This week’s guest columnist is LI Yingyu, manager of international mobility for Huawei, one of China’s major technology companies. Miss LI did her graduate work in Australia before returning to China several years ago.
Weeks ago, when I prepared some slides to facilitate a workshop, one American HR professional working together with me asked: Do your Chinese employees know brainstorming? He has been working as assistant to our HR VP in Shenzhen for 2 years. Looking at my confused face, he explained, “Many times when I said ‘brainstorming’ I found you Chinese people just sit there, holding their arms, closing their mouth…I suspect they don’t know what brainstorming is.”
I told him that we of course know this popular stuff imported from western management books and often used in workshops. But Chinese are not used to speaking in public, especially when there is a leader sitting at the table. There is a power distance issue in our culture; they want to hear what the leader says first.
His question reminded me of an interesting phenomenon in our classrooms when I studied at the University of Sydney. We had a young lecturer who was very popular in the Business School. He liked to raise interesting questions to students and his class was full of debate and laughter. But some students complained he was mean because he often made Chinese students feel awkward in the classroom.
When he said “This time I want to have some shy people answer my question,” or, “I want to give a chance to those guys sitting in the back,” everybody knew he was going to point to some Chinese student to answer the question. With his eyeshot sweeping over, I could see many black heads lowered down. He was annoyed by this silent small group in his heated classroom, but we knew we had a disadvantage. Those western students often open their mouths before their brains think. Chinese are used to thinking clearly before speaking, sometimes, to make sure not to lose face.
I remember one Polish student who was even teased by this lecturer – “Are you digging a hole?” – when he lost his point but still kept talking and turned out to be debating with himself. In the last class the lecturer said he was not going to discriminate against some people by using such a teaching style. He wanted to encourage interaction between people with different cultural background but he found western people are more eager to express their opinions.
Are Chinese shy to speak? The most ancient Chinese philosophy base, the Book of Changes, says: “Propitious people speak little, while impetuous people speak too much.” Confucius said “Be agile in action, while be clumsy at speaking” or “Be slow in word and prompt in action.” Between speaking and taking action, Chinese place more importance on the latter. We have also have the saying “Don’t only to listen to what he says, but also see what he does” or “Actions always speaks louder than words.”
When this traditional education becomes a belief, Chinese become shy to speak in westerners’ eyes. At the same time, Chinese don’t understand why those retired western national leaders can make big money from making public speeches. “What’s the use of their words?” we may ask.