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dnautics ◴[] No.22975063[source]
Not Harvard, but (being Asian American) this sort of soft characterization as being deficient in personality metrics rings true in my head.

For starters, my father in his full time government job repeatedly got "no leadership potential" reviews. Meanwhile in his part time job with the US Navy, he advanced to the level of captain and in his final act for the Navy led a team that completed its first fully digitized inventory system, saving the Navy billions of dollars, and delivered it under budget and ahead of time. (Fwiw he was non-technical, just "good at making things happen for nerds", his words not mine)

In my personal life, I've encountered several situations where people have expressed to me explicitly or implicitly they didn't consider me to be leader-worthy despite my having successfully managed small teams several times in my career.

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woofie11 ◴[] No.22975163[source]
Cultural differences are big here too.

Asian American culture leads to personalities which are not considered leadership-worthy in WASP culture. You're not alone there. The same is true for people from most cultures -- African immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, and most other types of immigrants behave in ways which are too foreign.

It's not universal -- there are individuals who manage to culturally adapt. But they're a minority, and it's an uphill battle.

Actual performance tends to be excellent, but that's not how leaders get chosen in most organizations. Leadership decisions are almost entirely about perception: Do your employees like you and relate well to you? Your superiors? That has a huge cultural component, and a lot of room for racism.

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asiachick ◴[] No.22976860[source]
What cultural differences are these? We're talking about Americans not foreigners.

All my Asian American friends are just Americans. If you talked talked to them on the phone you wouldn't be able to tell them apart from any other American.

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1. woofie11 ◴[] No.22977058{3}[source]
Cultural traits persist longer than accents. Not forever (if you wait many generation), but longer (often a few generations). If you talked to me or my sibling on the phone, you wouldn't be able to tell I wasn't any other American. On the other hand, many of our personality traits are reflective of the culture our parents were born in.

Growing up, I always thought those were places where I was socially awkward and didn't fit in. It wasn't until I did a deep dive into cultures and started managing international teams that I saw that these lined up completely with the culture my roots come from.

I can't talk about specific differences since how people from India differ is not the same as how people from Tanzania differ. A good survey for general differences is Hofstede's writing.

In addition, there are major differences in communication styles. I will mention a few major ones:

1) How positive one is. Americans always smile. They're always doing "well," "fantastic," or similar. Eggs start at medium, and go up from there. That's not true of most of the world.

2) When and how much one shows emotions or talks about personal details in professional settings. Immigrants from cultures who show them less (e.g. Japan) seem emotionally stilted. People from ones who do this more (including many African American communities -- you can't get more American than that) seem unprofessional.

3) China: Emojis / "cute pictures / etc. in professional communication.

4) When one disagrees (and especially across hierarchies), how, and especially how much confidence one shows. This is a gender difference too.

5) Sense of humor (what's funny -- watch foreign films and see where people laugh)

Most people have no problem getting over the big stuff (e.g. Middle Eastern gender relationships), but it's the subtle stuff that puts one in an uncanny valley. There's an almost fractal expansion of nuance in subtle ways language differs, what's appropriate, etc. That's really tough to manage unless both sides are expert in it.

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2. coffeeling ◴[] No.22987921[source]
> 1) How positive one is. Americans always smile. They're always doing "well," "fantastic," or similar. Eggs start at medium, and go up from there. That's not true of most of the world.

Whenever our American boss comes to visit this side of the pond, this drives me so nuts. Like, if things suck, just say so ffs. We royally fucked something up? We've had challenges. Some new thing is good but not mindblowingly amazing? Excellent.

Your language has a range of expression, please use it :'D

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3. woofie11 ◴[] No.22989300[source]
Americans do use a range of language too:

[okay, not bad, decent, awesome, fantabulous]

Depending on where you are, that might maps onto:

[horrible, passable, average, good, excellent]

In a management setting, those communications are sometimes obvious, but just as often you get into dynamics like:

* American managed by non-American: Constantly feeling criticized, like they're failing.

* Non-American managed by American: Often, not realizing when something went wrong.

Both sides need to be aware of the difference for this to work. It's a fair learning curve, but well worth it.

4. dnautics ◴[] No.22989710[source]
>Whenever our American boss comes to visit this side of the pond, this drives me so nuts. Like, if things suck, just say so ffs. We royally fucked something up? We've had challenges. Some new thing is good but not mindblowingly amazing? Excellent.

> Your language has a range of expression, please use it :'D

It's a bit of a stereotype, but be glad you don't have an anglophone boss from your side of the pond.