ADOPTING AN IMMIGRANT'S MINDSET

What is an immigrant’s mindset? What does this even mean? And what can we learn about immigrants who have to reestablish themselves in a new country? Do they get things done due to being more street-wise than others? Do they possess grit?

I have found that when we apply the ‘4 persona grit test’ (exploring if they have a healthy relationship with their inner sage, wizard, warrior and robot) there are a trail of clues left behind by the gritty or non-gritty person. We are able to see if grit was present in all successful and ‘successful failure stories’.

Grit researcher Angela Duckworth married passion with perseverance to equal grit. Her research is a great start, but we need to examine grit with a deeper lens. Especially if we are too find a way to teach grit in our boardrooms, homes and classrooms.

Immigrant mindset

Harvard Business Review released a compelling article discussing why immigrants who set up companies are successful due to the way they work. The term ‘Immigrants mindset’ became a business buzzword, as businesses tried to adopt an ‘immigrants mindset’ to solving business challenges.

Circa 50 years ago, my own parents moved from India and settled in the UK. I am a daughter of immigrants. I then technically became a 1st-hand ‘immigrant’ (also known as expat in some circles) when I moved to Asia. I’ve always been in the minority of population in my own country the UK, and in Singapore.

And for good measure, let’s throw in that I’m a woman (since women have their own battles when it comes to gender equality, discrimination and equal pay).

Back to the story about my immigrant parents. My dad had studied in the UK, and my mum was playing hockey at an international level, representing India and travelling the world. However she had never stepped foot on English soil (unless you count England’s colonial rule over India, but that’s another story for another day).

My parents experienced a spectacular fall from grace. Mum’s qualifications were revered in her motherland, and she held a Director position within physical education at an education institute.

Since mum had represented India at the highest level of India’s national sport, she was in demand.

Back in Blighty (and endearing term for the UK), never had she witnessed such hostility as a reception.

A celebrity in her homeland, and absolutely hated in the UK.

WHY?

Because of her skin colour.

Did her multiple degrees count for anything in the UK? NOPE

Did her working experience count for anything in the UK? NAH

Did anyone care that she was not only over qualified but supremely hardworking with endearing integrity? NO WAY

Was she welcome in the UK? ABSOLUTELY NOT

Welome to England

As newlyweds my parents arrived to a hostile reception in the UK. And since the Indian rupee didn’t have the purchasing power that Sterling commanded, their funds were limited. So they rented a room with some random acquaintance in a run-down neighbourhood.

This was a shocker compared to the lush mansion home mum had experienced in India, to the mouldy cold room they were offered on arrival. Still beggars can’t be choosers (or so they thought).

The financial situation was desperate and unfortunately my dad had had a major motorbike accident that put him out of work for around 1 year. During this time, my mum had no time to catch her breath or explore her new home, since she had to become the breadwinner.

And what was the only job she could get? A gruelling labour-intensive job working at a factory line. It was in this factory she first experienced racism and hate. And as a newcomer in a country where English isn’t your 1st language, this was intimidating. Especially since she experienced harassment and bullying from other workers, who gave the new Indian girl the worst jobs, and she better do it or else!

And so my parents developed an immigrant’s mindset. They had to, as they needed to survive in their new environment. They began the grafting and grinding to improve their social-economic status. They experienced relative poverty in UK terms, but their desperate situation led them to have streaks of creativity, they became networkers expanding their support group. Eventually they became entrepreneurs, where they worked blood, sweat and tears, in the face of racism and gang violence.

It wasn’t pretty, but their immigrant’s mindset saved them.

Nothing was taken for granted, and they sought extra revenue streams as their family grew.

UK in the 70’s/80’s was very hostile for people of colour. Oh wait, it would seem not much has changed if you look at the current British climate. The anti-immigrant conversation still hails strong, since Brexit was largely triggered by the desire to not mix with the Europeans, and limit the influx of immigrants.

What is interesting is that the Asian community (I’m lumping the Indians, Pakistanis and Chinese together here), have already called the UK home for a couple of generations now. So they have somewhat established themselves into the British multi-cultural scene.

Within the last decade Britain has seen an influx of Polish and Romanians settle on her shores. This created stirs amongst nationalists particularly those with far right-wing views. And of course the open media documented the arrival of the immigrant’s, which helped to spice up the divides amongst the community.

I recall a conversation with my mum around 2018, where she cited that little had changed with the mentality towards immigrants in the UK. At least our Polish and Romanian friends had the ‘right’ colour skin, this would have certainly helped them on their British on-boarding journey.

And so my grit research has taken me down the path of exploring what an ‘immigrant’s mindset’ really is, and what the components are, and can they be modelled?

But is it fair to say that just because you are an immigrant who needs to survive, doesn’t mean you are going to be successful. If it were that simple (I didn’t say easy), we should all pack our bags and move abroad and become immigrants to make our wealth elsewhere.

So why did Harvard Business Review popularise the concept of the ‘immigrant’s mindset’, and why have some corporates gone on to try and adopt this mentality (other versions of this include adopting a ‘start-up’ mentality).

Whether you adopt an immigrant’s mindset, or a start-up mindset, the thing both these mindsets have in common is that they adopt a position of beginning a journey from behind, and a basic need to survive.

To an immigrant or a start-up, it can feel as though you are joining a race as the last contender, with other runners way ahead of you. You must learn to navigate the track (sometimes whilst stones and insults are thrown at you), and jump hurdles that seem to only be placed in front of you and not the other home-grown runners. You must learn the rules of the game, whilst you’re busy learning and adapting.

Oh and don’t forget to feed yourself and your kids tonight dear immigrant. The pressure is on.

Immigrants and the race

Imagine the runners in this race are running a looped track. The 1st person (gold medalist) to cross the finish line gets a chunk of bread (the silver and bronze medalist may or may not get slightly smaller portions). Then they repeat the run, and keep going round and round, collecting bread or missing out as they cross the line. During the continuous loop (rat race), some become complacent, some run on autopilot, others drop out, and some continue a steady pace.

Theoretically the hungriest person will pull out all stops to get to the chunk of bread first (unless they are dying of malnutrition already, but people in those circumstances would not have made it into this race in the first place). It’s a case of survival.

Then enters a hungry immigrant who hasn’t eaten for a while. They enter this race from behind. They observe the race and they note how the race is won. They note who is lazy, who is hard working (the winners), who is complacent, who is on autopilot, who drops out (and why). They notice the crumbs of bread that other runners don’t notice, and they pick them up. They are grateful for the crumbs.

The new runners begin running faster and working harder. Despite doing this, they don’t always succeed since the earlier runners establish unofficial ‘rules’ that keep the new runners in a suppressed position (racism, discrimination, bureaucracy).

But the new runners still need to eat. So they graft and grind to create a winning method for themselves in order to survive. Some eventually find ways to get on the podium and have access to bread, others survive on crumbs, some experience wins and share their bread with those that don’t, others win and keep their winnings. Others give up.

And the gritty ones create their own track (new businesses) and learn to make their own bread.

Harvard Business Review suggests that immigrant-run businesses have a certain drive (hunger) to succeed. Success may be a desire, but I believe their fundamental hunger comes from a need to survive first and foremost.

Maslow makes it simple

If you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, when exploring what motivates people, the very first level of motivation is to establish physiological needs (food, shelter, water, clothing, rest), followed by the next level termed ‘Safety’ (security, employment, healthy).

So back to the running track analogy, the existing runners who are running in their home country arguably already have their physiological and some degrees of their safety in place. They may be running to establish the other levels in the hierarchy.

For the immigrant however (assuming they are not coming from wealth), they need to start at the bottom. So who is hungrier?

Perhaps a better question is, who has more at stake?

The runner in their home country who has a level of home security, support and access to certain benefits? Or the immigrant who could be expelled out of the country? Who HAS to make this work with no solid plan b (or a very unappealing alternative………return to your war-torn country anyone?).

Modelling an immigrant’s mindset

So if for a moment we acknowledge that there is such a thing as an immigrant’s mentality or mindset, then is it possible to model it? Is it really possible for an established corporate to ask it’s team to operate like an immigrant or a start-up, when it is neither?

If you haven’t walked in the shoes of an immigrant through their own start-up journey (in the face of adversity), can you really adopt their mindset?

The short answer could be YES. Isn’t this exactly how Hollywood actors prepare for their characters? They study a character in depth and step into that character’s being, to ‘become’ that character. How are they able to do that? Well they are pro’s but I’m also guessing they have an amount of empathy and creativity to be able to morph into an alter ego or a character.

In reality, I believe it would take real grit to adopt a mindset you have no clue about.

So in theory a business with little experience with either mindset, could possibly model it if their WHY is big enough, and if they have a gritty team working together.

Social Media influencer Gary Vaynerchuk openly talks about how his immigrant family and immigrant mindset is programmed to work to achieve goals. This is not a lazy man. This is a gritty man, from a gritty family, with gritty goals and gritty way of achieving them. Just follow his You Tube channel and you will get the idea.

To surmise, to achieve our goal over the short or long term, we need grit. Even if you want to adopt an immigrant or start-up mindset, you still need grit, or at least you need to assemble a gritty team.

Take a moment right now to ask yourself if you are being gritty with your own dreams and ideas. Are they still stuck in your head? If yes, there’s a good chance you need to learn how to become grittier.

So whichever way you go, remember to pack your grit with you.

Written by Dee Allan- The Gritty Girl, International Speaker, Writer and Entrepreneur.

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