In this book excerpt from Jane Hyun’s Leadership Toolkit for Asians, the author candidly reflects on the challenges of having dual identities and cultural expectations when pursuing leadership positions in corporate America. Rather than shying away from discussing stereotypes and biases about Asian leadership, Jane wrote a book about it. Yesterday, her book released, and today she’s here with an excerpt from it.
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Growing Up Asian in America: Book excerpt from Leadership Toolkit for Asians
This excerpt is from Jane Hyun’s Leadership Toolkit for Asians: The Definitive Resource Guide for Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling. Reprinted with permission from Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Growing up Asian in America, I have experienced the daily conflict of having one foot in two very different worlds. I’ve grappled with how our cultural values are sometimes at odds with the dominant workplace culture. Even if you haven’t directly experienced this challenge, you’ve wondered why others often have preconceived notions about your leadership capability. It has become the norm to try to figure out the mysterious path to get ahead in your company with few resources or a trusted guide to coach you. If this sounds like you, you’re not alone.
In fact, Asian Americans are the least likely of any group to be promoted in corporate America. Asians make up 13 percent of the professional workforce, but only 3 percent of Fortune 500 corporate officers. The barriers holding us back are a complex set of social, cultural, and organizational issues without an easy solution. It’s something I wrote about in my 2005 book, Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Career Strategies for Asians, where I sought to challenge companies to proactively lead their talent with a truly multicultural lens and not a one-size-fits-all approach.
Though I eventually learned to speak up and share my opinions as freely as my classmates did, there was still a voice inside my head screaming “Yeolsimhee!” (loosely translated to “work very hard) in the face of authority figures. When I started working full-time, I recognized that there were unwritten rules that were clearly unknown to me, and I found that I didn’t have access to the same resources that others had. There were a few minority development programs that provided access to insiders at prestigious organizations; however, most of these opportunities were not available to Asian American graduates entering the workplace.
Having dual messages drilled into my head from a young age was often confusing. And that confusion carried into my professional working life. Throughout different projects in those early years, I would receive occasional feedback about needing to be more vocal with my opinions, and I was often encouraged to speak up. Whether I was demonstrating it or not, I was keenly aware that Asian women were stereotyped as passive and quiet (these portrayals were reinforced daily in the media, if Asian women were depicted at all), and so I made a conscious effort in work settings to counteract that perception by voicing my opinions whenever I could.
A breakthrough moment came during an early performance review in my mid-twenties, when I was up for promotion to VP. An internal client who had neglected—despite my repeated requests—to provide essential data that I’d needed to complete my year-end report submitted a client review saying I was “too aggressive” in my approach. I was livid! I walked into his office and confronted him about it: “I have been living with the passive Asian female stereotype and everyone’s biases toward me for years, and the feedback has been crystal clear: to speak up more, not less. I’m always operating under that narrative. Plus, your numbers were the only data point that was holding us up. Now you’re telling me that I’m too aggressive?”
He backed off. He also apologized to my boss for his choice of words and said that the implication wasn’t that I was doing a poor job, but that I was going after what I needed in a strong way. I got the promotion. However, that experience of having to defend my leadership capability made me realize how pervasive assumptions can be, and how much that was affecting both the way I acted in the workplace as well as other people’s perceptions of me. I started to see patterns where I had been underestimated because of what I look like. I’ve also felt the frustration that comes from not having the right support or a clear path forward when it comes to advancing your career even after you’ve “proven yourself.” Those feelings, along with those of the thousands of Asian professionals whom I’ve had the joy of coaching over the years, were the impetus that drove me to continue this work.
I’ve come to realize that we are not going to be most effective when we emulate the “white male executive” approach to leadership over the long term, and I have learned, through trial and error and lots of feedback from trusted advisors, to create my own approach for working with and influencing others.
If you’re starting out in your career, you might just be beginning to connect the dots with your identity and how others perceive your leadership effectiveness. It is important that we assess ourselves, delve deeper into our experience (even if some parts may be painful), and decide for ourselves how we want to work with others. By choosing to do the work, you’re one step closer to becoming the most authentic leader you can be.
About author Jane Hyun
Often called an interpreter, Jane Hyun is a global leadership strategist and trusted coach to Fortune 500 companies. She is an internationally recognized expert in cross-cultural effectiveness, inclusion, and talent onboarding. Jane believes that people’s behaviors in work and life are guided by many unseen factors, which include culture, values, faith, and other elements that need to be better understood by our organizations.
She has keynoted in over 14 cities across 4 continents (including Munich, Bangkok, Seoul, Shanghai, London), and her Bamboo Ceiling® Breakthrough Leadership workshops have helped hundreds craft their bespoke leadership journeys. She is the author of the book, Leadership Toolkit for Asians, Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling and co-author of Flex.
What do you see as a way to promote inclusivity in workplaces? Have you encountered biases related to your cultural background on the job? If so, how did you cope?
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