How Asian American Women Claim Their Leadership | Tutti Taygerly | TEDxRutgersCamden

Back in 1993, at the age of 16, I came to California as a first-generation immigrant to attend school at Stanford University. It was known to be a banana, yellow on the outside, white on the inside. I wanted to get away from my Thai Chinese heritage and my life in Asia and become someone completely different. He wanted to be white as he rose through the ranks in Silicon Valley. I emulated this traditional command and control

leadership

style by putting on this armor of inspired passion and supreme confidence that I would always know how to solve the problem. I didn't want to consider the intersectionality of race and gender and how it was truly central to my

leadership

.

I didn't want to be someone else. I didn't want to face the stereotypes stereotype a good worker bees bad leaders Asian Americans make up 57% of the tech workforce, but they are severely underrepresented in top leadership positions. Asian

women

have a double bind of race and gender, and according to US employment data, they, along with black

women

, are the least likely to be promoted to top positions. a double glass ceiling reinforced with rigid bamboo bars In my research interviews I spoke with many women who described others as hardworking but not creative enough strategic or outspoken enough to be appointed managers and some parts of the stereotypes exist because they are certain.

I spoke to 27 women from 16 countries and when asked about values, 100 of them said they worked hard. Many of us are familiar with the immigrant mentality of quietly toiling away to get the job done. There is a Japanese who says that the nail that sticks out gets nailed. Asian stereotype 2. Americans already have the privilege of being the model minority. It is a cultural expectation placed on this group of immigrants that each of us be intelligent, hard-working, and obedient. There is a pressure to live up to this stereotype. This could be born from the Asian cultural value of education.

Seventy percent of Asian Americans have a college degree compared to 38 percent of the general population, but a model minority is still a minority. Asian Americans are people of color who are considered more privileged than Black or Indigenous Latina women, but in other cases they appear on the list. in the smallest of ways in the safety of a corporate workplace when someone says oh you're English, it's so good and it shows up more broadly outside of this bubble when we live in fear that our parents or we might being attacked randomly in the streets with the recent rise in anti-Asian violence, while some stereotypes may be true, we can choose to move beyond them I spent 22 years in the corporate world as a design leader.

I am now in my second career as an executive coach for women of color. and immigrants I am here to tell you that we can move beyond our model minority status and step toward integrated leadership that honors our lineage values ​​and modern workplaces. This message is not just for Asian women. I'm going to share three universal strategies. on how to lead when you feel like an other in the corporate world strategy a move from humility to advocacy I spent many years when I worked at a large technology company having professional conversations with Asian women on my team.

I noticed that some of them seemed perplexed. When I asked them about

their

career aspirations for the next three years, one woman explained it to me this way. I was raised to think about the general well-being of the entire group. It seems selfish to think about myself and my career aspirations that my parents never wanted. I find that many Asian women, especially early in

their

careers, do the work, work hard, and say yes to whatever task the boss gives them. This behavior is supposed to get you noticed, recognized, and rewarded. It's what worked at school. Remember that we.

We are highly educated, it's what we were taught, none of us wanted to be that nail that gets hammered, but unfortunately that's not how corporate America works, as evidenced by the depressing number of Asian American women in top positions, this is what you should do about it, he begins. stand up for what you want this is the advice I gave to the Asian women on my team and that I give to some of my coaching clients first understand what parts of your job satisfy you now think about your last work week and consider what activities you enjoy dan Do you gain energy and put yourself in a state of flow?

Do you get energy from writing code, crafting a pitch story, or perhaps researching legal briefs? Do you gain energy from collaborating with certain types of people? Consider these hours you spend at work and consider which of these energize you and charge your batteries then start advocating for more of these energizing activities have a conversation with your boss and tell him about the work you do best, set and boundaries, let's play with some experiments and say no to work that exhausts you strategy two find your people when you are part of the minority at work it is natural to feel impostor syndrome and wonder if you really belong here what helps is to find two groups of people who help you the first is your allies this is where you look for similar people For you, I recently spoke with a Chinese-American venture capitalist who founded the global Women in Venture fund within this group of CEOs and co-founders.

These women were used to standing out as entrepreneurs. They build their careers on being unique to stand out. Being different, it's the path of a lone warrior, but when they finally found themselves in a room with other women like them within this global community of women at Venture, there's a feeling of ah, this is nice, letting go of that soft side, that ability to put them aside. boxing gloves for just a minute that's the feeling of finding your tribe and feeling like you belong the second group of people are your allies this is where you look for people different from you because of diversity of thought I spoke to a Thai engineering leader about mentoring she found the most confident white guy she knew and asked him to be her mentor because it's mind-blowing how differently they think at the end of the mentoring.

She realized that I never want to lead like that, but by working with him she learned how to lead without Fooling Who I Am It gives me goosebumps, right, some women do this by creating a personal board of directors by assembling a group of diverse advisors to surround themselves. from different perspectives, so finding your people is about finding allies who are similar to you and finding no, finding your tribe. who is similar to you and finding allies who are different than you is important and this message is not just for Asian women, it is for anyone who wants to be a better leader strategy three affirm your differences make these values ​​your strengths by listening to this talk It may seem that lineage values ​​could be holding some Asian women back; being a quiet leader who listens first or thinks communally can be a weakness in a corporate workplace;

However, the strongest Heritage recovery is to take these perceived weaknesses and

claim

them as strengths. clients Soraya is a first generation Indian American, she was raised with a lot of respect for her elders and that translates into listening a lot. Syria had a great product organization and was known for her consensus building and her ability to get all these tremendously opinionated stakeholders on the same page no one else led like her she was the only one capable of completing the largest and most complicated professional project in her company her consensus building and empathy were her superpowers many Asian women don't feel like we fit into the standard American corporate leadership styles, where having the loudest voice, not being afraid to interrupt others is celebrated. and become effortlessly brilliant with a response on your feet that usually does not correspond to Asian cultural values, but like Soraya, what we consider a weakness is actually our greatest source of strength.

You may not be a silent leader like Soraya. I certainly wasn't as a creative director at world-class design firms. I put on this bravery, this armor of performance and experience. I did it because that's how everyone else is. male creative directors around me LED, but it wasn't good enough that this style of leadership came from a woman of color, a lot of clients felt bad about it, but the most important thing was my armor, it wasn't me, it wasn't until years later when I felt comfortable enough to soften into a leadership style of sincerity and compassion that my career skyrocketed.

I needed to tap into my Thai self with the soft laugh and genuinely caring smile of a culture that

claim

s to keep a calm heart while being fiercely direct and claiming your differences. It's about looking at the values ​​from when you grew up that might have been discarded amid corporate culture. It is about making your otherness your strength. We have talked about moving from humility to defense, finding your people and making your otherness your strength. I spent many years. downplay my race, remember that banana and then fight for feminism. I have now learned that my idea, my leadership needs to incorporate all aspects of my identity and also the system we live in because we live in a system of unconscious bias where well-meaning strangers will ask me where you are really from if San Francisco is not an answer acceptable or if a woman's traits are called aggressive when those same traits are called assertive in a man or if there is a belief that Asian women should be submissive and docile.

Three strategies apply to all who identify as other. You see, we are all in this system together and we can dismantle the stereotypes they see of us. We can be hardworking and frank. We can be quiet leaders and advocate for ourselves and our teams. We can embrace our built-in leadership that honors our lineage and succeed in workplaces that weren't built with us in mind. This is how we claim our leadership as another thank you.