In Search of Asian-American Leadership

In the Sept 2010 issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, Professor Thomas Sy of University of California at Riverside and his collaborators published an insightful research article: Leadership perceptions as a function of race–occupation fit: The case of Asian Americans.  It has generated considerable interests in press, see e.g., the UC Riverside Feb 16 news article ‘Model Minority’ Not Perceived as Model Leader and other coverage.  There have been few academic research papers on Asian-American leadership; the work reported is a valuable addition to the topic since “it is not reality but perception that counts”.  Moreover, aided with confirmation bias, perception and reality do feed and shape each other. 

There have been numerous ad-hoc statistics and anecdotal stories that support the existence of “bamboo ceiling” confronting many Asian-Americans in U.S. for decades. Through carefully designed controlled-experiments and rigorous analysis, Professor Sy and his collaborators provide strong scientific evidences that 1)leadership perception is higher for Caucasian Americans than for Asian Americans, and 2)technical competence perception is higher (lower) for Asian American engineers (salesperson, respectively).  Further, the work offers detailed analysis and understanding in how race and occupation together influence leadership perception.  

As a first generation Chinese-American immigrant who has gone through the ranks in my professional career from entry-level technical staff to a mid-level manager, as a skeptics of quota solution during Affirmative Action era, as a friend who has seen the rise and glass-ceiling effect of co-workers, as a mentor who has shared the joy and frustration of the advancements (or lack of) by some, as a parent who has been watching his children progress on their career, many times I have been wondering and pondering over this issue again and again. To name just a few of them: Can leadership be acquired?  How much of it is by nature or nurture? Why and how do race and gender play a role? What role does culture play?  How important is assimilation?  How important is the communications especially the verbal and linguistic skill?  How much and how fast can one overcome or get around the obstacles?

Let us digress a bit.  What is leadership anyway, a word that we come across multiple times every day.  Beyond dictionaries, a quick and good place to start for a broader introduction and discussion is the Wikipedia entry that begins with a pretty good definition: “leadership is a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a task.”  Note that in this definition, there is no mentioning of structure, title, organization, authority.  It emphasizes the fact that leadership a process of creation that can be done by individuals without being granted the role by others explicitly.  There is also no qualification for the task involved being political, or business, or religious.  In fact, there is no suggestion that the task itself is a short-fused or a life-long endeavor.   Neo-emergent leadership theory (from the Oxford school of leadership) had gone further and suggested that leadership is created through information that does not necessarily reflect the true actions or the quality of the leadership.  It may sound cynical but I am sure you can name quite a few examples supporting the statement from areas like merchandizing and politics.

In reality, formal title and role is often used as a surrogate for leadership especially in hierarchical organizations,  although being a higher level manager does not necessarily suggest meritorious leadership and vice versa.  With these surrogates, statistics collected by various organizations have shown consistently that there is still a widely spread and significant under-representation of Asian-Americans in senior leadership positions in U.S. across sectors from education to business.  Instead of sitting there and blaming it on external factors, or taking refuge in segregated Asian-American communities,  the most important and relevant question for all Asian-Americans is why and how can one close the gap effectively.

One place to start is to understand the basics.  Leadership theory and teachings are not new.  For one, there have been keen observations of leadership from the moment human beings engaged in social activities.  Some have traced back and pointed to writings of great men like Plato and Sun Tze 孫子 in Republic, and Art of War, respectively, 2500 years ago.  As the tools and understandings get further developed, researches in recent centuries had come up with numerous theories such as Trait theory, Behavioral and Style Theories, Situation and Contingency Theories, and so on.  In a part of Professor Sy’s investigation, he adopted the six key attributes of Implicit Leadership Theory.   They are: intelligence, dedication, tyranny, dynamism, masculinity, and sensitivity.  Note that intelligence and dedication are considered competent leader prototypes and tyranny, dynamism, masculinity are considered Agentic leader prototypes.   Professor Sy points out that Asian-Americans tend to be perceived high on the competent leadership but not on Agentic ones.  Clearly being competent alone is not sufficient to become a leader in competitive environment. 

Another place to look is other “model minorities”.   What immediately come to my mind is the Jewish Americans who have been often compared against Chinese-Americans for their achievements and competence.   Jewish-Americans account for approximately 2+% of the U.S. population but they represented almost 8% of the corporate boards.   In addition they have disproportional share of honors and recognitions in science, music and arts (e.g., according to Wikipedia, of American Nobel Prize winners, 37 percent have been Jewish Americans which is19 times the percentage of Jews in the population. Of the John Bates Clark Medal winners, 71 percent have been Jewish Americans which is 35 times the Jewish in population).  In comparison, Asian-Americans are about 5% of U.S. population but represented only about 1.5% of the corporate board.  One may note that Jewish-Americans were not exempted from systematic discriminations.  One may also point to the obvious time-lag that the major wave of immigrations of Jewish-Americans began at late 19^th century which is 2-3 generations ahead of the major waves of Chinese-Americans immigration.  The question and the concern remains however if the rate of assimilation of Asian-Americans is reasonable and if the stereotyped Jewish-Americans’ behavior of being pushy, aggressive, outspoken are advantageous in the score of agentic leadership.  Don’t forget that the negative stereotypical traits of Asian-Americans include submissive, quiet, poor language skills, introvert, etc., and often seen as under-delivering on their potential influences with their perceived superior technical competence.

I don’t believe there is a silver bullet for the perception gap.  But it seems intuitively obvious that perception can be changed if however small attention and effort is made by enough people for sustained period.  Yes, it helps by making people more aware of the bias and be sensitive to it but that is not sufficient.  Better yet, one can simply act on improving one’s weak points individually that will no doubtedly bring satisfaction and rewards to him/herself, while contributing to the positive perception for the community.  It could be challenging but is easier than you think.  Just remember, practice makes perfect and mastery.  Just bear in mind that natural talent and smarts are over-rated in competitive environment; I don’t know of any successful leaders who did not work very hard for what they are passionate about.

In one of the interviews, Professor Sy skipped all the theory and technical terms, and boiled down his insights for us in this way: “The stereotype in the workforce is that Asian Americans are great workers, not great leaders.  In the Western world, the ideal leadership prototype is charismatic.  Asians are perceived as competent, intelligent and dedicated, but lack the perception of charisma needed to be viewed as strong leaders.”  The good news is charisma can be improved.  Now we understand more about the illusive leadership, let us work on it to be what you want and can be.

Talk to you soon!

All Eyes on Egypt

Hosni Mubarak, the “President for Life” of Egypt, finally yielded and resigned on Feb 11^th, the 18th day after the first mass protest that called for his ousting at Tahrir (Liberation) square in Cairo on Jan 25^th.  Word like cosmic and historical have been used by the journalists and commentators to describe the event, considering the size and strategic importance of Egypt in Islamic and the Middle East geopolitical plays.   So much coverage by the press has been reported across the world daily for the last 2+ weeks that requires no repetition.  I do however like to highlight a few what I thought were unique aspects of this mostly non-violent revolution and made some observations as Egyptians began to search for and shape their path to the future.

It is the first time in history that Internet based social network services like Facebook and Twitter were used in organizing and mobilizing protesters from bottom up dynamically.  Wael Ghonim, the 30-year-old Egyptian marketing manager of Google Inc. was credited for starting the Facebook page “We Are All Khaled Said” under the assumed name “El Shaheeed,” (meaning the martyr in Arabic) that called for and sparked the first protest on Jan. 25.  It took less than 8 months to gather sufficient energy and momentum: that Facebook page was set up within 5 days of the suspicious death of Khaled Said on June 6^th last year, an 28 years old Egyptian blogger (see Jennifer Preston’s Feb 5th New York Times article) who was beaten to death by two policemen.  With more than half a million people signed up, it is the biggest dissident Facebook page in Egypt.  Egyptian government made Wael Ghonim disappeared on Jan 28^th.  Fortunately he was not physically harmed and was released 12 days later.

With the distributed, decentralized and self-reconfiguring architecture of Internet, with the applications like YouTube and social networks, and with technologies like cell phones and smart phones equipped with camera, dictators no longer have monopoly over information dissemination and “truth”.   State sponsored and orchestrated propaganda through radio, printed press and TV networks is no longer the tool the authoritarian governments can depend on to fool their people.  When Mubarak and his men tried the oldest isolation trick on the protesters by shutting down Internet and mobile services, the assault could not continue as Egyptian’s every day economic activity came to a halt without these ubiquitous infrastructures.  

You may wonder then the social-economy status of Egypt when you saw the scene that some pro-Mubarak people on camels and horses charging against the anti-Mubarak demonstrators with cell phones at one point during the revolution.   With 80 million people, Egypt is the most populous country in Middle East and the second most populous in Africa with almost all of them concentrated in few areas along the banks of Nile and Suez Canal.   For the last several decades, Egypt has had a high population growth rate (2.0+%) and has been adding more than 1.5 million people per year recently to its population.  As a result, about 50% of its population are under age 25.  While the commitment to education is strong (free public education through university) with over half million students enrolled in colleges and universities, Egypt’s 70% literacy rate is much less than desired.  It does have bright spots in recent years for economic development, but the population growth has outpaced its resources (especially water) and economic growth with a per capita GDP at $6,000+, ranked 103^rd in the world (according to IMF).  Over 40% of its people live in the range of extreme poor to near poor.  On top of it, a significant number of high school and college graduates are unemployed (estimated at around 25% for those under 25 years old) or under-employed and there is no hope in sight.  Doesn’t it sound like a prescription for social instability and revolution in waiting? 

As the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 enters the next phase when Mubarak stepped down and handed over the power to the 11 members Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, all eyes are now on the Egyptian military led by the 76 years old Mohamed Hussein Tantawi who has been the head of the Defense Ministry and Defense Production Ministry since 1991.  With nearly half a million active personnel, it is the 10^th largest military force in the world.  The guesstimate for the annual defense budget of Egypt ranges from $7 to $25 billion dollars including a steady $1.3 billion dollars aid from U.S.  The Egyptian military is an independent entity that reports directly to the President.  Throughout the 59 years of the Republic since the Revolution of 1952 by a group of young army officers, Egypt had effectively only three rulers, all from Egyptian military:  Nasser (14 years), Sadat (11 years, assassinated), and Mubarak (1981 – 2011). 

What is more intriguing and less known is the significant role and influence that the Egyptian Military has in Egyptian business world.  The reality is that Egyptian economy has been following the state-dominated model with 70% of the workforce outside of agriculture sector work for the government!  The Egyptian military in fact controls not only security and the defense industry, it is also heavily engaged in civilian businesses including consumer staples, road and housing construction, owns land and involved in resort management, starting with the construction of the Aswan High Dam back in 1960.  According to the Feb 9th Time Magazine article by Ken Stier, Egyptian military business empire may account for 10% to 15% of Egypt's $210 billion economy!  

As the most powerful institution from the rest of the government with a vested interest, the Egyptian military has served as the critically needed stabilizing force in the autocratic government.  It enjoys the popular nationalistic support and has managed to keep the respect of the people by staying behind the scene and positioning itself successfully as nation’s neutral guardian.  When the scenes of the friendly interaction between the protesters and the Army were shown on news media, one can’t help but to contrast it with the image of Tank Man in Beijing during the suppression of the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 by the Communist China.  It could have ended in tragedy should the military choose to side with Mubarak.  

Despite all that, it is questionable that if the military can meet the younger Egyptian’s zeal for reform and for more and faster changes.  For one, changing status-quo is hard; the older generals are not likely to be able to deliver satisfactory result in short time, even if they are willing, given the fundamental issues above and their self-interest in maintaining status-quo.  The first test will be the September election.  It remains to be seen how will the Egyptian military address the revision of the Constitution and the transparency of the process.  Only in last Sept, a New York Times article reported that it has put eight striking employees of a military factory on trial in a military court for “disclosing military secrets” and “illegally stopping production.”   Even a bigger challenge and the next test will be if and when a civilian controlled military, a necessary condition for democracy, would take place.

All in all, the Egyptians people should be proud of what they have accomplished in this short 18 days.  They have been an inspiration for many suppressed people in the rest of the world and the peaceful revolution serves as a loud warning to all corrupted and dysfunctional authoritarian regimes.  Hosni Mubarak is not the first one nor will he be the last one who tries so hard to hang onto his/her position and to hold onto their power.   The truth is if you sit back and reflect for a moment, you would find such behavior familiar in public and private sector, and in large and small organization.   “When and how to let it go” is actually a very important but often overlooked question; something for us to ponder. In the mean time, as the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 moves forward, I wish the Egyptian people succeed in managing their future and making a better life.

Talk to you soon!