Expatriates' key skills

I work regularly on the topic of “soft skills”, what they are, how crucial they are to effective and successful leadership. Often we oppose “soft” skills to “hard” ones, such as technical skills. My experience is that they are not soft, they are really hard to develop !

?When I meet people who are good at soft skills, they often had at least one experience in another country, in another culture. It really strikes me how an experience abroad can boost their level in these skills. And how difficult it can be to be given opportunities to develop these skills, when you stay in the same organization, with the same market, environment, colleagues…

?Skills and skill sets are transferable - once you've developed them, they are part of you, stored under the surface, even if you have almost forgotten that they are there. Your skills are your strengths. You can choose to use them or not – that’s another topic – but you have the choice, the capacity, the agility.

Do you know what skills are in high demand back home?

Let me tell you about key skills that are more specifically developed when you live and work in a foreign culture. And how these skills are key for leadership roles, how valued and in-demand they are back home. Let's explore the skills and skill sets that we develop as expats, when we live and work in a different culture than our own.

There are 2 skills that come first, when you ask the question “what important skills did you develop while in expat?”: multiple language fluency and "adaptation". These 2 come to mind to anyone who is asked this question, BUT I am afraid that they are not valued in most organisations.

If you’ve learn to speak a new language, that’s fine if it is the requirement for the new job back home, but beyond English and your mother tongue, let’s be realistic, it is rarely the case.

“Adaptation” often translates into “Ok this guy/gal will be quickly up from scratch in the job” but also “he/she might not stay long”. If adaptation is a skill that you enjoy, it means that you will probably want to explore new territory quickly. Employers are weary of people who might not stay more than 2 years in a job.

?So let’s go beyond these obvious but undervalued 2 and explore 6 key skills for success as a leader:

·?????Business Acumen

·?????Communication Agility

·?????Organizational Acumen

·?????Influence

·?????Impact

·?????Networking

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Expat skills 1 : Business Acumen

When you move abroad, you are thrown into a completely new environment and it is very much "sink or swim".

You have to do your homework, even if your company (if it is a company that sent you) might try to support you. Basically it is up to you to figure out and make sense of your new context and environment, market, organization, and how to operate successfully in it.

?So, very quickly, the skill that you develop is a strong Business Acumen.

Some call it strategic vision, or strategic thinking.

You need to be able to avoid sinking, by holding your head out of the water (or get a periscope!)

Business acumen relies on your capacity to see the big picture, work out meaning, identify patterns, seek, collect, understand and analyze the data that are relevant. Not being bogged down by what you don't know as well as by analysis paralysis. It means also being able to build a network of "experts" and "insiders" who will share with you their insights. You need capture and investigate "weak signals" which will point towards underlying trends and shifts.

And here is the challenge : to do all that, you need to manage your time wisely, establishing some "time out" when you are not doing operational stuff, where you can think, read, reflect, write and/or talk, to continuously build and refine your knowledge about the business you are in.

Having done that successfully, you will be in great demand back home, because there isn't any place where this skill is not regarded as key for being a successful leader. To lead you need to share your vision, obviously, you need to have one!

Expat skills 2: Communication Agility

This is another skill set that expats develop, while living and working in a different culture.

Operating in a different culture, we are facing different customs and ways of interacting interpersonally, that we need to decode and understand.

As people around us have different ways to talk, to express emotions (or not !), to ask questions, we discover and need to adapt to these new ways.

When in Rome, do as Romans do !

By interacting often, being curious, reflecting and adjusting our own ways, we acquire intercultural sensitivity and agility, and we become more agile and efficient communicators.

Once we have adopted and implemented different ways, this allows us to go back home with a much larger repertoire of options.

For example, you might have heard of direct or indirect cultures. By operating in mostly indirect cultures, like in Japan, you become much more comfortable in decoding non-verbal language and managing ambiguity. A yes can mean no. A smile can mean "I am not comfortable". No question does not mean everyting is clear.

If you have a strong communication agility, in one conversation you can choose to be clear, direct, straight to the point, in another one you will be mostly observing, listening, nodding and keeping your own ideas for yourself.

Expat skills 3 : Organisational Acumen

Organisational Acumen is the ability to read the organisation's currents of influence and power. It is about reading the informal functioning of groups of people, sometime implicit, something you can't see in the orga chart (if there is one !).

Identifying who are the real decisions makers and who are the individuals influencing them - and how they do that.

Understanding how decisions are made and shared/communicated.

Some call it “Office politics” and it can be seen as negative, but let’s be realist and not naive, it is a super useful skill. You don’t want to rely solely on this skill to push your ideas and advance your career, but it is crucial for achieving your and your team’s goals.

Communication agility is about reading another person, Organisational Acumen is about reading a group of people.

It's like being an anthropologist.

Working abroad, within a different culture, you are bound to come across very different ways that groups have to work together.

To operate efficiently in such a different environment, you need to understand and be sensitive to different behaviors, codes and customs.

It's like a different language - you need to learn and then speak it.

Some cultures will be more explicit and the reading will be easy, like in top-down cultures. Some will be more bottom-up. Some a mix of both, depending of the levels, functions or topics.

?However, you need to decode that and play with these rules, if you want to be influential and successful. This means you need to develop your Organisational Acumen.

As organisations are getting more complex, projects becoming more global, this skill is in high demand.

Having worked abroad, knowing different organizational behaviors, and being able to function well whatever the culture, is a super power that you carry with you.

Expat skills 4 : Influence

So many leaders have identified this skill as key in their role and are at loss about how to develop it.

This topic is the number one for many of my coachees. They want to be better at speaking up, sharing their ideas. They want to be heard and visible, to have a seat at the table where decisions are made.

They need to develop a large repertoire of tactics to convince, persuade, motivate, inspire, push their ideas. Even more so if they are managing and inspiring multicultural teams.

In some cultures, personal influence will be built on clear ground such as achieved results: if you are an achiever, and recognized (visible) as such, people will listen to you.

In some others your influence will be based on the quality of your relationships, especially with the key decision-makers (see Organisational Acumen to identify those).

In some others, it will be based on your title, your seniority or your grade .

In some it will be a conjunction of factors, then it is much more difficult to decode (by the way, this is the case in most of our organisations today, which are multicultural matrixes).

Influence is another skill that we, expats, develop a lot, while living and working among different cultures.

Operating in a different culture, to survive and become efficient, to build relationships and make friends, we need to influence many types of people in many different ways.

We try different tactics, hard and soft, direct and indirect, logical or emotional... We succeed and we fail, we learn and we try again.

As people around us have different ways to communicate, take decisions, solve problems, we need to adapt to their ways.

When we have adopted and implemented several ways that work, this allow us to go back home with a much larger repertoire of options.

The example of the traditionnal japanese #Nemawashi approach

You might have heard about the japanese way of taking decision, called "nemawashi".

Instead of a top-down approach, there is long process of consultations, among a broad panel of stakeholders, where every person or function who will be impacted have a say, and where all the consequences of the decisions are evaluated.

This is time consuming, but for any major decision such as a re-org or a strategic change, when you need broad buy-in, this approach works well. It is slower at first but then when all minds are in, aligned, collective intelligence kicks in and achieves wonders.

So, by experiencing different ways to influence, you broaden your influence toolbox .

Expat skills 5: Impact

This one is an essential and strategic skill - that can make or break your leadership. Influence is a key skill?to be an effective leader : an effective leader is able and agile in using a variety of tactics to influence those around you, starting wth bosses, clients, team members, stakeholders...

BUT Influence is not enough without Impact. To develop an effective inlfuence, you need to understand and adjust your impact.

Influence and Impact : These are the 2 legs that you need make things happen, transform ideas into reality.

Having great ideas and trying to sell them is one thing, but building the buy-in that can bring them to life is quite another. Whether you're finding that your ideas get overlooked by your team, or you're prepping for a presentation to convince new stakeholders, being aware, conscious and agile in your impact is key.

Impact is the ability to understand, evaluate, assess (even measure) the effect you have on your audience - be it a group, large or small, or a single person.

So impact starts with listening - with your ears and guts, with empathy and clarity.

There are many ways to gather feedback, directly or indirectly, formally or informally, collectively or individually, to evaluate or anticipate your impact.

I know so many leaders who launch themselves into skilled and complex techniques of influence, and fail miserably in checking what effect it had on people - what a waste of time and energy !

Or sometime they get but dismiss the feedback - it's about the audience "not being ready" or "resistant to change or new ideas"

The risk is mulplying the inadequate ways to influence which build the resistance of the audience - "this is one more injonction from the boss"

How you develop this competency more powerfully abroad ? Because you are exposed to many types of influence, formal or less formal, direct or less direct, and if you observe closely the impact on people, you can clearly see, over time, how the skilled influencers seek feedback, to assess their impact, and take it into account to adjust their influence tactics.

Expat skills 6: Networking

You don't need to go and work abroad to get better at building a network. But the more places you've been, the more people you've met, the larger and more diverse your network can be.

So, as expats, we have the opportunity to build a large network, and it's super important that we do so, to capitalize on our expatriation. It's such a waste of opportunity if you don't !

But to build a network you need to be willing do so, put the energy and time, and develop the skill.

You need to be curious and open to meet new diverse people.

You need to be willing to build long term relationships with them.

You need to be able to build and nourish mutual trust and connection.

What networking is NOT

Networking is NOT to be visible and market your personal brand

Networking IS NOT about how many contacts are in your LinkedIn profile

Networking is NOT about being a social butterfly and talk to everyone at the party

Networking is NOT about distributing your business cards to all the participants

Networking is about relationship building and MAINTAINING your network of contacts.

By catching up regularly : creating opportunities and making time to do so.

By reaching out and rely on / leverage your network when you can, NOT waiting to be in need to ask them for a favor

Thanks to your network, you get, not only meaningful conversations, but also new ideas, insights, new information.

You have access to experts, friends and allies who will support you.

Networking is the skill that enable other skills such as innovation, out-of-the-box thinking, influence, strategic thinking, etc.

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Want to know more about how to develop your soft skills in expatriation ? Or how to "sell" them when preparing to repatriate ? DM me and we will chat !