In this episode of Honest HR, host Wendy Fong is joined by Buck Gee (Cisco Systems, Committee of 100) to discuss why AAPI employees go under-promoted, stories on breaking the stereotype of the model minority and how to challenge leadership when climbing the corporate ladder.
Asian-American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) are no strangers to adversity in the workplace, but their experience often doesn’t receive much attention because of longstanding positive stereotypes of AAPI as hard workers and good employees. In this episode of Honest HR, host Wendy Fong is joined by Buck Gee (Cisco Systems, Committee of 100) to discuss why AAPI employees go under-promoted, stories on breaking the stereotype of the model minority and how to challenge leadership when climbing the corporate ladder.
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Amber Clayton:
Welcome to Honest HR, the podcast for all of us HR professionals, people managers, and team leads intent on growing and developing our companies for the better. We bring you honest, forward thinking conversations and relatable stories from the workplace that challenge the way it's always been done, because after all, you have to push back to move forward.
Wendy Fong:
Honest HR is a podcast from SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management. By listening, you're helping create better workplaces and a better world. I'm Wendy Fong.
Amber Clayton:
I'm Amber Clayton.
Gloria Sinclair Miller:
I am Gloria Sinclair Miller.
Amber Clayton:
Now let's get honest.
Wendy Fong:
Hello, fellow HR pros and welcome. I'm your host, Wendy Fong, Manager of Virtual Event Innovation for SHRM. But I am excited to introduce or go into this next episode on cracking the bamboo ceiling. Amid companies' promises to increase diversity, Asian-Americans are frustrated by their lack of progress and employers seeming indifferent to their plight.
What is the bamboo ceiling? It's defined as a combination of individual, cultural, and organizational factors that impede Asian-Americans' career progress inside organizations, including under representation in leadership positions. But I had always had the belief, the cultural belief that instilled by my parents, and nothing is wrong with this.
But it is just an Asian cultural value that I identify with that you must work hard. You must not complain. Listen to authority. Don't try to, I guess, shake things up too much and respect authority and not try to question or push boundaries in that way.
I remember when I worked at my previous organization, I was in charge of running board meetings. In the cadence of how our unconscious bias works, I would get cut off or my ideas would get disregarded. I would say it was early in my career where I didn't necessarily have the skills to challenge and speak up and confront people like, "Hey, I'm not done speaking. Can I finish my thought before you interrupt me?"
It's really being conscious of, to be an advocate, to call people out on their biases and microaggressions and unconscious biases, because people don't necessarily know. But we do have to continue to advocate for ourselves in order for there to be any systemic change to happen in those every day-to-day conversations.
Today, I'm excited to introduce our guest. Buck Gee is the co-founder of the Advanced Leadership Program for Asian-American executives at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Since 2010, the executive education program has provided leadership training to over 500 Asian-American executives from over 100 companies, such as Microsoft, Google, HSBC, Chevron, and IBM.
He has co-authored many Ascend Foundation research papers. Ascend Foundation, if you don't know, well, they are the largest Pan-Asian business professional membership organization in Northern America. Its mission is to drive workplace and societal impact by developing and elevating all Asian and Pacific Islander business leaders and empowering them to become catalysts for change.
I've actually been a lifetime member since 2014. I can certainly attest that it has helped improve my communication and leadership skills and help me be more self-aware and cognizant how culture and cultural values play an important role in how I navigate my professional career.
Buck retired in 2008 from Cisco Systems where he was Vice President and General Manager of the Data Center business unit. Welcome to Honest HR, Buck. We're glad to have you on the podcast.
Buck Gee:
Thanks Wendy.
Wendy Fong:
Well, how are you? Welcome to Honest HR.
Buck Gee:
Well, thanks for the opportunity to talk to your listeners. I'm great. Still working hard, although I'm retired. I try to play golf part-time and work part-time.
Wendy Fong:
I know. Just reading off your bio, you still sound very busy and very involved in the Asian community. That's great to hear and fascinating research that Ascend Foundation has released. Can you define for our listeners who may not know, what is the Asian bamboo ceiling as I've heard you to refer to before?
Buck Gee:
Well, actually the bamboo ceiling was a term coined by Jane Hyun in her book Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling way back in maybe 2005 or something like that. Really, the book talked about the fact that very few Asian-Americans reached the top of the corporate pyramid, although they're plentiful in lower levels.
She talks about challenges she saw back in 2005, I guess was. That basically were made today. I mean, what she talks about back then is what I've seen in my career. Just quick story, I got involved in and wasn't even interested in the topic till 2006, when I was acquired by Cisco Systems. I was the head of a company that was on DMO Systems.
In 2006, I realized out of 104 vice-presidents in development, I was one east Asian out of 104 in a population roughly 25% east Asian.
Wendy Fong:
Wow.
Buck Gee:
That's when I realized something's going on. That is the glass ceiling. In fact, that we're plentiful at the bottom and not so much at the top. What you find ... At least what we found in the research, any progress in terms of cracking the glass ceiling for women, for example, there's been some progress, but not for minority women.
Actually, in terms of the issues, in terms of promoting people at the top, very little progress for minority men or minority women. Absolutely, in terms of glass ceiling, all minority men and all minority women, the issue for us is that no one thinks about us as minority. We tend to get ignored with regard to diversity programs.
Wendy Fong:
Why do you think that is? I know I've heard the term model minority for Asians or Asian-Americans.
Buck Gee:
One reason ... Not the only reason. But one reason why we are often ignored in diversity programs is, well, I can tell you. The best way to illustrate it is a story that I have. I went into a very large company in Silicon Valley and talking to the head of diversity, very large company. I explained to him the Asian glass ceiling and actually with the data in that company, showing that we were basically 50% underrepresented compared to the top and the bottom.
In fact, Asians were about 35% of the company's workforce. He said, "Buck, you're right. The reason we never looked at this honestly, is because that's a metric we don't look at. Generally, what we look at is compliance metrics. For Asian-Americans, the compliance metric look at it 6% of the population is Asian. You're 35% on our workforce. We don't look at the glass ceiling for Asians. The one we look at is for women. Yeah. You're being ignored because the metrics we look at don't point out the problem."
Wendy Fong:
Oh, wow. This was back in ... What year was that when you had that conversation?
Buck Gee:
That was about four years ago. In fact, just another illustration, I point this out, there was a company, again, another large different company in Silicon Valley, published a DE&I report and talked about the diversity programs and talked about every minority. The word Asian was not in the report because we are not part of the underrepresented minorities. We were not part of ... not even in the report, not even in metrics, not even in the programs.
Wendy Fong:
Oh, wow. That's so interesting. Why do you think that Asians weren't included in that report?
Buck Gee:
Because for this particular company, 45% of the workforce is Asian. They're not considered underrepresented. Again, they're not looking at the glass ceiling from our perspective. They think there's plenty of us. In fact, the numbers are fine. This company, 45% of the company of white collar is Asian. Somewhere around 20% of the executives are Asian.
When you have 20% of the executive being Asian and you look at the 6% Asian population, they don't connect the two numbers. They look at the 20% and think 6%, and we're great. In fact, I can tell you another story if you want another story.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. Go. Absolutely, Buck.
Buck Gee:
Sure. At Cisco, I pointed out the problem that at the top, there are very few. Out of in the company, in the US, out of 300 in the US, there were 15 Asian VPs. I pointed it out to the head of HR and he said, "You're right, Buck. We have a problem. Let's take a look at it." They hired a diversity consultant, came in, presented, and I was on the DE&I task force. The consultant presented results.
Results were as follows. She said, "About a 30 of the population is Asian, and about a 30 of your management is Asian. You have too many in your workforce and you have too many managers." I said, "What?" She said, "Well, because you're 6% of the population, so you're overrepresented, number one. Even though your third population is Asian, you're well represented manager."
I said, "If you look at the numbers, actually a third of managers, they're all at the lower levels. You get to the top," and I just quoted him. I quoted you. I said, "Oh, you're right. You have a problem." The problem is people aren't looking at the right numbers, which point out the problem, which point out our situation.
They're looking at the numbers that metrics to which they have for federal compliance or public compliance. They're not looking our particular issue. Because what masked the problem is the fact that there's so many of us, they assume we're doing fine. Because we don't complain, because we are in a way of the modern minority, no one's paying attention to us.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. It seems like ... I mean, you brought the issue. You had to bring that issue up to HR in your career. How did you overcome those obstacles and climb the corporate ladder, knowing that those factors were challenges for you?
Buck Gee:
Let me clarify one thing and I'll respond to that. There's no over-discrimination here. I mean, in terms of barrier, no one is saying, "You can't do it. You can't do it," necessarily. But there is implicit bias of the model minority. The model minority conveys a stereotype of being a very hard working, very smart, good in math, quiet person.
My approach was ... Although I never explicitly thought about this till afterwards. I had a phrase that I had internally, which was, "I'm not who you think I am, because I know who you think I am." Implicit, although I never thought of myself that way, I always knew that I was different, because I always knew I was different, because in my generation, growing up in a small town in Northern California, we were the only Chinese family in town.
You had to deal with being different. You have to define yourself. That's where I looked at my career and the way I looked at myself. I have to define myself because I'm so different.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. Break through those, whatever stereotypes that people might have.
Buck Gee:
Yeah. Again, that serve me well when, again, the top being, "I'm not who you think I am. I better show you who I am." That's the problem that we have as a community. The lesson that we teach in Ascend and training programs, unless you assert otherwise, people assume that you're the model minority and that's a burden that we have. Again, not because of malicious discrimination, but implicit bias.
Wendy Fong:
Absolutely. I feel like some of those cultural values, too. I mean, I myself are raised to have humility and to not speak up or interrupt or to talk about myself in ways that Western corporate society asks us to in order to move up in our careers. Being able to consciously recognize that to practice and be aware to catch myself when I wouldn't speak up. Yeah. It does take practice to go against what I've grown up to always known.
Buck Gee:
Yeah. It's something we have to work on as Asian-Americans. Diversity programs can help in terms of making people aware of this. But having your manager being aware of this, still requires you then to break through that cultural barrier, because even though name aware of cultural limitations, at least my perspective, most managers tend to be with HR issues lazy because it's not the first priority that they think about.
Although they mean well and they'll respond well, but most managers won't proactively act on it because they're so busy. It's up to you to take the advantage of whatever training they get and they will respond well. That's where I believe all manager mean well, but we have to take the first step to reach out.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. Not only from the ... Sounds like from the bottom-up approach of the employees speaking up and bringing these issues up, but also from the top-down, if leadership is not on board or not prioritizing diversity and to help support diversity on all levels of their organization, then it may not be a priority or a top of mind.
Buck Gee:
Again, I think that, for me, a differentiation between supporting, passively supporting and proactively engaging. I'll say the difference is this, from my perspective, and I can tell you another example. But when I was in college, I volunteered for Head Start, which is a program for minority kids. I tutored at East Palo Alto. At that time, it was mostly black community, East Palo Alto high school.
When I was working with HP, I took a year on a program they had and taught electrical engineering at Howard University, a historically black college. I'm well aware of, as part of the affirmative action program, to pull more black engineers into HP. I'm well aware of that. But did I do anything proactively when I was a general manager with regard to diversity? No, because I had a diversity officer doing the work for me.
It wasn't until I realized that I was the only Asian VP, East Asian VP that I said, "I better get involved and begin to push issue." That's the problem that all of us face is that although a manager are supportive, you have to reach out to take the first step. They will support you in that. I'm always positive about manager. At least in Silicon Valley, they won't do the right thing.
Here's the story of the right thing to do. For example, one of the things we did was organize a meeting with John Chambers who at the time was CEO of Cisco. John walks into room and we had prepared a briefing for him about the issue. He knew what the issue was, but obviously he did not read it because he walked in the room and he said, "I've been a CEO at Cisco for 15 years. I'm so happy that so many Asian-Americans have done so well at Cisco."
I said, "Uh-oh. He didn't read it." I said, "John, actually, it's not true." I quoted him the numbers I was telling you. I knew John was a good guy. I knew he wouldn't take it offensively. Because when I corrected him about stuff and he laughed, he said, "Buck, yesterday ... Buck just made it safe for anybody ask any questions. Don't be afraid of asking any question," which is a great thing for John.
But at the end of the meeting, we had an hour and a half meeting, John, he said, "I'm glad you told me a problem, but if it exists, you need to fix it. I can support you, but I don't know what to do." That's a situation that we have and they have. They don't know what to do. We told them what the problem was.
A year and a half later we had a quarter million dollars for leadership training inside Cisco for Asian-Americans. It takes somebody or some group or critical math in the company to really help upper management understand the problem. Individually, you need to help your manager understand the problem and what needs to be done about it, generally.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. No. That's a great example of how do you take the first step. You had the research to back it up. You set a meeting with the higher ups to make your case. Thankfully after that conversation, it sounds it went positive to lead. They were on board. They gave you the budget and the resources to move forward. Is that what you recommend to leaders or other HR professionals that want to help address this opportunity in their organizations?
Buck Gee:
The answer is "Yes." Don't be afraid to ask. In particular, you certainly need to engage the people in the community, leaders in the community. I would say this, "You really need senior leaders to get engaged. You need to find a champion." That's always the way it is in any company outside of HR.
What I do, for example, with regard to Asian-Americans, I spend a lot of time. I'm meeting people and building a network ... I'll say through a ... For example, in other organizations meeting other senior leaders and trying to raise a question. That's why I crunched data so I can go in the meeting and say, "Here's what it looks like in your company."
In that case, I'll tell you another story then just as a simple example. I met at a lunch Fong Wan, who was the senior vice president at PG&E. I told him my story at Cisco. He says, "PG, same thing. We have a lot of Asians in the company, but I'm one of very few people at the executive level."
He says, "I do something about it." I looked at Fong. I said, "Fong, you're the highest ranking Asian American at PG&E. You report to the president and you have this big chunk of business. Why don't you do something about it?" Fong says, "Buck, you're right." He goes back. Two weeks later, I get this call from Fong. I say, "Hey, Fong, what's up?" He says, "Well, Buck, what I did is I went back, got the numbers, got a meeting with the head of HR, got a meeting with the head of diversity, showed him my numbers"
They said, "Fong, you're right. What are you going to do about it?" He says, "Okay. Buck, now, what do I do?" That's what it takes is they don't think about it until somebody raises the question, but then you have to be prepared with an answer. Yes, answer. That's the other part of what you have to do. Be a champion, but be constructed, too.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. That's true. Wow. I love your honesty. The fact that you're able to just bluntly challenge them like, "Hey, well what are you doing about it?" I think that's very inspirational that we need to just not be afraid to bring it up in conversation.
Buck Gee:
By the way, not everybody will respond that way, but many will. No. No. I mean, everybody will respond positively and they'll think about what they can do, depends on what the level they're at, that sort of thing. But yeah, I'll give you another example on that thought about raising the question.
I raised question inside Cisco and one of the things I did is I had a discussion with the ERG and talked about this. They knew the numbers. About a month later we had an all hands meeting at Cisco and Charles Giancarlo, who was my friend, who was ... he was the head, at that point, all head of all development, who I had known for, at that point, maybe 15 years.
He's talking about plan Cisco and he's on the stage with his staff. Then he says, "Any questions?" This one Asian-American woman, a Chinese woman who was in the meeting, actually I knew her because she was in the ERG, Employee Resource Group. She was not a manager. Okay. She's five levels down from Charlie. Stands up in the audience and she says, "Hey Charlie, one question I have, I'd like to understand why all the people on the stage with you are white."
Wendy Fong:
Oh, wow. Very bold.
Buck Gee:
Very bold. I had two reactions to that, really. One was, I was so proud of her that she could say that. By the way, Charlie, I wouldn't say defensive, but he didn't have a good answer. My other reaction was, I wish I could have prepped Charlie to have a good answer, because my responsibility as an executive for Cisco and in a way that's why somebody at my level is a good champ, because number one, I'm responsible for my community, but I'm also responsible for the company.
Okay. I look at what I do as good thing for both. I'm not doing something just for the community. I'm doing ... Because it's the right thing to do for the company. Generally that's what most people also believe, too. Charlie would've believe it. In fact, Charlie and I talk afterwards. He was totally supportive of stuff we wanted to do. Again, remember he's supportive. He's not going to push it.
But I was so proud of her, again, but embarrassed that I didn't give Charlie any good answers, because there were good answers.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. Just having the resources and information to be able to respond to that. That makes sense. What advice do you have for Asian-Americans in the workplace then, if you're starting out entry level from the bottom-up?
Buck Gee:
I think the first thing is ... I'll quote some researcher. But you need to build a relationship with your manager, because your manager will determine at any level how successful you can be. The problem we have and the problem they have. The problem we have is there are some cultural barriers that limit our tendency to build a relationship.
One is we think we need to prove that we're smart. Tend not to ask questions. We want to show that we can do it without a lot of help. That's a problem. I told my son this many, many years ago when he started working for Google. I said, "Your manager is your friend. Your manager know you're not going there for grades. His job is to make you successful, not to grade you. Take the opportunity when you run to problems, ask for help."
That's a problem we have. We don't ask for help. Okay. I have that problem, too. I probably still have that problem. But the problem that creates is then it gets in the way of building relationship. That gets in the way of promotions. The reason I say that is promotions happen at the middle level up for two reasons. Number one, you're good that you can do the work. Second is that they trust you in terms of your judgment.
Building a trust comes from that relationship. If you have no relationship with it, you're the manager, then they don't have the trust and you're at a competitive disadvantage to your peers. You're limiting yourself because you're not building that trust relationship with your manager. The research says this, in order to build a relationship with another person, you generally have to have three things in common, because then they begin to see ways you can relate.
Disadvantage we have is manager tends to be white and male. If you're a white and male and you have a manger who's white and male, you have two of the three already, you just have find one more. For you as an Asian woman, you have to find three things in common that the other white guy did not. He had to find one. That's extra work you need to do.
Like it or not, they trust people who have things ... It's not look like them, but have things in common. If you look like them, they have two of the three. With regard to my advice back to your original question, my advice is understand that dynamic. You need to build a relationship in order for your manager to best help you and think of you as promotable and understand you have to think of those three things and the barriers you have just because of your face and your sex.
Wendy Fong:
Also that implicit bias happens in hiring as well. When someone is hiring to fill positions in their company, when you establish that relationship during the interview process, they may not be aware of if two of the three or things they have in common, or if you have none of the three that you have in common, how do you build that trust even during the interview process to get hired for the position?
Buck Gee:
That's right. I agree. Although one advantage, at least with regard to functionally technical positions is that there are studies that look at same resume with different names, in Asian name, even white name. What you find is there was a research study done, University of Irvine, I think. The research white name and Asian name. It was more likely the white name would be hired in sales jobs. More likely the Asian names hired in technical jobs. On the one hand, if you're an engineer, you have one advantage that you have, because they assume you're good at math.
Wendy Fong:
Unfortunately, I'm not good at math.
Buck Gee:
That works against you there.
Wendy Fong:
It does work against me. I have to work harder in the math aspect with my spreadsheets and everything.
Buck Gee:
There is another story. Unfortunately, with regard to that, I have a friend of mine who was a partner, retired now, at accounting firm here. He started with six other, when he is hired as an associate with six others. At the end of one year, the five got promoted. He was offered a job in IT because they assumed he was good at math. He said, "I'm not that good at math." That's the bad news. I'm sorry.
The good news of the story is he said, "I'm going to make my job to know every partner in this office, because I want to get promoted. Obviously, they don't know me. They think I'm good at math. They don't know me." The good news is out of the six in that office, he was the first one to promote to partner. Again, the comment about relationships and the value of relationships, because they will assume things about you if they don't know you as they did with him.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. Absolutely. He leveraged other skills like networking, building relationships, community within the firm to get to the next step.
Buck Gee:
Again, I'm assuming they're all good enough at math. Don't get me wrong. [inaudible 00:26:56]
Wendy Fong:
I hope so. Working for accounting firm.
Buck Gee:
They better be.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah.
Buck Gee:
Right. Especially, he was an Otter assistant. He better be good.
Wendy Fong:
Or could also join organizations like Ascend. I know Ascend offers workshops and conferences to help build those skills.
Buck Gee:
They do.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. I know when I had taken a few of those workshops earlier in my professional career, just even something simple as, okay, ask at least one question in this meeting or starting off small like that to start building it naturally to ask questions.
Buck Gee:
Right. Exactly.
Wendy Fong:
To build the business case on, okay, if I'm a HR professional or a leader or even employee, and I want to bring in more diversity programs or have more opportunities for Asian-Americans in the workplace, what is the benefit of all of this?
Buck Gee:
My view is it is assumed that because Asian-Americans are generally the quietest group in a company, in fact, again, another funny story. I was at another large company. Talking to one VP and ask her to ask a question at HR about more diversity programs for Asian-Americans. In fact, there's a part two of the story.
The pushback she got from the HR group was as follows. We're a data driven company. We do things that employees want us. Every year we do these annual surveys and where there gaps and satisfaction, we're actually very proactive and we want to respond and have a motivated satisfied employee base. That's what you're trying to do. You want to get ... Be sure the motivated, energized, loyal.
Okay. That's part of the role of HR. What we find is that with all the metrics we use, Asian-Americans are the happiest folks here. They're not complaining about anything. If they complain about something, we actually would do something. But the data we get is you're the happiest folks here. We're helping everybody else, but it's not because we're ignore you. You don't ask for anything. We don't know what you want.
The fact that we're the happiest folks there is something because we don't complain. We're feeding that stereotype. In fact, when asked, it turns out that Asians are the most aspirational in terms of reaching higher positions than white, black, Hispanics. Underlying this is that we do want to get up. We do what we promoted. But we don't tell anybody about it.
When they ask, we don't do anything ourselves and we don't ask ourselves. Actually, you think that Asian-Americans are the happiest folks here. Actually, they're most the least happy folks here, because they just don't how to complain. That's part of the problem.
Wendy Fong:
It goes back to the importance of speaking up.
Buck Gee:
Exactly.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah.
Buck Gee:
You want to energize and motivate a loyal workforce. What I'm telling you is that you're doing nothing to energize and motivate, except keeping them fat down and happy. For a lot of them, that's not the best thing to do this. But I'll tell you that, again, the data says that they're actually, they really are aspirational. Underlying that happiness is ... There is underlying frustration. That's my business case.
Wendy Fong:
SHRM actually has research, too, that if employees are engaged and they're productive and happy in their roles, then the company will also have higher revenue, happier customers as well.
Buck Gee:
Yep. You tie those things together. That's my argument.
Wendy Fong:
Well, to shift gears a little bit, I did want to briefly touch on the rising anti-Asian violence. I know SHRM released a few articles on this last year due to COVID in particular. In 2021 anti-Asian hate crimes have rose 164%. They've documented 95 incidents in 16 of the country's largest cities and counties during the first quarter of the year compared to the year 2000. Can you speak on that a bit and why the rising sentiment against Asian-Americans during COVID?
Buck Gee:
Probably make two comments. I'll give you a bit from talking to various leaders in the Asian-American community. You talk to people members in China and members in DC and members in New York, and a lot of members are engaged in the stop Asian Hate Movement. The problem is US and China are going to have a rocky relationship in the next, pick a number, 10 years, 20 years.
China is a strategic and economic threat. It's becoming more visible as an economic threat. It's going to be easier and easier for political figures to call out China. That will increase the xenophobia in this country. It's going to get worse before it gets better, because a lot of politicians want somebody to blame and they're going to blame China for the slow growth in the United States.
That's going to translate to xenophobia and increase racism. It's important that the Asian-American community speak out now because it needs to find its voice as a collective. That's the problem that our community has failed to garner both in business and in corporate to find our voice as a collective. Partly because all the things we've been talking about were just fat down and happy and don't want to complain.
I'm very encouraged that more and more people complain about it and that there is movement here. To that, I'm grateful that's going to happen, because it's going to be needed. The other element which we need to do is that, although there are many, many Asian leaders and many, many Asian groups, so far there hasn't been some naturally visible leaders that are emerged from this whole episode yet, because we're going to need those.
We still don't have the gravitas power and influence in the quarters of power, nationally, both in business and in politics that we'll need to do as things get worse, because things are going to get worse. We can't influence those things at a geopolitical level. What China's doing, what US doing in reaction to that, but affects us in our daily lives.
It's going to affect the ERGs. It's going to affect how corporate leaders will have to treat and respond to that and be supportive of their Asian-Americans in the company. Because it's, again, they need to speak out. I'll say this, because I do believe that most corporate leaders are ... meanwhile, they are speaking out. They are being constructive.
They want to support what we do. We better ... That's why we need the leaders in the community, actually galvanize a community as a community and tell people like, "John, okay, here's what we need to do."
Wendy Fong:
That's great to have those champions, those leaders as allies, but also the people behind it to take action and organize. SHRM has some resources while on how to deal with that xenophobia at work. We have some toolkits and resources that members can access to help prepare HR professionals, even in the employee level, just like communications to prevent that workplace discrimination that can happen on a daily basis, even if it may not be an overarching organizational problem as well.
Buck, as we're closing our conversation here, what's one thing you would like our listeners to walk away from this conversation from?
Buck Gee:
The one thing that I always advocate for is assertive outreach to the community and ask what they want and then be a corporate resource to try to get it for them. I say it this way with regard to the Asian-American community. Most ERGs that I'm aware of and I've dealt with in general are populated and led by middle managers who are still a little ... I want to say do it what they're told. I don't mean it that way. I mean, they live with constraints ...
Wendy Fong:
By the book, maybe.
Buck Gee:
They do it by the book. When HR says, "You get X dollars" That's what you got. My story about that is I remember having discussion with this one manager at Cisco. We're planning a party trying to get everybody engaged in this thing. He said, "I only got $200 for this from HR." I'm like, "I have a quarter billion dollar budget. $200 is like nothing"
I said, "At Cisco, the VPs will organizing an ERG meeting the same thing." They said, "We only have this budget." The VPs "Don't worry about it. I'll fund it." They live my constraints. They'll want to be good corporate citizen. When you get this budget, you don't need the budget. That's what you're taught.
My advice is, tell me what you need and I'll try to go get it. If it's a problem you want fixed, let me understand what you want to do and let me go help you. Not constrain you. That's my lesson. That's my advice to HR folks. Again, Asians, because we're not going to some money. Please ask us what we want.
Wendy Fong:
That's great. That's great advice. Lastly, Buck, how can our listeners find and connect with you if they wanted to find out more information about Ascend, the Ascend Foundation?
Buck Gee:
Find me on LinkedIn.
Wendy Fong:
Absolutely. Well, thank you, Buck so much for being here and taking the time out of your busy schedule. Thank you listeners for listening. If you haven't already, please subscribe so you'll never miss an episode, and be sure to rate and review the show wherever you listen a podcast. We have a review from one of our listeners that I'd like to share with our audience from Savvy Entrepreneur.
It's titled SHRM on the Fly. Love it. They are sharing great podcast. It's like having professional development from SHRM at your fingertips. The result is a show that always leaves me with nuggets of wisdom. I reflect on long after the episode.
Oh, that's so sweet. Thank you, Savvy Entrepreneur. Love it. Love it. Love it. I really glad you're enjoying the show. We're really glad that you're able to listen and support us. Appreciate all the feedback that you have to share and any of our listeners have to share. Thank you.
Lucky you. You get 0.75 PDCs that's professional development and credit, if you don't know, for your SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP certification. 0.75 PDCs for listening to today's episode, and let me give you that activity ID. I know you need that activity ID. It's 22-7H as in hug, U as in unicorn, and S as in sassy and the number5. 22-7HUS5.
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