
the knowledge.”
Western managers base a substantial
portion of performance reviews, salaries and bonuses on the degree to which
they perceive an employee is visibly, vocally struggling to overcome the
challenges of the business. Chinese employees compensation suffers as a result
of simply not knowing how to present themselves to employers. The Chinese bank
employee explained, “If a Western manager asks a Western employee to do
something new, the Westerner will likely answer, ‘No problem,’ and begin work
on the issue immediately. A Chinese employee will likely say, ‘I’ll try the
best; but I will need some practice,’” which is considered an admirable
response of modesty in Chinese society. This sounds like an inadequate response
of disinterest to a Western manager, who expects %110 employee investment at
all times.
The Western manager’s view of the
Chinese employee is further dimmed by the lack of conversation or banter the
Chinese makes with the manager. Friendly banter about sports or the family or
the household renovation are important to Western managers, who gauge the
degree to which an employee fits into the group in this way. “But if I see the
President is busy, how do I bother him? And if he’s not, what do I say? I don’t
know his culture. Of course, in China [in a Chinese company] I talked all the
time,” the Chinese bank worker explained.
Essentially, Western managers will never be able to empathize with the barriers Chinese employees perceive in Western companies until the managers try to learn about and operate in Chinese modes of perception and communication. When Western managers take even fifteen minutes a day to engage their Chinese staff on some aspect of Chinese culture or language, they will find a garrulous and appreciative staff that will do whatever is required to make the business – and the manager – successful.
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.