Part 8 of 8 of a weekly series entitled, The Bamboo
Ceiling: Managing Chinese Employees Beyond Stereotype
By William R. Dodson
17 May 2002
The author recalls mentioning to the account manager of a consultancy that he had spent the weekend with some Chinese friends. Immediately the manager, an American woman, said, “Chinese … very industrious!” without reflection, without depth. She knew where in her world order to place Chinese. I was too surprised at the whitewashing to respond.
Probably the most damning stereotype Westerners at large hold about Chinese is that they – as part of the Asian “race” – are a model minority. The thinking goes that Chinese are a model to hold up to the civilized world because they are so hard working, so earnest, and do not protest injustice. Eric Liu, an American of Taiwanese descent, writes in his book The Accidental Asian, “The Asian Way holds that Asians, unlike non-Asians, prefer order to freedom; that Asians can suffer hardship better than non-Asians; that Asians are more disciplined and virtuous than non-Asians. All of which explains why Asians the world over seem to be doing so exceptionally well.”
Of course, the very concept of a model minority has ramifications for the majority culture in which a Chinese works as well as for other minority groups. One of the ramifications is that the idealization of a group of people precludes knowing them and engaging them at an individual level. The pigeon-hole of Chinese-as-high-performer dehumanizes the vast majority of Chinese who are not caricatures of uninformed Western fantasies, and limits the ways in which the run-of-the-mill Chinese can contribute to organizations.
Liu writes on this point: “…the glorification of Asian Americans as the ‘model minority’ was fueled by the fear that (white) America was in decline, surpassed by ‘those amazing Asians’ who had flooded our markets and our schools. Today, America seems to be back on top, but the rise of China has some in our political class looking at Asian Americans and seeing suspicious characters.”
A Chinese IT manager explained to the author that Western managers have an expectancy of high performance from Chinese employees. Yet, simultaneously, the same managers find too-high a performance “distasteful”, “unwelcome” [sic]; since ultra-performance shows up the average Western staff in a bad light, the IT manager believed.
He continued, “the American manager is more comfortable praising whites than Chinese, to whom managers give smaller praise less frequently. Managers are afraid Chinese will get inflated egos that American managers would find difficult to manage. So, Chinese don’t get the same opportunities for visibility as others in the company. Chinese careers develop more slowly.”
Western managers can demoralize Chinese staff by applying double-standards that do not meet the expectations the company charters of most Western companies espouse. Saying a company is a meritocracy and then ignoring the merits of individuals that clearly created results above and beyond expectations is vindictive and destructive. Western managers need to genuinely extend the same spirit of engagement to Chinese as they do their Western staff. Once again, exercising even a modicum of curiosity about the background and interests of Chinese staff is enough to begin the dialogue. Humanizing individuals and learning and then justly applying and nurturing their abilities will help the company’s bottom line and enrich any manager’s professional life beyond measure.
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.