Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Career Strategies for Asians

An Asian American child grows up listening to Asian proverbs: "the loudest duck gets shot," and the "nail that sticks up gets hammered down." A Euro-American child grow up listening to Western maxims: "the squeaking wheel gets the grease," and "you have to learn to toot your own horn." Now when these kids graduate into the workplace, which one is going to be more comfortable speaking up at an important meeting? Addressing a Young Professionals Forum, Jane Hyun, executive coach and author of the recently released book Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Career Strategies for Asians, drew these contrasts to highlight the cultural underpinnings of the prejudice Asian Americans face in the corporate world. But she went on to argue that the bigger barrier for Asian Americans is the challenge of reconciling their deeply felt cultural values with the tasks required for career success. The key to that success lays in developing what Hyun calls "critical competencies" and "cultural fluency." That means, for example, understanding that modesty and deference are cultural convictions and then making an occasional effort to toot your own horn in spite of them. Adapting to the workplace while retaining one's cultural identity isn't necessarily easy, but it is possible. "I've always felt I have led a bicultural existence in which I have been breaking new ground," Hyun told the audience, "even in the workplace I don't feel I've lost my cultural values, but I feel instead that I've developed new skills."