Intercultural Nugget #11 The Barometer

The international company you work for has chosen you to be the one to set up their new office in another country. You and your family are excited about the opportunity and start making plans. You eagerly read some books on expatriation but quickly get depressed. They are full of disaster stories of working abroad. You suspect that they are written by horror merchants who deliberately exaggerate in order to get you to buy their expensive intercultural training.

When you arrive you realize that there are elements of truth in the stories. After the jetlag has worn off you struggle with the unusual food and feel like a child when you speak using the few phrases of the local language which you have painstakingly learnt in an online course. Your spouse is bored and starts to resent having given up their stimulating job in their home country to accompany you. People seem to be reacting in strange ways. You feel excluded from decision-making and social events. You don't feel that you can meet the high expectations your managers have of the assignment. At some point you are even be tempted to pack your bags and go 'home'.

Back in the 1960s Kalervo Oberg described these feelings as 'culture shock'. For him it was a disease with four phases: honeymoon, frustration, adjustment and acceptance. Many people are now critical of this model and see it as an oversimplification and too negative, recognizing that the phases can recur and not everyone experiences expatriation in the same way.

More recently some interesting insights from neuroscience help us to understand better what can happen when we move abroad. Naomi Eisenberger has reviewed the research on social and physical pain and concludes: 'The research reviewed here supports the idea that the pain?of social rejection, exclusion, or loss may be more than just metaphorical by highlighting a common set of neural regions that underlie both social and physical pain. One of the key implications of these findings is that experiences of social exclusion or relationship loss may be just as emotionally distressing as experiences of physical pain.' * This confirms what many people experience: exclusion is painful.

So what can be done to make the assignment successful and alleviate possible pain? Ideally you should get support from others. Companies can help by providing intercultural coaching for you and your family, not only before you leave, but also while you are away and before you return. It shouldn't even stop there as it is also in the interest of your organization to ensure that your knowledge as an expatriate is collected and shared for the benefit of future delegates.

One simple but effective tool for use on the personal level is the 'mood barometer'. Regularly track the mood of yourself and other members of your family so that you know where you are on your personal culture shock curve.

For information on how the barometer works and more practical tips on making your work abroad a success see Chapter 11 'The Barometer: Coping with International Assignments' in my forthcoming book: Bridge the Culture Gaps.

Coming soon: Intercultural Nugget #12: Bridges.

*Eisenberger, Naomi I. “The neural bases of social pain: evidence for shared representations with physical pain.”?Psychosomatic medicine?vol. 74,2 (2012): 126-35.