Coaching For Kababayan Transcript

Insight on Coaching Coaching for Kababayan Transcript

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Confidential | May 8, 2008

Coaching for Kababayan Transcript

Time Speaker Transcript

Tom Floyd Hello everyone and welcome to Insight on Coaching.

Insight on Coaching explores the many facets, flavors and side of the emerging professional coaching field.

I’m Tom Floyd, I’m the CEO of Insight Educational Consulting and your host for today’s show.

Well this week our topic is Coaching for Kababayan, insights into the Fil-Am community.

We will provide a big picture overview in terms of the landscape of the Filipino American community. We will discuss the typical beliefs, culture and values within the Filipino American community. We will discuss the perception of the Filipino American community as an invisible minority and of course we will also discuss the work coaches who specialize on working with Filipino American audiences and teams are doing within this diverse audience.

With me to explore this topic today are five guests and let me give you a quick overview of who we have with us today.

Our first guest J. Bruce Daniels is an executive coach and life coach for Renaissance Life Coaching. Bruce brings a multicultural perspective to the field of professional life coaching and specializes in cultural socialization in the Filipino and Spanish bay area groups. He is fluent in both Tagalog and Spanish. On the business side Bruce has a strong understanding in union and management relationships from first-hand experience in labor management negotiations. Bruce also specializes in academic assessment coaching for underrepresented youth of color.

Welcome to the show Bruce.

1:46 J. Bruce Daniels

Thank you very much Tom.

1:46 Tom Floyd Our next guest, Tristan de la Rosa is a Filipino American certified executive coach who has turned his passion for people development into a full time practice with his own executive coaching and leadership development company, Banyan Way. Tristan brings an uncommon blend of masterful real-world experience and rich multi-national & multi-cultural insight to the executive coaching field. With decades of experience under his belt at some of the world’s largest and most respected companies including Procter & Gamble, Kraft General Foods and Johnson & Johnson, he has coached, guided and helped shape the careers of executives. Tristan is also on the coaching advisory board and faculty of Northwestern University. Additionally he is a pro bono Account Director at the Taproot Foundation, a non-profit organization providing management and marketing consultancy services to other non-profit groups.

Welcome to the show Tristan.

2:37 Tristan de la Rosa

Hey great to be here.

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2:40 Tom Floyd Our third guest here is Terence Elumba a Filipino American engineer, is the brainchild of PhilFortune Media Group, the premier one-stop online destination of choice of Filipino Americans and Filipinos worldwide when they need information and resources on business, culture and lifestyle, and Filipino communities and organizations. An entrepreneur, Terence is also the president of Elumba Information, a multimedia solutions and software development company. At PhilFortune Media Group, Terence develops search engine technology and builds a virtual corporate community of global Filipinos in a centralized Web site. Terence has also worked with the U.S. Department of Defense as a network, security and system contractor. Additionally he is a consultant to many home health agencies and medical facilities all across the U.S. Welcome to the show Terence.

3:25 Terence Elumba

Thank you Tom for inviting me here with all of these distinguished peers and your great radio broadcast.

3:34 Tom Floyd It’s a pleasure to have you. Our fourth guest Joel Jacinto serves as the executive director of Search to Involve Pilipino Americans (SIPA), a 36 year-old community-based organization serving youth and families in the areas of health and human services and community economic development. Joel has helped to build SIPA into the largest organization focusing primarily on Filipino American youth and families in the United States. Joel was a recipient of the Durfee Sabbatical Program in 2005, which recognizes creative leaders who keep their organizations ahead of the curve. He also received the Filipinas Magazine Community Service Award in 2000 and in 1998, received a Humanities Fellowship grant award from the Asian Cultural Council. Joel is also a member of several advisory boards including Citibank's California/Nevada Community Advisory Board, Alliance for California Traditional Artists and the UCLA Pilipino American Alumni Association.

Welcome to the show Joel.

Joel Jacinto Thanks Tom.

Tom Floyd And our fifth guest, Alma Kern, serves as the National Chair for the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA), which is recognized by Washington policy-makers, private industry and national advocacy groups as the voice of Filipinos and Filipino-Americans throughout the United States. As a community volunteer and leader for the past 30 years, Alma has served as a consultant in women’s health and family planning programs for the United States Agency for International Development for 10 years while living in Indonesia. Alma was also a former State of Washington Commissioner on Pacific Asian Affairs. Today, she continues to be an active advocate for the Filipino World War II veterans’ bill, domestic violence, and youth programs. Welcome to the show Alma

5:13 Alma Kern Thank you. Thank you Tom.

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5:15 Tom Floyd Well as we do with each show I would like to begin by sharing some data that our research team pulled together to set the stage.

Well since the early 1900s the Philippines has been heavily influenced by American culture. After the Spanish American War and during the course of the Philippine/American War the Philippines was made into a United States territory and later a commonwealth from December 12, 1898 to July 4, 1946.

Some additional data from the United States census, this from the 2000 United States census actually:

The Filipino American, Fil-Am community is the second largest Asian American group in the United States behind the Chinese American community.

Fil-Ams are Americans who trace their ancestry, excuse me, to the Philippines and have attained United States residency and/or citizenship.

Over 2.4 million identify their ancestry, gosh I’m struggling with that word today, as Filipino, but it was speculated to be at 4 million by many Filipino American and Asian American organizations.

Filipino Americans nationwide command 57 billion in buying power with a median income of $60,570. The highest of all Asian American groups compared with $52,616 median Asian American household income.

Filipino Americans have the highest average income per household among Asian Americans and minority groups in the U.S. and could be comparable to their Caucasian counter parts. Filipinos are also the second largest migrant population to the United States behind Mexicans with an average of 70,000 people migrating annually.

A large number of Filipino Americans live in California, Washington, New York City and Hawaii. Major geographic concentrations in Los Angeles, 375,000 approximately; San Francisco 325,000 and Honolulu 180,000. They also form the largest groups of Asians in states like Alaska, Maine, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Virginia, and Wyoming.

One last statistic, 40% of adult Filipino Americans are college and University graduates holding advanced degrees in the arts and sciences. Filipino American high school studies have one of the highest graduation rates and are known to perform well in state-given exams as well as the SAT and advanced placement examinations.

Well Alma I would like to start with you to kick us off. Just general question so far. How is this information landing on you so far?

7:53 Alma Kern Well your statistics according to our organization your statistics are a little too small. We estimate about 3 million Filipino Americans in the whole United States but you are right about us being the second largest minority immigrants in the United States next to the Mexican Americans.

And as far as being the largest Asian minority, I think the Indian Americans have outnumbered us in the past few months so this year we are seeing that the Filipinos are now the second largest Asian minority next to the Indian Americans.

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8:40 Tom Floyd And are most people surprised to learn that?

8:44 Alma Kern They have a very good demographic description of the Filipino American community.

8:50 Tom Floyd Okay, great. Are most people surprised to learn that Filipinos are the second largest migrant population?

8:57 Alma Kern Normally Americans are but if you tell that Filipino, they are not surprised because Filipino Americans are present in a whole, what do you call it many industries especially in medical profession, in government, in education, in the field of education.

There are many, many Filipino Americans and of course care givers are now becoming a big presence in the United States but in business I am sure my other - - can agree that we are not what you would call entrepreneurs in the sense that Americans are entrepreneurs. So maybe we are not as what do you call it as present as visible in the business field.

10:00 Tristan De la Rosa

This is Tristan and you know I am not very surprised to the numbers in the demographics that you quoted Tom but what is - - it puts in sharp juxtaposition the subject that we are about to discuss which is despite all of those numbers why is it that the Filipino becomes or is invisible in quotation marks in the American environment.

10:23 Tom Floyd That is definitely that I want to come back to in our next segment. I have got some additional information that our research team pulled together about the Filipino American community really being viewed as an invisible minority. So I definitely hear your question there and want to come back to that point.

Before we get there though just some general information to get out and to set the stage. Alma, another question for you before we move on, can you tell us just and just in general some of the work that you do at the National Federation of Filipino American Associations?

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10:55 Alma Kern Okay we are the largest most credible national Filipino American organization and we have been in existence for the past 14 years.

And what we do is number one we are trying to get Filipino World War II veterans bill passed in Congress. The Senate approved it last week with a vote of 96 to one and that alone shows you that Congress is now recognizing Filipino Americans and that Filipino Americans can come together for a common cause and now we are fighting for its passage in the House and it might come either this week or next so those people, my co-panelists please call your congressman because we need to pass it by a vote of two thirds majority.

And then the second is that for the coming elections in November we are trying to educate our voters and trying to get them to vote. The Filipino Americans have a very low voting average. We estimate that only 50% of us actually vote even though many are eligible to vote. So we are trying to get them to come and vote in November by doing seminars and reaching out to those Filipinos, especially the senior citizens and the new citizens to express the voting preference in November.

Our third national program is tutoring or helping Filipino Americans tutors all over the United States to achieve or to perform well in school. Although many, many Filipino American students from kindergarten to high school excel, we still have some communities in which data have shown that they are falling behind their American counter parts.

For example in Seattle we have very, very good data that shows that Filipinos, Filipino American students especially in high school are failing the standardized tests in Math and science and reading. And so we had a national educational assessment done recently and report shows that there are still some communities who are Filipino American students, especially those that have come recently and who are not very fluent in English are falling behind.

And then our fourth of course is we help those who feel they have been discriminated against because of the color and their fact that they are Filipino Americans and always, always these people who are discriminated against the first complaint that they get in their evaluations is the fact that they have an accent, which to me is ridiculous.

14:21 Tom Floyd Wow I mean there are so many different points there that I want to come back to and it certainly sounds like your organization has a lot of great things going on as well in terms of just building awareness and advocacy and things like that.

Joel, I would like to go ahead and loop you in on the conversation. Anything that you would add?

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14:40 Joel Jacinto Yes Tom thank you for having me on and to my fellow panelists, being from historic Filipino town here in central Los Angeles, just a little brief background about SIPA.

We are a community-based organization that was founded really as a product of the activism of the Filipino American community in the late 60s and early 70s in Los Angeles. We have been around for about 36 years and we provide services to Filipino American families, youth and families and other families in the areas of health and human services and in the areas of community and economic development. So we serve about 7,000 individuals on an annual basis with a variety of direct services and I think I am a little bit different because I am in the fish bowl.

I am immersed in the Filipino community pretty much every day and interact with a mainstream community that never really does not have enough information and exposure to the Filipino American experience so a lot of my job is about communicating and about educating and about advocacy is that we are a tremendous part of this American landscape and we deserve a larger participatory role in the shaping of America and the benefits that all Americans have.

15:55 Tom Floyd And what are, I mean I think that so much of what you and Alma just shared is going to be new information for a lot of our listeners. I mean that I am just sitting here jaw hanging open incredulous to hear some of these things.

I know that we will talk about the invisible minority more in the next segment of our show but what are some of the additional reasons why more people aren’t aware of some of the struggles and issues that are of importance to the Filipino American community.

16:23 Joel Jacinto One of the major reasons we have to look is in two areas, in education and in the media and I think in both areas, in both arenas that really shape the public’s perceptions and their ideals that Filipinos, the images and the messages about Filipinos and about Philippine history and about Filipino American history is non-existent or it is very slanted beginning with the lack of treatment of the Filipino American war and about manifest destiny.

The only thing that we really see about the Philippines in social science in K to 12 education is Uncle Sam and little brown brother and two begin educating a nation about another nation from that stand point of reservation and colonial has a very damaging effect.

So basically Americans will either not learn about the Philippines or will feel that the Philippines is just a third-world country and that is about it. The other area that I go to is in media.

Tom I don’t know if you raised it already too but the power of the media, which Filipinos are sorely lacking and if it is, it is the butt of a joke. We go back to a few months ago to Desperate Housewives, disparaging remarks about Filipino doctors, doctors who keep park of the American Medical system afloat. And to belittle education in the Philippines is a tremendous blow and insult at the expense of or just with the want to entertain the American public.

So the lack of information and the stereotypes that come out of Hollywood are just totally off base.

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18:06 Tom Floyd Gosh yes I can just imagine. I had no idea about the remark that was made on Desperate Housewives also.

Terence, I want to go ahead and loop you in.

I think this provides a nice segue perhaps to some of the goals that you have with your organization. Can you talk to us a little bit about some of the goals that you have and really building a virtual corporate community of global Filipinos?

18:34 Terence Elumba

We have been fortunate, we have started developing this search engine technology - - to create a virtual community of Filipinos and we have shared a lot of, we shared - - with embassies with consulates and based on my study, right now it is very hard to unite I would say Fil-Am specifically.

One reason that we have is we look at the geography of the Philippines where we have about 7,100 islands. So you know if you connect this island probably if you walk like 30 miles, they speak different dialects already.

And based on my experience I was so privileged to have worked with a few islands and part of the plan that we have is in order for us, that is why we call it there is like an invisible, we need to for our mission is we need to unite this probably on the - - level and later on the - - I would say the - - that we have. So and -

20:04 Tom Floyd So it sounds like some of the things that are kind of contributing to the lack of kind of unified communications and things like that is just one just sheer geography and separation between regions and also just the variety of different dialects that are spoken within the Filipino community as well. Is that correct?


It is yes. It is like we are here. We are Fil-Am. But in the Philippines we don’t actually communicate because we are located in 7,100 islands.

Of course part of this is not fully available island. But for me I was if you look at the dialect that I know, I can actually speak about eight of them but they are about almost 20.

20:51 Tom Floyd 20. Goodness.


For us, so that is why part of our development is to build a virtual community that everybody can interact like as of now PhilFortune.com. If you go there you have almost 50,000 virtual members right now that are communicating. When you go there you can find all of the services that you need from lawyers, accountants - - to start and - - move into a bigger which - - the things that we are discussing right now.

21:31 Tom Floyd Okay well I think this is probably a good place to pause. I am starting to hear the music for our first commercial break so let’s go ahead and go on pause.

Stay tuned everyone. More from Insight on Coaching when we return.

24:59 Tom Floyd Welcome back to Insight on Coaching, I’m Tom Floyd.

Today the topic is Coaching for Kababayan.

With me are J. Bruce Daniels, Executive and Life Coach for Renaissance Life

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Coaching, Tristan del la Rosa Executive Coaching and Founder of Banyan Way, Terence Elumba Founder, CEO and President of PhilFortune Media Group, Joel Jacinto Executive Director of Search to Involve Pilipino Americans (SIPA), and Alma Kern, National Chair of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations.

Well in this segment of the show I would like to focus on the ease of integration and assimilation of the Filipino community into American society which has gained Filipino American community the label of an invisible minority.

Some more data to set the stage, in general some overall themes across a variety of sources that our research team pulled together seem to be as follows:

Recent Filipino immigrants assimilate into American culture rapidly, as most are fluent in English and are Christian.

Intermarriage among Filipinos with other races is common and they have the largest number of interracial marriages among Asian immigrant groups, as documented in California.

It is also noted that 21.8% of Filipino Americans are of mixed blood, second among Asian Americans, and is the fastest growing.

“Invisible Minority” also extends to the lack of political power and representation of Filipino Americans.

In the mid-1990s, only 100 Filipino Americans held elected office, with all but one serving at the municipal or state level. This is also partly due to the lack, or invisibility of representation, of Filipino American role models in the wider community and media, despite being the second-largest Asian American group in the United States.

Some additional data, according to one of our guests, Terence Elumba has noted on PhilFortune.com that 57 billion dollar buying power of Filipino Americans is underserved because of their invisibility to American society.

Many Filipino Americans are also urged to invest back in the Philippines in order to help the local economy.

More than half of the population are home owners but many Filipino Americans opt to return to the Philippines upon retirement.

One last bit of data before we jump back in our conversation, according to the April 3rd, 2008 issue of Diverse Magazine, one writer Lydia Lum notes “there are the social misperceptions that Filipinos don’t have a distinct culture. For example, Chinese and Japanese restaurants offer their native foods at restaurants in U.S. cities everywhere, but Filipino foods don’t touch daily American life as extensively.”.

Because of their ability to speak and understand English more fluently, many Filipinos “blend in more in the United States than some of the other Asians.”

Newcomers often speak fluent English, which is one of the official languages in the Philippines.

Within academia, the historic infrastructure does not easily accommodate Filipino study either. East Asian institutes and programs have increasingly collaborated with scholars specializing in Chinese American and Japanese American study.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian

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The number of Southeast Asian programs are far fewer than those for East Asia.

Lots of things I would like to have a conversation with here and Terence I would like to start with you.

Can you tell us a little bit more about why Filipinos an specifically the Filipino American community is sometimes referred to as the invisible minority?

Terence are you still there? Well it looks like we may have lost Terrance and so I am going to direct that same question to the rest of our guests, Joel let’s turn to you.

Can you talk to us a little bit about the Filipino American community as the invisible minority?

28:51 Joel Jacinto Yes again one of the things that I started out saying is that in terms of presence in the public sector and educational system that - - mainstream society learns about when they learn about the Philippines and the Philippine/American experience but I think thre is a misconception, or there could be that Filipinos are a homogenous group and I forgot to say, forgot to realize that with over 100 formal years of immigration, migration, immigration from the Philippines to America, you have a situation where there are different generations of Filipinos, different types of Filipinos and Filipino Americans, so we want to steer away I think of saying Filipino Americans in general because you have those that are in between Tom and my panelists, you have those who are multigenerational Filipinos who have intermarried and you have MexiPinos. You have IndoPinos. You have AfroPinos. You have a whole conglomeration of the Mesdiso blood or the Filipino blood and that may or may not identify with the Filipino at a level.

So I think that to say that we are a diverse community is correct and we have many, many parallel truths and stories is an important thing but by and large when my hair raised up was when your staff had made the research finding that Filipinos generally assimilate well into American society because they can speak English well.

A lot of - - especially here in southern California in Los Angeles and urban centers have difficulties where English is not their first language and there is another language other than English spoken at home and so therefore they feel more comfortable communicating in another language other than English and to be able to deal in mainstream society, I think effects, has a great effect on the quality of life and services and their general well being and sort of disagree and want to delve in deeper about the Filipino’s ability to cultrate and assimilate into society.

31:11 Tom Floyd Okay anything else that anyone would like to add to Joel’s point there?

Is that a misperception that English really is spoken fluently to make an assumption that it is really spoken fluently and it kind of helps ease with integration?

Does anyone else have perspective or thoughts to add there?

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31:28 Tristan De la Rosa

Well I certainly agree with that point. I think the three. One of the biggest reasons for you have an invisible minority among Filipinos, they learn English very early on. The - - for many generations of Filipinos is actually English so when they come to a place like the United States it is so easy for them to assimilate. It is so easy for them to melt into the larger mainstream so that melting into the main thing actually means losing a large part of their actual identity so I think really the biggest reason for being invisible is this fact tat it is so easy for them to assimilate because of the language.

As opposed to the other races or as opposed to the other nationalities, I mean Chinese, Korean, the Japanese since they don’t speak English they really need to come together to be much more cohesive.

I mean in all of the large cities here in the U.S. you have a Chinatown, you have a Japantown, you have Koreatown. As a matter of example I went to Chinatown two days ago to buy some Asian food and the guy who was selling me would hardly sell me anything because he didn’t understand English and I understand he was here for several years. He was Chinese, born in China. Came here about 15 years ago and despite that still couldn’t understand English. Now that will not happen to a Filipino.

32:59 Alma Kern But this is Alma. I would like to jump in here. It is true that we speak English better than our Asian counterparts but you know there is also some cultural traits t hat we bring here that also contributes to us being invisible.

For example we are taught from a very early age that we should try to conform. We should perfect our interpersonal skills. We should not try to make waves so that is what we do. We work well. We work hard. We take care of our families and that is it. We don’t complain. For example our city employees here, there is a very small chance of getting into the managerial position and it is not because Filipinos are not eligible or are not qualified but it is because they will not stand up to the boss and say I want that job because we are taught to be humble and to be modest. If we are not asked, we shouldn’t volunteer ourselves.

So that is also contributing to the fact that we are invisible because we don’t complain. We don’t shout and say hey you know that is unfair to us. Don’t do that. Even in business we are not supposed to be competitive. That is why we are not very good entrepreneurs. We are supposed to conform. We are supposed to be nice. Be nice; don’t be greedy. Don’t try to make a spectacle of yourself.

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This is Bruce. I would like to spend a few moments also as a non Filipino who speaks Tagalog and has been absorbed into the Filipino culture from a very early age of 17.

I believe what I find very interesting about the Filipino culture is in some ways it is very similar to the African American culture in terms of multiple different languages, tribes, dialects being united by a colonial power.

It started off with the Spanish, which had an influx of Spanish, which is highly infiltrated throughout the Tagalog language and liberated by the Spanish by the Americans and then pulling the business and the need to speak English in order to do business.

My feeling in being involved with the Filipino culture for so many years and enjoying all of the different facets of it is that many times English and the colonial influence that goes along with the language English as the unifying factor that brings Filipinos together in the United States.

And I also know that there is a great difference between what is called state-side Filipinos, Filipinos born here and state-side and then Filipinos that are born in the Philippines and often I find experienced American Filipinos are often not comfortable attempting to navigate their own language not to mention the multiple cultures within.

So in this sense the Filipinos are a multicultural group and so are African Americans. Our background is multiple and so our unifying culture is English in its colonial base.


This is Terence.

36:35 Tom Floyd This is interesting. I never would have necessarily thought or realized how many similarities there were between both groups but I think you really bring up some great points Bruce. I’m starting to hear the music for our next commercial break so let’s go ahead and go on pause.

Stay tuned everyone more from Insight on Coaching when we return.

41:31 Tom Floyd Welcome back to Insight on Coaching, I’m Tom Floyd.

Today the topic is Coaching for Kababayan. With me are J. Bruce Daniels, Tristan del la Rosa, Terence Elumba, Joel Jacinto, and Alma Kern.

I would really like to spend some time in our last part of the show focusing on the work that various coaches out there are doing both with members of Filipino American community and also within other groups and trying to help them understand better the values and beliefs, the motivators, all of those things but then focusing within the Filipino American community as well.

And Bruce I would like to start you within this segment. Just a big picture question first, can you talk to us just in general about some of the work that you have done typically as a coach within the Filipino community?

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My focus within the community, especially with the Filipino emphasis, has been on coaching the academics and assessments and we had heard a little bit about the coaching around education and some of the low SAT scores and such.

And so part of the work that I am doing is developing an academic assessment program and process so that as I begin coaching with young Filipinos and African Americans and Latinos, I am able to focus specifically on some of the identity issues that may show up in the course of their studies as they are acclimating into high school and moving on from there into junior college or major universities.

This is especially true for the Filipino culture. Filipinos are in my experience predominantly moving into tech type positions within hospitals and often times you are not finding a large population of Filipinos as we have heard in the show showing up in administrative and executive positions in terms of going to major universities, completing masters and moving into leadership roles.

So part of my coaching is around leadership, part of it is around academic assessment and I am looking at working with students at the junior level of high school, the senior level of high school to prepare them to show up within the work force and present themselves as viable leaders within communities and moving onto executive positions.

44:08 Tom Floyd So it sounds like you are really working with a good variety of kind of a cross segment mix from students to executives to even folks in health care as well.

Tristan also as a coach on today’s show, can you tell us a little bit about some of the individuals that you are working with within the community as a coach as well? Tristan do we have you there?

Okay Bruce I’m going to turn back to you then, another question that I alluded to at the beginning that I wanted to ask as well, do you find and this has come up in some of the other shows that we have done. We have done several shows now focused on coaching within communities of color for example we did a show on coaching for African American communities and teams. The same thing with the Latino community. We even did a show on the LGBT community. And I have noticed that this theme has kind of come up on several shows also on this show as well.

And what my question really is that are you finding that is the work that you are doing, is it really split between helping Filipino American professionals themselves and kind of guiding them on their career paths but also working with other races in the workplace to really help them understand their Filipino American coworkers?

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Absolutely. I am working at both sides and coaching with Filipino Americans to allow them to as you say have a voice within the office and also to celebrate their culture and in some terms identify their culture because there are multiple languages within the Filipino culture.

Often times Tagalog is considered the national language and yet it is not widely used always within the Philippines.

So I am also working with some other coworkers within a structured office environment because what happens many times is the Filipinos begin to bond within the office and begin to speak their own languages and often times there is a separation that goes on between the rest of the work force and I also believe that African Americans many times do not understand the diversity of the Filipino culture.

So there is coaching around both areas, absolutely.

46:32 Tom Floyd What are some exercises or practices that you have used that have really helped bridge any cultural divides for example in the work place?

Let’s say for example with the African American community and the Filipino American community.

Are there certain exercises or practices that really kind of helped both sides kind of recognize differences more and hear each other and those kinds of things?


Well some of the exercises that I use, most of my coaching is one on one and I am not doing group coaching or doing any kind of corporate coaching in that sense.

What I would like to work with in developing exercises is to help both groups to start to understand the significance of their diversity and how similar their diversity is in terms of navigating a colonial type of atmosphere and working closely with the fact that African Americans are made up of multiple different cultures.

The Filipinos have been impacted by the Spanish in the American cultures as well as having multiple different dialects within their culture and for the two of them to start to share the similarities, start to embrace in a world or a global view of all of us being people of color.

47:50 Tom Floyd Tristan anything that you would add?

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Well the corporate workplace tends to be different I guess.

Bruce talked about life coaching but in corporate or business coaching it tends to be very different especially for Filipinos as well.

Like I said Filipinos because of the Philippines language and because of their much higher level of education generally tend to assimilate very easily not just socially but also in the corporate world so there really is no big chasm between when you talk about coaching Filipino Americans we are coaching Americans in the corporate world. I don’t see that as a major problem, cultural differences I don’t see that as a major problem.

What I see as a major problem is when you are coaching I guess it is a little bit more difficult when you are coaching other Asians.

Again it goes back to very, very pronounced differences in culture and it goes back to what we were saying earlier with a facility with language so that is, we are coaching Chinese and coaching a Chinese executive for example working in Western enjoinment or a Japanese executive coach in a Western environment.

That is where I see huge differences but I don’t seem to sense that too much in the Filipino American or Filipino executive working in a Western environment.

49:11 Alma Kern This is Alma may I ask a question of Tristan and Bruce?

49:13 Tom Floyd Sure Alma.

49:14 Alma Kern Then why, how do you explain the fact that in the management position Filipino Americans are not visible?


Why is it as a Filipino or as an executive?

49:35 Alma Kern No although there are many Filipino Americans who work hard in the corporate world or in government, how come they haven’t managed to become directors, to become you know general managers and stuff like that?


I’m not too sure whether that is correct Alma.

In the corporations that I have been associated with I mean I have seen Filipinos rise to very high levels. I for example was the managing director for Johnson & Johnson responsible for Hong Kong and Indochina.

I was also managing director for the Wrigley company responsible for the Philippines and the export market. So I don’t see that as an issue.

I do not think it is an issue of race. I don’t frankly I have not felt any kind of discrimination and I might be just talking for myself but frankly I have not felt that and I did not seem my being a Filipino American to be a hurdle or an obstacle to rising in the corporate ranks.

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I also can support what Tristan is saying. I believe that culturally there are certain stereotypes and beliefs about what the role is of the Filipino in being assimilated into the American culture.

And in that sense many Filipinos actually believe that their role is limited and that is where my personal life coaching works around is helping Filipinos understand that they have a role in America and that they can work forward towards showing up in a larger population of the managerial range.


Right well thank you very much for reinforcing my point Bruce. I think many of the limitations that we imagine ourselves to have are purely that, our own imagination. I think a Filipino or anybody for that matter can go as high up the corporate ladder if he wishes and brings himself to be.

51:35 Alma Kern We are the second largest minority in the United States. Filipino Americans in the high positions of government and businesses there are very few of us. Am I correct or not? There are people like you Tristan who have made it. But the majority are still you know your hard working employees you know? That is what I am concerned about.


This is Bruce. I don’t know if I can come in with you there. A fundamental piece around this that I have noticed in speaking the language is that many Filipinos when they arrive here they actually encourage their children not to speak the native language in order to assimilate and not to have an accent and this is a cultural issue I imagine goes all the way back to Filipinos going into the military and the colonial impact of the Americans bringing in English as the dollar English, what I call the language of money.

So I have found many, many Filipinos here that were actually born in the Philippines, brought here and the parents encouraged them not to speak their native language, which what happens is that they lose their native culture which is the same situation with African Americans.

We have an identity crisis in the same arena. How do we self identify?

53:04 Tom Floyd Well I would hate to interrupt the conversation. Gosh I really feel like there is like 5 or 6 more shows that we could do on this topic alone.

We are unfortunately at the end of our show.

Huge thank you to the five of you for joining us today.


Thank you.

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53:17 Tom Floyd And as always huge thank you to our listeners as well.

For more information about our show you can of course look us up on the Voice America Business channel.

You can visit our website at www.ieconsulting.biz and you can always feel free to email me at [email protected] as well.

Don’t forget you can download the podcast version of this show as well on Apple iTunes, just open up iTunes and go to the iTunes store. Click on podcasts on the left side of the screen and enter Insight on Coaching in the search field.

Thanks everyone we’ll see you next week.

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Coaching For Kababayan Transcript

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Transcript of Coaching For Kababayan Transcript