Saving Face

When was the last time someone embarrassed you in public—maybe unintentionally? You might have laughed it off, but deep down, part of you felt your dignity slip away. That invisible loss is precisely what Maya Hu-Chan explores in Saving Face: How to Preserve Dignity and Build Trust. She argues that face isn’t just a cultural concept—it's a universal form of social currency that determines how we build relationships, communicate across cultures, and lead teams with trust and authenticity.

Hu-Chan contends that saving face—along with its counterparts, honoring face and losing face—are at the heart of nearly every human interaction, especially in the workplace. Her central argument: when we protect each other’s dignity and maintain respect, we unlock psychological safety, innovation, and enduring trust. Conversely, when leaders disregard face—by humiliating, ignoring, or shaming others—they erode the very foundation of collaboration.

Face as Social Currency

Hu-Chan begins with a deceptively simple yet powerful analogy: think of face as a bank account of respect. Every compliment, act of empathy, or recognition is a deposit. Every moment of disregard or public criticism is a withdrawal. Relationships thrive when that account is positive. She argues that we must make consistent deposits—showing appreciation, listening attentively, and giving credit—so that occasional withdrawals (like difficult feedback) don’t bankrupt the relationship.

For Hu-Chan, face is not limited to Asian hierarchies or Confucian ethics. While she traces the concept to its Chinese roots (miàn zi), she expands its relevance, showing that everyone—executives in Silicon Valley, engineers in Dongguan, or family members in everyday life—are governed by an unseen dignity economy. We all crave validation and respect, and those who recognize and nurture this need achieve lasting influence.

Why Face Matters in Modern Leadership

In today’s hyper-connected and often harshly judgmental world—think performance reviews, social media scrutiny, and public accountability—leaders live and die by how well they preserve face. Hu-Chan explains that saving face does not mean avoiding conflict or sugarcoating truth. In fact, it’s about being authentic, intentional, and benevolent while delivering honesty. Great leaders confront issues directly but do so in ways that maintain others’ dignity. She calls this the difference between “straight talk” and “blunt talk.” The former respects; the latter harms.

Her example of a chief operating officer turning a theft scandal into a dignity-preserving learning moment demonstrates the power of authentic leadership. Rather than berating a subordinate for failing to prevent fraud, he focused on problem-solving and reassurance—transforming humiliation into accountability. He didn’t just save the manager’s face; he restored trust across his organization.

The Three Dimensions of Face

Hu-Chan introduces three interlocking dimensions:

• Honoring Face – Elevating others by recognizing their worth, showing respect, and expressing appreciation.
• Losing Face – The moment someone feels shame, humiliation, or unworthiness, often inadvertently triggered through careless words or actions.
• Saving Face – The act of restoring respect and dignity when circumstances threaten them, through empathy, accountability, and cultural sensitivity.

These core ideas thread through the entire book, influencing everything from psychological safety (Amy Edmondson’s concept of risk-free collaboration) to cultural agility (Geert Hofstede’s and Edward T. Hall’s models of cultural behavior). Hu-Chan merges emotional intelligence (echoing Daniel Goleman and Brené Brown) with cross-cultural insight to show that saving face might be the missing link between empathy and effectiveness.

The Architecture of Trust

Throughout the book, Hu-Chan uses vivid metaphors—the face bank, the cultural iceberg, the human antenna, and the frog at the bottom of the well—to explain how people perceive and misperceive one another. Beneath the surface of words and gestures lies 90% of any cultural iceberg: invisible beliefs, histories, and traditions shaping behavior. When we go on “autopilot,” assuming others think like us, we crash into unseen icebergs. Only those who consciously raise their “human antenna”—their sensitivity and adaptability—can tune into deeper signals, making cross-cultural communication successful.

If face is the hidden economy of human dignity, then saving it is the art of leadership. Hu-Chan’s ideas go beyond traditional management advice. They illuminate how empathy, respect, and authenticity—when culturally attuned—transform misunderstanding into collaboration. Whether it’s an executive managing Chinese engineers, a leader mentoring millennials, or a team negotiating across borders, preserving face is the invisible thread binding trust, creativity, and growth.

By the end of Saving Face, you realize this isn’t just about leadership—it’s about humanity. Every word, gesture, correction, and recognition you give either deposits or withdraws from someone’s dignity. Learning to honor, avoid loss, and save face is more than cultural wisdom—it’s the blueprint for genuine connection in a fractured world.

To honor face is to lift someone up—to show explicitly that you value, respect, and appreciate them. Maya Hu-Chan describes honoring face as one of the most powerful tools a leader or colleague can use to inspire loyalty, motivation, and trust. But she also reminds you that honoring face must always be authentic, not performative.

Authenticity Over Politeness

Hu-Chan opens with a deceptively simple example: when a cashier says “Have a nice day,” the words rarely land because they feel routine rather than sincere. Genuine respect isn’t about polite phrases—it’s about undivided attention and emotional intelligence. In organizational settings, authentic honoring means celebrating real achievements, appreciating effort, and acknowledging humanity beyond performance metrics.

Building Dignity Through Compassion

Drawing on Brené Brown and Pema Chödrön, Hu-Chan links compassion to dignity. Compassion means recognizing others as equals in shared humanity—not as subordinates who need fixing. When leaders operate from understanding rather than judgment, they foster environments of psychological safety, where people can take risks without fear of ridicule.

“Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”—Pema Chödrön

Acts of Honoring Face

Hu-Chan’s story about a homeless man near Carnegie Deli captures the essence of honoring dignity. When she offered her leftover sandwich, he insisted on giving her a theater coupon in return—a quiet but profound act of reciprocity. Even in hardship, he preserved self-respect. Similarly, leaders honor face not by charity but by mutual respect—recognizing capability and creating opportunities for growth.

Motivation Without Money

Drawing from Daniel Pink’s Drive, Hu-Chan reminds you that intellectual and emotional recognition often outperform monetary rewards. Leaders can honor face through creative appreciation: a handwritten note, public recognition, or symbolic gestures that convey sincerity. She shares the example of a manager who gave team members beach rocks as thank-you tokens; soon, those rocks became treasured symbols of achievement.

Other strategies she suggests include flexible work arrangements, mentoring opportunities, or visibility with senior leadership. These simple actions communicate one powerful message: “I see you. You matter.”

The Psychology Behind Respect

When leaders honor face, they reinforce self-worth, creativity, and accountability. The act of honoring face is both prevention and motivation—it prevents people from losing confidence and motivates them to perform their best. Hu-Chan concludes that honoring face builds a virtuous cycle: when you treat others with dignity, they, in turn, extend that dignity to you and others.

In a world often driven by competition, honoring face is an intentional act of kindness that transforms transactional relationships into human ones. You don’t merely give respect—you co-create it.

If honoring face builds relationships, losing face destroys them. Hu-Chan devotes a chapter to exploring how people lose face—and more importantly, how to prevent it. Losing face happens when shame, fear, or humiliation replaces dignity. It damages not just individual pride but organizational trust and morale.

Understanding Shame and Vulnerability

Hu-Chan cites Brené Brown’s definition: shame is the belief that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. In multicultural or high-performance environments, this shame can surface when someone’s competence is questioned publicly or when feedback is delivered carelessly. Once face is lost, “spilled water is hard to regain.” Even apologies may not fully restore the emotional equilibrium.

Technology: The New Threat to Face

Hu-Chan warns that modern digital communication—emails, texts, and social media—magnifies face loss. Without tone or body language, messages often sound harsher than intended. She recounts a Lebanese woman bullied online for posting photos from Harvard, accused of "showing off" instead of being celebrated. Digital spaces, stripped of empathy, can turn achievement into embarrassment.

Drawing on NPR’s studies of “the end of empathy,” Hu-Chan argues that technology erodes emotional connection. When we stop seeing others’ humanity, we stop honoring their face.

Empathy as an Antidote

To prevent loss of face, Hu-Chan insists on cultivating empathy—the ability to “walk in another’s shoes.” She contrasts the American tendency toward blunt communication with the Asian emphasis on harmony and respect. Her story of cutting off a Korean manager mid-sentence, causing him deep embarrassment, illustrates how small cultural missteps can have huge consequences. She redeemed the moment by apologizing privately, restoring mutual respect.

From Ugly American to Global Citizen

The “Ugly American” stereotype—loud, self-centric, and insensitive—embodies losing face on an international scale. Hu-Chan’s four strategies for overcoming this include respecting hierarchy, raising your cultural antenna, avoiding irritating phrases, and practicing the Platinum Rule: “Treat others the way they want to be treated.” These guidelines transform cultural friction into trust-building.

Learning Through Humility

Perhaps the most vivid example is John, the kung fu-loving executive who dismissed colleagues with curt “no” responses until Hu-Chan coached him to recognize that his coworkers were allies, not adversaries. Inspired by Bruce Lee’s quotes about self-awareness—“Mistakes are always forgivable if one has the courage to admit them”—John learned to replace arrogance with listening. His transformation shows that humility is the ultimate safeguard against losing face.

Hu-Chan closes by reminding you that spilled water is hard to retrieve—but emotional intelligence can prevent the spill in the first place. If empathy is the cup, awareness is its handle. You hold it carefully when you speak, act, and lead.

Hu-Chan connects the concept of saving face with an environment of psychological safety—the belief that people can express themselves without fear of humiliation or rejection. Drawing from Amy Edmondson’s research at Harvard and Google’s Project Aristotle, she shows that psychological safety is not soft—it’s strategic.

From Fear to Creativity

Innovation blossoms when people feel safe enough to take risks. If losing face is linked to fear of shame, saving face eradicates that fear. Hu-Chan describes Google’s discovery: successful teams weren’t defined by hierarchies or expertise but by how members interacted. Teams that respected each other’s voices and emotions—those where nobody was ridiculed for mistakes—outperformed all others.

She encourages leaders to manage “interpersonal risk” by balancing benevolence and accountability. When people know they won’t be judged harshly, they propose bold ideas and challenge the status quo.

Practical Steps for Leaders

• Establish turn-taking in discussions so everyone’s voice is heard.
• Call out toxic behaviors like sarcasm or gossip that erode trust.
• Foster social sensitivity—attentiveness to tone, posture, and emotion.

Hu-Chan’s example of a manager using a “speaking rock” to balance dialogue perfectly illustrates respect in action: whoever holds the rock speaks, ensuring equal participation. This simple ritual turns hierarchy into harmony.

Innovation Without Fear of Failure

Hu-Chan quotes Agilent Technologies’ Darlene Solomon, who replaced the language of “failure” with “learning.” In her company, projects aren’t terminated—they evolve. By reframing mistakes as data, leaders protect employees from losing face and create curiosity-driven cultures. Pixar’s “Plussing” technique follows the same principle: responding with “Yes, and…” instead of “Yes, but…” expands ideas while preserving dignity.

When you build psychological safety, saving face becomes systemic—it’s embedded in everyday language and actions. People innovate not because they’re fearless, but because they trust that mistakes won’t define them. That trust is face in action.

Relationships, Hu-Chan insists, are never accidental—they’re built intentionally. Her BUILD model—Benevolence and Accountability, Understanding, Interacting, Learning, and Delivery—serves as a blueprint for creating trust and collaboration across cultures.

Benevolence and Accountability

Hu-Chan’s story about her father-in-law’s San Diego hotel is a masterclass in benevolent leadership. He genuinely cared about his staff—helping them in personal crises, paying medical bills, and celebrating milestones. Decades later, most employees still work there. Benevolence isn’t weakness; it’s an investment in loyalty. But Hu-Chan warns: kindness without accountability leads to chaos. True benevolence corrects errors with empathy and clear standards.

Understanding Through Perspective

To understand others, you must view issues from multiple lenses:

• The first-person lens: your experience.
• The second-person lens: the other’s feelings and motives.
• The meta position: objective analysis free of bias.
• The helicopter view: distant perspective that sees the system.

Like a frog climbing out of a well or Tom Hanks in Cast Away surveying his island, leaders must climb out of narrow perspectives to see the broader reality.

Interacting With Sensitivity

Hu-Chan’s anecdotes about misinterpreting common phrases (“that’s a no-brainer”) reveal how easily cross-cultural communication can misfire. To interact successfully, focus on both verbal and nonverbal cues—tone, posture, and timing. Building rapport turns transactions into relationships. Her client who transformed from solitary high-achiever to collaborative teammate did so by sending daily thank-you notes and proactively connecting with colleagues. The result was career growth and renewed trust.

Learning and Delivering

Borrowing from Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Gates, Hu-Chan emphasizes curiosity—the hunger to learn. She outlines the “Four P’s” of mastery: Passion, Practice, Persistence, and Pattern Recognition. These transform learning into wisdom. Finally, Delivery—the last step—means acting with consistency. In Thailand, a Caterpillar executive applied all five BUILD elements to negotiate a deal by respecting cultural deference, understanding silence, and patiently adapting his strategy. His success became a case study in face-centered leadership.

The BUILD model isn’t corporate jargon—it’s architecture for mutual respect. When you build relationships brick by brick, your foundation becomes indestructible.

In global leadership, success isn’t about technical skill—it’s about cultural agility. Hu-Chan defines it as the ability to adapt thoughts and behaviors to achieve results within another culture’s context. She weaves metaphors like relearning how to drive, navigating cultural icebergs, and raising your “human antenna” to clarify what agility demands.

Driving on the Other Side of the Road

Working cross-culturally is like driving in a foreign country. The mechanics are the same—rules, cars, signals—but the coordination is different. Hu-Chan’s client John failed overseas because he applied his American leadership “autopilot.” He later learned that pushing harder made his Asian counterparts retreat. In unfamiliar terrain, autopilot leads to collision; awareness leads to adaptation.

The Iceberg and the Antenna

Cultural understanding requires diving beneath visible behavior—the iceberg’s surface—to uncover hidden motivations, values, and histories. Most of what drives behavior lies unseen. Raising your human antenna means tuning into subtleties—silence, eye contact, or coded politeness—that reveal respect or discomfort. Her story of Molly Chiu and the American executive Mark Jones shows this vividly: when Mark missed Molly’s indirect signal that she was hungry, his low-context communication clashed with her high-context cues. Only heightened awareness—antenna sensitivity—avoids misunderstanding.

The AAA Model

Hu-Chan’s AAA model—Aware, Acquire, Adapt—translates agility into action:

• Be Aware of your own cultural filters and emotional biases.
• Acquire cultural knowledge with curiosity and humility.
• Adapt behaviors to bridge differences with empathy.

She applies this model to real cases—Tom mentoring Raj across American and Indian norms, and Prabal, the Indian-American leader in Oman, adapting to “IBM principles” (Inshallah, Bukra, Mafi Mushkilla, meaning “God willing, tomorrow, no problem”). Through cultural empathy, Prabal led his team toward global excellence without diminishing their traditions.

Listening with Ten Eyes

In one of Hu-Chan’s most memorable lessons, she cites the Chinese character for “listen” (ting)—composed of an ear, ten eyes, and one heart. Listening requires emotional, visual, and cognitive presence. In Japan, failing to recognize implicit communication (“It may be difficult” meaning “No”) can collapse deals. When you hear one, understand ten. Cultural agility is, ultimately, empathy applied with precision.

By combining awareness, knowledge, and adaptability, leaders turn diversity into gold. As a Chinese proverb concludes her chapter, cultural agility is the ability to “turn stone into gold”—to transform misunderstanding into mutual success.

Feedback, Hu-Chan argues, is where saving face meets leadership courage. Delivered well, feedback builds confidence and trust; delivered poorly, it humiliates and alienates. This final concept in Saving Face integrates straight talk, empathy, and feedforward—the art of using feedback to honor dignity and inspire growth.

Straight Talk vs. Blunt Talk

Straight talk is factual, specific, and respectful. Blunt talk is careless, driven by emotion rather than intention. Managers often fall into extremes—either harsh confrontation or fearful avoidance. Hu-Chan’s SBII (Situation, Behavior, Impact, Intent) model from the Center for Creative Leadership provides a simple corrective: describe what happened, its impact, and explore the person’s intent. This prevents defensiveness and preserves dignity.

Remediation vs. Reinforcement

Borrowing from Marcus Buckingham’s “Feedback Fallacy,” Hu-Chan reveals that remediation—focusing only on fixing errors—hinders learning. Instead, highlight what works. Positive reinforcement generates a “rest and digest” neurological state conducive to growth. When employees feel seen for strengths, they develop competence and confidence—two pillars of face.

Feedforward: Coaching Toward the Future

Feedback looks backward; feedforward looks ahead. This distinction, inspired by Marshall Goldsmith’s coaching philosophy, keeps conversations constructive. The best leaders help employees pivot from mistakes to ideas. Mistakes aren’t permanent losses of face—they’re opportunities to save and strengthen it through learning cycles.

Empathy and Retention

Hu-Chan’s examples—from Filipino salesperson Joseph to leadership consultant Carl—illustrate that empathy turns failure into trust. People don’t leave jobs; they leave humiliation. Leaders who honor face during feedback retain top talent. When Carl’s firm failed to support him after a mistake, he left, scarred by shame. In contrast, those who help employees save face foster loyalty and innovation.

Global and Gender Dynamics

Hu-Chan extends feedback principles to cross-cultural and gendered contexts—highlighting how women leaders like Darlene Solomon and Frances Hesselbein blend assertiveness with humility, “modulating their dimmer switch.” Whether confronting bias or micro-inequities, face-conscious feedback empowers rather than isolates.

Saving face isn’t just about politeness—it’s leadership mastery in action. When feedback honors dignity, communication becomes transformation. You don’t just manage performance; you build people who feel safe to shine.