Are you an expat, who was assigned to a year-long project abroad, and who feels homesick? I believe, many will understand you. Or are you a spouse, who decided to leave your life back home to accompany your partner, and you feel homesick? Well, that is also quite normal. What if you are an expat, […]
Multilingualism: Multiple Personalities or Just a Diverse One?
Governed by the needs of globalization, I believe it is fair to state that multilingualism is becoming a MUST in the increasingly multicultural business world. Apart from simply possessing more than one language, multilingual individuals are usually more culturally competent (linguistic knowledge decreases cross-cultural barriers), have a more efficient brain (take a look here), and […]
Working in a Cross-cultural Environment: Where to Look for Cultural Gaps?
Multicultural, multinational, and multilingual teams are part and parcel of global organizations of today. This highlights the importance of cultural competencies, cross-cultural cooperation, and leadership of multinational teams. Indeed, the main question for many is how to do business and effectively manage in such a culturally diverse environment? Cultural competence: too broad to grasp? Well […]
When an Expat Visits Home: Caught Between Two Worlds?
In this blog I have written several articles about expats’ difficulties and challenges for the initial adjustment abroad, and also about the difficulties of repatriation. However, what has been less discussed in my blog so far is the time ‘in-between’, namely when the expat is visiting home during the international assignment. Are there any potential […]
Gender Bias on a Global Scale
Remember the last time you did something wrong or experienced a failure? How did you explain it? I bet you could have attributed many reasons to some sort of situational factors. For example, you could have failed to execute some work assignment on time due to having many other urgent tasks, right? Now, think of […]
The Return of the Expat Allowance
Given the recent focus on the economic crisis in financial news reporting, many headlines in the area of global mobility were about reductions of expat costs and, more specifically, of expat compensation packages. At the beginning of this year however, several sources predicted possible changes to the cost reduction orientation, arguing that talent scarcity will […]
Latest Global Mobility Highlights: Decrease in Long-Term Assignments
When talking about expatriation we tend to think primarily about traditional long-term assignments, which are two to three years in duration and imply an employee relocation to the host country. These are the assignments that we readily relate to attractive compensation and benefit packages, career enhancing moves, and profound cross-cultural experiences. However, in spite of […]
From Trailing Spouse to Career Chameleon: In Search of Identity
As human beings we all have a need to define ourselves, specify who we are, categorize ourselves in relation to others and find a way to present ourselves to the world. In other words, we all create personal identities, which entail the perception we have about our roles, interests, characteristics, relationships, and membership in social […]
Empathic Listening: Listening or Simply Hearing?
As long as four decades ago American psychologist Paul Ekman boosted the study of human emotions and came up with what we know today as six basic and universally recognized emotions. According to Ekman’s and much of the following research, people universally show and are able to recognize the facial expressions of such emotions as […]
Expat Lifestyle, Travel Bug and Addiction
‘Once an expat, always an expat’, ‘catching the travel bug’ and ‘itchy feet syndrome’ – these are some of the fairly common phrases you come across when looking through expat blogs, forums and global mobility related articles. Indeed, sometimes expatriation moves from merely a one-time international work experience to a nomadic lifestyle, and there are […]
Global Mobility in 2014: Looking Ahead to the New Year
The beginning of the year is usually when we start making New Year’s resolutions, look back on the events, achievements and experiences of the past year, and take a hopeful look forward to the year ahead. Somewhat following this trend I decided to start this year with a post about predictions for 2014 in the […]
Host Country Nationals: You’d Better Get Them on Board
Expatriation is all about expatriates, right? Probably you already sensed the undertone of this question. Naturally, the success of an international assignment is not only about the actual assignee, as there are many other parties involved, starting from the spouse and finishing with the relocation support professionals. However, it is also true that inspite of […]
‘Where Are You from?’ – Soon to Be an Outdated Question?
Go to New York, London, Paris, or Stockholm and you will see the incredible blend of cultures, or the cultural mashup, that increasingly exists in these major cities in the world – and is growing elsewhere too. A typical person one would meet in such a melting pot could be a half Korean half German […]
Global Dexterity: Translating Cross-Cultural Knowledge into Action
I am sure we all remember our school and university years, when we were filled with lots of theoretical and practical knowledge to be used in our future lives and careers. I am also sure we all remember the first days and weeks in our professional careers, when we realized that all that knowledge is […]
Corporate Volunteering Initiatives: What are the Benefits for Global Companies?
The globalization of business goes hand in hand with global mobility. Indeed, global mobility of employees is necessary to expand a company abroad, to establish partnerships with foreign companies, and generally, to sustain the international status of a company. As such, there are many different goals international assignments might aim to fulfill, which is why […]
Psychological Difficulties of Expatriation: When Inaction is the Best Action
Several of my recent posts emphasized the ‘dark’ sides of expatriation, namely the psychological difficulties of repatriation, loneliness when moving without family, and insecurities when adjusting to life abroad. Whether these are self-doubts, extensive tensions, critical thoughts or negative feelings that arise in challenging situations, we can all agree that such undesirable states are quite […]
