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Stereotypes and stereotype threat in the workplace image

Stereotypes and stereotype threat in the workplace

S1 E5 ยท Hidden in Plain Sight: All Things Asian in the Workplace
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In this episode, we talk about typical stereotypes that manifest for Asians and Asian Americans in the workplace and how they can sometimes lead to stereotype threat. Tune in to hear about our experiences and some of the current research!

Haiku

Boxed mind weaves tails wild

Laughter breaks through biased walls

Truth smiles, stereotypes fall

Articles for Nerds

Stereotype Threat

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9174398/

HBR - Why Women Feel More Stress at Work

https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-women-feel-more-stress-at-work

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Transcript

Introduction to Hosts and Episode

00:00:09
Speaker
Welcome back, listeners, to another episode of Hidden in Plain Sight. I'm one of your hosts, Jill Quinn. I'm Echo. And I'm Johnny.

Exploring Asian Stereotypes in the Workplace

00:00:17
Speaker
Today, we're going to talk about stereotype threat and stereotypes of Asian and Asian Americans in the workplace. So if we're talking about Asian stereotypes, let's go ahead and list them off and we'll provide some links to listeners so you can see that all of this has been based on research, but we're also talking about experiences that we've had based on our own lives. So
00:00:38
Speaker
I'll start off, intelligent is one. Asians are smart. What else? Delegent. Submissive. Hard workers. Hardworking. Yeah. Good at math. Good at math, but not good at interpersonal skills. So not good at making connections, you know, small talk. Doug, I want to like, I want to go back to what you said, subservient or submissive. Yeah. Yeah.
00:01:08
Speaker
Not going to say no. Oh, yeah. Always going to say yes. Passive. Yeah. Pushover. Yeah. Not to be dominant. Non-dominant, not aggressive, kind of passive, good listener. Yeah. Young looking. Young. Yes. Young looking. Forever 21. I was actually prompted by an agent.
00:01:34
Speaker
the I didn't know this forever 21, the company, I think the founder was like an Asian person.

Stereotypes and Their Real-World Examples

00:01:39
Speaker
Oh, really? Yeah. But they I think I read an article last week saying they are taking Oh, they're almost like a taken down by Shane, which is another Chinese company. Like Shane is this brand that that is like super cheap,
00:01:56
Speaker
and sell like fast, kind of like a fast version of. Oh, like a faster version because forever 21 is fast fashion. Yeah. It's fast, fast, fast fashion. Okay. Um, cheap labor that we're on that topic. She all the same. So I don't really have to differentiate between my employees because they're all the same. They all look alike.
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah, if I can go back to the cheap labor, I think that goes back to the coolies, the term coolies, and it's actually a pejorative term that's actually used for a lot of different groups of people of color who've historically come to the US to work as cheap labor. And I think there's an underlying aspect of that that indicates that they're also a menace to Western society as well, too.
00:02:46
Speaker
All right. So that's kind of depressing, but let's go ahead and, uh, discuss, you know, how, how do these stereotypes show up in the workplace? Cause this podcast is about agents in the workplace. So maybe we can go back to some of these stereotypes and talk about how they manifest in the workplace. Yeah, absolutely. Do you want us to give examples that we've, uh, we've had Jenny? Sure. Uh, so I guess the one that echo said diligent, right? I think.
00:03:15
Speaker
A lot of people assume that Asians are hard workers. They're going to put a lot of time into working on your projects. So you can give them a lot of work and potentially a lot more work than you would assign your non-Asians. That's one example. We're all a little quiet because we're crying a little bit inside right now because it might happen to all of us. Well, should we unpack that? Should we maybe talk about a few examples?
00:03:42
Speaker
or should we list off? Could it be like our examples or like examples that we've heard of? Both. It could be any. Yeah. Okay. I, you know, in one of our studies that we had, well, we, um, Echo Jenny and, uh, and I interviewed, uh, some folks and we found out this, um, social worker who was Chinese American in the New York area. Uh, she had, I think like maybe 10 cases that she had to take on.
00:04:10
Speaker
Plus like three or four extra that she had to take on every week and the standard cases that other people had to take was about eight and then you know plus or minus two and That's each week and you know Because I think her boss who was also Asian, you know had this a
00:04:29
Speaker
Assumption that she was willing to work a little bit harder gave her more work consistently than other folks You know, and this is just a week by week basis Imagine what that looks like over, you know months years an entire decade or even a career's worth of work This person now has to basically do a lot more work in her career than other folks for the same pay and I feel like that's
00:04:59
Speaker
gosh, it's unfair to say the least and exhausting for this person who had to do this.
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, I'm also sure it's probably not foreign to some of our Asian listeners that if you get bypassed by a promotion, even though you feel like you have done the same amount of work or contribute the same amount of value to the team, to the company, but it's always that white worker get promoted faster than you do. I can also give another example is the
00:05:31
Speaker
Asians are lack of social skills because you're Asian, you're not good at communicating to other people that you're not going to be assigned to more of a sales or even like a get on to in front of the executive audience because you're just not good at that. I think that could also potentially be very detrimental to Asian comics where as we're thinking about the ways to progress on the career side, like one of the way is to be able to like
00:06:00
Speaker
have that socialized skills with other people and be able to demonstrate that that presentation to the executive level audience. I think a lot of that might potentially also pigeonholed Asians into
00:06:15
Speaker
technical roles because well the expectation is you're good at technical stuff but not like net us to deal with the people side.

Personal Experiences of Stereotyping

00:06:23
Speaker
Did you see that in your workplace? Have you seen that? I mean we don't have to name like organization names but have you seen that trend play out in the workplace? I'm not seeing that like in the way that people get like hey you're not going to that presentation or something like that but when you're actually seeing a room who is actually usually gets in front of a C-suite?
00:06:44
Speaker
let alone C-suite, there are not even that many Asian people there. And so that's just an obvious thing that everyone can observe from their own team or their own organization. Who is the one that's usually doing that presentation, right? What about you, Doug? I know you've been at the top when you're working at the startup. And I'm sure that was probably one of the only few Asians at the top, if not the only one. Yeah, I was. And even for me, I got
00:07:13
Speaker
you know, put into roles that I didn't think that were relevant or, uh, for example, for instance, um, you know, as we were growing as an organization, it work became something that I kind of had to do a little bit. So distributing ordering, um, laptops and distributing laptops and making sure people have the right hardware. Now I did have like experience with this, like in the,
00:07:39
Speaker
in the 90s and 2000s when I was building my own and selling and fixing and all that. But I also came in with a PhD from an organizational psychology. And it was weird for me to be doing IT stuff all of a sudden. And having that be part of my main job, I felt like in a way,
00:08:03
Speaker
I get it. Like they needed the work. They needed someone to do the work. No one else wanted to volunteer for the work. Somehow I did like one or two little assignments and it became the much bigger assignment. I was kind of, I was pretty frustrated with that. And, you know, I mean, it was, it was easy work, but I knew that it wasn't going to get me anywhere anytime soon. And even as someone, you know, as a, at the director or senior director level,
00:08:31
Speaker
I had influence on certain things. I made sure I tried to hire someone in to actually take that work off my plate, but it actually took a long time. I think I had to do that for about a year and a half before something came about. You didn't volunteer to be like, hey, I'll be the quasi IT guy in the interim. They just kind of assigned that to you. I don't remember. I may have.
00:08:55
Speaker
Because in the startup setting, you do stuff to just get stuff done. I may have done it just to get things rolling because people need the right equipment to do their work. And for me, that was more important than falling into this potential pigeonhole, which I didn't realize until really, I would say six, eight months later, I'm like, wait a second. What's going on here? Why am I doing the majority of this?
00:09:24
Speaker
this work where my expertise lies elsewhere and I could be more useful to the organization elsewhere. And I don't think they were thinking about that. And, you know, I think in the moment, you know, it feels like when you're in a hot or a lukewarm pot of water and it starts to warm up and then boil, like you don't really notice it until it boils, if that makes any sense.
00:09:56
Speaker
we haven't talked about that submissive one, that Asians are being seen as submissive. What does this mean? Okay, so you're submissive. You're not going to say no. I think that's an example that we brought up earlier. I had a very, very recent example when I was working in Columbia, Columbia, South America. So I'm going to throw my previous workplace under the bus and I don't care. But I experienced
00:10:21
Speaker
the stereotype that I wouldn't say no and how that manifested was I was hired at a business school and my two main responsibilities were to teach and do research but when I showed up there one of the I guess he was like a manager within the business school
00:10:40
Speaker
He was the area head and he kept on asking me to take on all these consulting projects, which is what a consulting professor or a professor of practice would do. So a professor of practice would teach a bit on the side, but prioritize like consulting to companies. So this guy.
00:10:59
Speaker
wanted me, and I'm just going to call him out. His name was David. He wanted me to not only do the two things that I was hired to do, teaching and research, but he also wanted me to do consultant projects. And I said no. And it got to a point where I was like dodging him whenever I saw him in the hallway. I would dodge. I would not go to that part of campus because my office was sort of on the side. The way I resolved that was I finally had to ask another associate professor who was a white man
00:11:29
Speaker
tell him what the problem was and ask him for his help. And so he went to David and said, Jenny's not working on this. She has to focus on teaching and research. That's what the other assistant professors who were hired previous to her were asked to do. So she's not doing consulting. And only then did David back off.
00:11:49
Speaker
So that's how it manifested for me, this idea that I'm not going to say no. And he kept on insisting. I'm like, what part of no doesn't he understand? Jenny, I got two follow-ups for you with that. First, when were you aware that this was operating? And how did you approach your colleague to help you out? How did you know that was the right person to help defend you or help you navigate the situation?
00:12:19
Speaker
Oh, that's a good question. So the first one is how, when did I figure it out? I don't think I figured it out until like a few weeks into it.
00:12:30
Speaker
I think the key insight was I'm always benchmarking against my peers. So I'm always talking to my colleagues, my white colleagues, my white female colleagues, just to see what's the standard and how am I being measured. And so I talked to several of my other colleagues at my same level, and I asked them, when you were hired, were you asked to do all these consulting projects in addition to your other roles? And they all said, no.
00:12:57
Speaker
And one of them even said, Jenny, I think you're being taken advantage of. Like you're not supposed to be doing consulting projects because those are huge time sucks. You know, that's like a full time job. So then I then it started clicking. That's how I decided I have to reach out to this other professor who hopefully he'll be an ally. But I also know that sometimes the same message coming from a white man is going to resonate more.
00:13:24
Speaker
then the message coming from me. So I kind of do that and maybe it's a product of doing the research and just knowing like when it's advantageous to speak up and when it's advantageous to get an ally involved. So that's sort of like my thought process. How artful of just knowing when to do it. That's amazing. Was it a semester? Was it two semesters? Like how long did it take you to say like, hey, I got to find a way to get out of this extra work that's being projected onto me.
00:13:53
Speaker
Uh, I mean, it didn't take too long, but it may be a few weeks, a few weeks of like dodging it and then feeling stressed. And then asking myself, why do I feel so stressed whenever I see him? Why am I dodging him? Then I realized I'm dodging him because he's asking me to do something that I don't want to do. That I know my peers are not doing. So it's time to get a white man to stand in.
00:14:15
Speaker
You're laughing, Doug. You're laughing. Bring those allies in. Jenny, do you know like this white man that you invited is also having like a, isn't him more like a senior or is him just like, you just know like he's identity going to help you? Like, does he have like an extra like a authority over this David? Like, how did you find that? And besides his identity?
00:14:42
Speaker
Well, officially, no, he did not have authority over David. No one did except the university. But this professor did have, he was there a longer time and he was well-respected. And there was a culture of just giving preferential treatment to the white professors over the non-white professors. I love that example, Jenny. Yeah, that's also talk about like how we can cope with those stereotypes that
00:15:09
Speaker
rest upon us. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Can I share one more stereotypes that we might have as Asians? And this actually came from the recent study that I did with Carrie.
00:15:37
Speaker
Karen is my advisor for our listeners. If you're listening to this episode, you probably already know that. And interesting one that hasn't been talked about a lot in the past research was independent and being able to handle things all by yourself. This is one big thing that we have seen in our recent study that people have on Asians.
00:16:06
Speaker
And this is fascinating because as we were thinking about when the organization started to assign in resources, they might seem like they have the expectation that Asians, you all are doing fine. You can handle this by yourself. You don't need extra help. So you can only get one half of the resource. Then I am signing to your white colleagues.
00:16:33
Speaker
So that's something I saw that's interesting as a stereotype that people have on Asians, which I haven't saw that in the past, but it emerges from the data that we've seen. Echo, based on that novel research that you did with Karen, have you experienced a bit of that or tend to that in your workplace, present or past? Just under-resourced?
00:17:03
Speaker
You know, I have never actually thought about that till like I've seen the day and then reflect my own experience. And I always realize, yeah, like I have always been a sideways, like last of the resource in this case, that's the head count under me or report to me then some of my
00:17:27
Speaker
white peers and also looking and this is only not applies to me, but also a lot of my Asian colleagues as well. I'm seeing a lot of them with only one or two direct reports, but they're still having the same scope of the work than some of their peers, where their peers have four or five or more resources. So I thought that was fascinating. Like part of it that is how
00:17:55
Speaker
I'm not contributing this all to stereotypes or people's impression on things, but this might be one of the reasons, right? When people are assigning those resources, how those resources are being allocated.

Workplace Challenges and Stereotype Threat

00:18:09
Speaker
When I ask you a leading question, did you have to work extra hours because of this?
00:18:20
Speaker
Oh, as always. I'm not saying like, because of this, but I work a lot of overtimes. And I observe the same thing a lot of my Asian comics. I haven't seen that much. I mean, I'm also seeing like,
00:18:38
Speaker
the overtime is a thing that more primaries I'm seeing on the Asian colleagues, more so than some of my white colleagues where they always holding a tighter boundary on one life. And how do you know, do they tell you like, do you guys talk and say, Oh, I worked over the weekend? Or how do you know that your Asian colleagues are working overtime? Um, I think part of it is like through just the daily conversations with them.
00:19:07
Speaker
But also like this is like a back then this is like not even like a like a study that we'd be able to share like with external companies. But I know some companies started tracking on some of the online activities just on like the mega data on like how long people spending on the office suite things like that.
00:19:31
Speaker
And I am aware that for majority of the folks or the workers in the Asian countries, and in this case, I'm just saying Asian countries because we're not looking at this by people's racial ethnicity, but in general, like workers in Asian countries working nine or an hour or spend more time on the office suite than folks in European or in the North America countries.
00:20:00
Speaker
Again, this is just by country. This is not just by race or ethnicity itself, but we've seen that as a pattern in the past. This might be a little bit off topic, but this is my argument. It's like, hey, if we are actually doing pay equity studies these days, it's not only just what people get,
00:20:28
Speaker
Now we should make sure it's being adequately, but we should also seem like, yeah, how much work that people are actually putting into this. But yeah, you can argue like, hey, not like all the time that you do ability to work, it will translate into the outcome itself. However, it's a fact that those people are actually working longer hours than some of the people who actually get paid the same as they do, or even more.
00:20:58
Speaker
I'm going to smile a little bit because there's a part of me that wants to give advice to our audience to know the difference between exempt and non-exempt employees. And if you're exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act, you cannot get overtime. So whether you work 20 hours or 40 hours or 50 or 80 hours, you get the same pay. So, you know, you should, I think this is alluding to one of our old episodes, know your worth and
00:21:25
Speaker
you know, in a way kind of know what you're getting into. And like Jenny and Echo said, like benchmark who around you is doing that, what amount of work they're doing and what resources they're getting for it. So what is non-exempt versus exempt? Is it the difference between like hourly like workers versus like someone who has a salary? Yeah, I think, um,
00:21:54
Speaker
Exempt is exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which means they don't get overtime. So regardless of how much they work each week, that's how much they get regardless. And if you're non-exempt, it means you're hourly, basically. Like a contractor. Yeah, it could be a contractor. You could say we afford
00:22:18
Speaker
For interns, for some people that know or listen to this episode, I know some of them just started their career, right? So you might start with interns. And in that case, you're actually paid by hour. If you're paid, because there are a lot of unpaid internships as well, which I think is so predatory. Even when I was paid at the time, I think I was asked to do like 20 hours a week.
00:22:46
Speaker
And for part-time like interns, but I need or like ended up like doing surgery or even like 40 hours Even though I get paid I only like 20 hours the work that aside to me is 40 hours worth of work
00:23:02
Speaker
I feel like our interns are like our most like vulnerable, like employees. And it kind of says quite a bit about the organizational culture and what they're willing to do or what kind of work they put the interns through, right? Whether it's like getting coffee, making copies or putting on like, you know, having them do all this hard work that this other full-time employee isn't willing to do. It's kind of like, I feel like, you know, how we would say in our
00:23:29
Speaker
through our organizational psychology. It's an artifact of what the organization is manifesting. Yeah, I think this might be a good segue to some of the consequences of the stereotypes, which in this case, I think we're going to dig deeper on stereotype threat.
00:23:57
Speaker
Do any of you want to give our listeners some explanation on what we mean by stereotype threat? Sure, I can give a brief definition of it if that's okay. So I believe stereotype threat refers to like
00:24:14
Speaker
you know, confirming a negative stereotype that a person has, whether it be racial, ethnic, gender or cultural. And this creates this kind of this cognitive load where they think like way too much about it. And what really happens, it hinders their performance on a difficult task. So, you know, for some of our listeners, you know, sometimes, you know, if you're at work,
00:24:40
Speaker
and you're tasked with this difficult assignment and maybe people project certain stereotypes on you, you may be thinking about that more so than actually doing the work and it may potentially hinder their performance where it takes them a lot longer to do that work because they're operating or thinking about all these other things. Yeah. Before I heard of this terminology, do you guys remember the GREs?
00:25:11
Speaker
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. We all had to take it to get into grad school. That's back in the day, right? It may not be the case anymore, the same with potentially the SATs. But I remember like, oh gosh, this is like maybe like over 10, 12 years ago. But I think I had to take the GREs a couple of times because I didn't do well in the verbal section. I thought my performance like didn't indicate that. But every time I took the math section, I'm like,
00:25:40
Speaker
you're good at this, you're good at this, you're Asian. I had to tell myself that. Just to get myself going a little bit before I jumped into the math section, which I always, I guess I always did well, well in. Yeah, actually, I, that remind me like some of the strategy or the coping strategy that we could potentially thinking about in the workplace is say like, because we know there are stereotypes there that Asians are not good at presentation or communication. Um,
00:26:08
Speaker
So when you are actually heading for a certain presentation, it might be helpful to just remind yourself, hey, you're such an excellent or expert on this subject, and you'll be able to pull this off instead of remind yourself as an Asian identity. This is just totally my ideas for future study, whether we can be just controlling that and see
00:26:36
Speaker
how that actually affect people's performance on the presentation or some other things that needed to be like in front of other people. Okay, so you're hinting about what we're going to talk about in our next episode. So we're going to break this up into two parts because it's a lot to listen to in one sitting. But should we spend just a little bit more time on stereotype threat as a concept before we
00:27:06
Speaker
transition. Do you want to get examples from like how some of these stereotypes of submissiveness, diligence and math competency and how that could undermine some of our own performance? Yeah, yeah, let's talk about that. So let's see submissiveness. I mean, I could see that panning out potentially. And I'm also trying to think about like examples where I've experienced that
00:27:37
Speaker
Like if I'm negotiating or if I'm going up against someone in a meeting, I might be reminded of the stereotype that I'm supposed to be submissive. And so that might impede my performance to really be agentic and stand up for whatever I'm presenting on. So I think that could potentially be something that emerges. So you're trying to grapple with
00:28:04
Speaker
There's a stereotype that I'm supposed to be quiet, submissive, but in this meeting I can't be. And that might potentially negatively affect your performance in that meeting. Or even you're trying to overcompensate that, like just by showing like more aggressively because you know that you don't want it to be seen as submissive, but somehow because that extra aggression can cause some damage to that negotiation.
00:28:44
Speaker
I'm kind of laughing at myself thinking about this, thinking about how silly

Leadership and Confrontation in the Workplace

00:28:48
Speaker
I am. But I apologize if I come off as silly. But I remember being in a meeting, and I had the person who was my boss come in. And I was doing check-ins with everybody and asking how everybody was doing. And this person just goes off and talks about 10 gentle things and didn't answer my question.
00:29:15
Speaker
And there was a part of me that realized, you're not answering my question. We're running the meeting here, and it's disrespectful, and I'm not willing to take this. And maybe that awareness made me, Echo, like you said, overcompensate. And I think this is like two, three minutes into this person's spiel, and I interrupted, and I said,
00:29:45
Speaker
This is my original question. Answer it or get off the call. Whoa, you did that? That's a power move. I respect that. Maybe it was all too harsh, but I wasn't going to let this happen. And I just wasn't going to
00:30:03
Speaker
let this person come in and kind of try to run the meeting in a different way. I had a certain agenda I wanted to run, and it's been the typical. And guess what? I ask the same questions all the time. So this was expected and known of everybody. So to come in and kind of go in these tangents and kind of just talk because this person was the head, I wasn't going to take that. And I think that person got really embarrassed. And maybe that was my intention.
00:30:33
Speaker
Because I'm like, there's a certain way we're running this meeting. And if I'm running this meeting, I'm going to keep this on point. And I'm not going to let you come in and change things and walk all over me. Because that's why I felt like what's happening as well, too. So I'm going to stop it right there. And if you're not aware of it, you're aware of it now. And now I am, too, about my overcompensating of this submissiveness.
00:31:04
Speaker
Wow, that's such a great example. Can I ask a few clarifying questions? Yeah, sure. So it sounds like this was your meeting. Yeah, kind of. It's a joint meeting. But yeah, I typically run it. And there's a certain way I run it. And it's always kind of been the case. Or at least I felt that ownership of it anyways. I was going to run it the way I ran it. OK, so this is your meeting. And this person is coming in.
00:31:34
Speaker
What was his, I guess I guess the he, what was his role? Like your colleague or is he your superior? Like I'm just trying to. My superior, yes. Okay, so he's your superior, but obviously he didn't respect the fact that this was your meeting and he didn't answer your question. That's what triggered you. Yeah. Yeah. It was very frustrating because I, um, you know, I think what ended up happening was I asked, I think this person how they were doing.
00:32:02
Speaker
And the person started talking about something, and then started talking about their lunch, or what they're about to have for lunch. And I kind of let that go on for a little bit, because thinking like, hey, you're going to talk about that, and then do your little check-in, and then you stop. Because we're not here to talk about your lunch. We have four people here. We're not here to listen to you about what you're eating. Nobody cares. I'm sorry.
00:32:32
Speaker
like nobody cares. So, and I'm like, you're wasting our time. And that was the tone that came off and that was the tone I was trying to strike. And you need to like listen to what I say. And if you don't answer my question, like within like a reasonable time, I'm going to try to bring you back in nicely. But if you're going to go two way off and take us off on something like this, I mean, there's other things I'm thinking and wondering of already, but I want to stop you right there.
00:33:03
Speaker
So what was the outcome from that confrontation? That person's kind of stopped. I think in the moment and what I think was a little embarrassed. I'm also older than that person. So I think the age pipe played a role in there as well, too. But, you know,
00:33:34
Speaker
Could I have done a better job which allowed this person to say face? Probably. But I think that person now knows that, or I have always known that I'm not going to let this slide. You could go off tangent or talk about things that aren't really related and just wasting people's time. I'm not here for that.
00:34:00
Speaker
There's a tangential story that kind of comes with this as well too. And I think this, because this person was a kind of a new manager, a new leader, I think one of the first meetings that person said, you know, because I'm the boss, I get to hold you back and you have to listen to me. And when that happened, I'm like, no, I'm not. When we're done, I'm leaving. You're not holding on to me because you think we're not playing boss here. And I'm not having that.
00:34:28
Speaker
So if you want that, you can keep the rest of these folks. But I'm leaving. Good luck with the rest of your meeting. So. So in that case, that actually get to the desired outcome to a certain degree. And you don't feel like there are consequences coming from it. Because I think one thing our listeners probably also wanted to know, I'm speaking on behalf of them, is because I'm also curious, is like,
00:34:56
Speaker
when you are actually demonstrating those kind of behavior at saying no, are there any consequences coming with it? So that's probably my question. Yeah, that's a great question. And I think that's always in the back of my mind, too. The first one is, really, was I too aggressive? Did I lean into this too much? Or did I fall over onto this and grind my nose off?
00:35:26
Speaker
Um, I think that's, I think for most folks who are trying to fight against these stereotypes, you're probably wondering how far can I go without, you know, damaging your relationship. And of course that was something that I always wondered as well too. But I think like certain days, I think we have our tempers and they're longer and shorter some days, and there's only so much you're willing to take on certain days. And I think part of what
00:35:55
Speaker
of potentially came off or a consequence, a negative consequence for me was that then I became viewed as too aggressive. And I mean, there's a part of me that wanted to say like, I wouldn't have been too aggressive if you just listened to my question and answered it. Well, here's some good news on being aggressive.
00:36:19
Speaker
I do find it's a sad fighting from my recent study. Yeah, tell us about it.

Aggression vs. Competence in Leadership Perception

00:36:24
Speaker
Yeah, we were controlling for race as they say, in this case, like Asians versus why we were controlling for that. And the only traits that predict leadership potential or being viewed as a leader is being aggressive.
00:36:40
Speaker
None of the others matters. No matter how competent you are, how intelligent you are, how hardworking you are, none of those matters. The only thing that predicts your leadership potential is being aggressive. Kind of sad. I know this episode can be a bit depressing, and that's one of the reasons why we decided to split it up into two parts.

Closing Thoughts and Haiku

00:37:07
Speaker
Do we have a haiku to end our episode?
00:37:10
Speaker
Yes, literally I just asking Chad GPT to write a haiku for stereotypes and make it more fun. Peko, thank you for sharing this. Looks like here's our haiku. Boxed minds weaves tails wild. Laughter breaks through biased walls. Truth smiles. Stereotypes fall. I want to say fail.
00:37:38
Speaker
Well, on that note, tune in to our next episode where we'll talk more about what you can do to fight off and navigate these stereotypes and stereotype threat. Catch you later. Bye. See ya. See you in the next one.
00:38:06
Speaker
Bye!