A Promising International Career Move Didn’t Start as I Expected, Now What?

July 22, 2020

 Carlos is a young Finance Director for a global Fortune-500 manufacturing company based in Colombia. Identified as a top-talent and high achiever, he has been promoted 4 times in 10 years, including a recent 3-year expatriate assignment in a Middle Eastern country. While happily married to Sofia, with two young children, and completely satisfied and engaged at work, Carlos realizes that a recent global organizational restructuring in the Company could significantly slow down his career progression toward the Finance Vice President job he has been tirelessly working for. To prepare himself for the organizational restructuring, Carlos decides to start taking headhunter calls.

 One Saturday morning, he answers his cellphone to a headhunter in search of an Eastern Europe Vice President of Finance for a top global American multinational in the industrial commodities sector, based in Krakow, Poland. This is a newly created position covering 5 Eastern European countries, including Russia. After deep soul searching, long conversations with Sofia, a short trip to Krakow, and several weeks of stress and insomnia, they decide to accept the job offer, which involves the difficult touchpoint of Sofia quitting her job. Then, they sell the house, the cars, pack their household belongings, say goodbye to family and friends, and embark on a life-changing, one-way ticket move. Life was great, though. Carlos could finally say he was a VP of Finance with regional scope of responsibility in a large multinational corporation.

Two months into the new role, Carlos and his family are still living in a small apart-hotel room in Krakow, have not been able to secure a credit card, personal cell-phones, nor have they been able to enroll the children in an international school, since some critical documents have not been issued by the local government. The new office is small, dark, and crowded. Carlos has no support team to delegate even the most basic administrative tasks to. Quickly, he feels as though he is an army of one, responsible for an entire region. Moreover, the global headquarters office decides that the Russian operation is going to report directly to the global headquarters office, and not to the Eastern European region office as originally promised. Overnight, Carlos’ scope of responsibility is reduced by more than half. He can’t help asking himself: What went wrong?

Often, when asked to define what made them successful, seasoned leaders mostly describe a list of upward career moves, achievements, and feats, as if reciting their resumes out loud. They seldom mention the gaps between what their companies promised to motivate them to accept new career challenges, and the role they ended up performing. Like in Carlos’ case, these shortcomings, or unkept promises, are sometimes significant, and occur after the leaders have accepted the challenge, moved to the new job, their replacements hired, and are unable to dial the clock back. However, we rarely include these professional setbacks on the list of circumstances that propelled us to success. Why is that? As a good friend of mine once told me, our brains like to play tricks on us. They are wired for us to remember and cherish positive past experiences, and to hide unpleasant or painful ones, since it registers them as threats and dangers to move away from. Nevertheless, most of these unperfect career moves bring a wealth of unexpected opportunities to create, experiment, learn, and grow.

Next week, we’ll check in to see how Carlos and Sofia are reacting to the adverse circumstances of the move. We’ll explore the stages of major career transitions, and we’ll reflect on ways to turn imperfect career moves into career boosters.

Reflections:

·       When was a time in your life when an unperfect situation lead to positive growth?

Rafael Durand

Leadership Performance and Development Coach

[email protected]

+ 1 (901) 690-4966