My first in a series of podcast appearances on Limitless Laowai with Ally Mona.
Episode #248: Why I encourage everyone to take an International Assignment!
The ideal situation for coaching expatriates is to begin sessions prior to the relocation and run through the first few months of transition. This approach allows the expatriate (and their families) to better frame their experience beforehand and validate their thoughts once they have landed. International assignees often are not mentally prepared once they hit the ground; a surefire start to a difficult experience. Typical questions I ask of new international assignees are:
- What are my current perspectives and behaviors?
- What are culturally acceptable perspectives and behaviors (of my new host culture)?
- What are others’ perspectives and behaviors (in my new host culture)?
This model brings structure to one’s own behavior, their new environment and how they can best fit or manage in a new cultural setting. Expat professionals become more productive faster once they can figure how best they can assimilate into the new surroundings. Trailing families can better integrate as members of a community faster when they have a better understanding of similarities between their personal mindsets and the culture of the host community.
The first question helps an expat reflect upon the unique strengths that will aid them to be successful. Highly effective expatriates have a high sense of self-awareness. Self-reflection allows the client to mentally develop an inventory of behaviors and mindsets; a list that will either serve as strengths or derailers as an expatriate. An international assignee who cannot realize their own shortcomings will inevitably hurt relationships and more seriously, not even realize that relational damage has been done.
The intention of the second question is twofold. The first is to give the client an awareness that there are similarities and differences across cultures. Often times, expatriates overlook nuanced cultural differences in different parts of the same country or between countries with a similar heritage. This point was never so apparent as when I worked for companies based in California, Wisconsin, and New York and recruited Overseas Chinese to come to China. Cultural differences, even subtle ones, will always exist.
When the client accepts that a difference will always exist between a home and host culture, s/he must then have an idea of behavioral expectations. A natural corollary of this thought process is also realizing the power of bias in forming our perceptions of other cultures. Being aware of bias is important as the expatriate continues in their international assignment. Identifying the specifics of a culture is the first step in validating the new behaviors and/or finding alignment with their own personal values.
The third question closes the loop in the thought process of an expatriate’s thought process. It encourages expats to either invalidate or validate their perceived notions of the new host culture but also identifies areas of commonality with their own values as well as blind spots to be aware of. Invalidating incorrect perceptions are particularly powerful as it underlines the negative impact bias can have if it influences judgement. Many clients take the first step of letting go of biases and assumptions and in fact, make an effort to better listen and understand. Another common discovery from clients in this phase is that it is impossible to have a 100% fit in the new culture and that adjustments have to be made.
Lawrence Chi is a coach for expatriates and cross-cultural consultant. His mission is to grow expatriates professionally and personally and to make organizations more international. Visit his website www.TheExpatCompass.com.
A dear friend (and fellow coach) and I recently discussed what we thought made for an effective coach. We concluded that clients would be best served by coaches that act dumb, heartless and lazy. We had a chuckle at the thought of pitching this perspective with future coaching prospects –
Effective coaches don’t have preprogrammed notions or expectations of the conversation, nor analyze the situation for the client. Dispensing advice or setting actions for clients serve a coach’s need to show value to a client or give the coach confidence. But there is no correlation between a coach showing a client how intelligent they are and client value. Over preparation means that the coach has a preconception as to how the session will proceed. The coach should facilitate the client’s self-discovery, analysis and action steps by acting dumb and asking powerful questions.
Everyone has emotions and biases but an effective coach will check these at the door prior to a client session. Effective coaches detach and serve as an empty vessel for clients to express themselves. While establishing chemistry is essential to build a trustful coaching relationship, it should be a means for the client to share perspectives, not for the coach to express opinions. The coach’s role is not to judge what the client says as that will influence the client and steer the conversation. An effective communicator, however, will use positive emoting and active listening to encourage the speaker to share more. In positive emoting, a coach demonstrates interest and care about what the client says but again, does not offer a judgement about what was said.
The role of the coach is not to advise or give the answer – coaching is not consulting. Clients should work hardest during sessions; they are the expert of their own life and the best way for them to learn is through self-discovery. This means minimal preparation for the coach prior to the client meeting and taking a follower role during. A coach-dominated conversation saps energy from and disempowers the client. An effective coach will free their mind of distraction and bias, be present and trust the process itself and follow the conversation based upon what the client says.
Effective coaches are obviously not actually dumb, heartless and lazy but must be able to appropriately take on these personas in a client situation. Not having pre-conceived notions means the coach has to ask basic questions. Being emotionless encourages the client to express opinions freely. By taking a follower role, the client guides the conversation and achieves self-discovery on their own terms.
The fourth commonality among successful expatriates is a high EQ. There is indeed a connection with humility and agility, but a high EQ reflects an individual’s level of self-awareness and general ability to recognize and manage their own behaviour and deliberately affect others’.
Humility allows an individual to be reflective and identify genuine strengths as well as blind spots. The ability to pivot enables leaders to change their behaviour during an interaction in order to evoke a desired response.
A key distinction that separates EQ from the other success factors is that it can be developed; someone who either has low self or social awareness, the inability to regulate their responses or effectively influence others can work towards improving one or all of these areas. Humility, curiosity and the ability to pivot are ingrained mindsets and more difficult to develop. There are many effective ways to improve one’s EQ, including partnering with an effective coach.
We have seen in previous cases that behaviours such as an admission that a newly transplanted leader “has as much to learn from his new team and it does from him” (http://www.theexpatcompass.com/the-humble-expatriate-is-the-successful-expatriate/) and changing a pure metric-based management style to one focused on relationship-building (http://www.theexpatcompass.com/the-successful-expat-is-agile/) have resulted in garnering team support in a cross-cultural environment and success as an international leader. Conversely, John’s inability to change his maverick management style ultimately led to his failure as an expatriate manager (http://www.theexpatcompass.com/the-successful-expat-is-agile/).
You would also rightly conclude that humility, agility and a high EQ are hallmarks of an effective leader … expat or not. This is an important point for it also underlines the importance of having a meticulous and thoughtful selection process to identify candidates with the highest probability of effectiveness and success as an expatriate.
Organizations know the importance of an effective selection process – to realize their return on an international assignment, commercial success, and effectively manage talent. Yet how many organizations truly have the rigor and objectivity to screen for expatriate success? I suspect a very low number –
The four characteristics: humility; agility; high EQ and curiosity are vital starting points to determining expatriate effectiveness at the workplace. The selection of expatriate leaders and the importance of a rigorous process will be the subject of future articles.
Lawrence Chi is a coach for expatriates and cross-cultural consultant. His mission is to grow expatriates professionally and personally and to make organizations more international. Visit his website www.TheExpatCompass.com.
Hearing that Premier McNeil had announced a strategy to build stronger ties between Nova Scotia and China was encouraging … not having any goals or accountability in it, is not.
Canadian government and business have demonstrated half-hearted engagement strategies with China and Asia in general: hoping something will happen won’t make it so. Recognition that China is an important market to engage with is tremendous, but if Nova Scotia (and other Canadian institutions) are serious and committed to increase its Asia Competence (Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada term), the effort has to go beyond setting vision … there has to be measurable actions aligned to it.
I genuinely hope Premier McNeil’s vision materializes, let’s see what gains materialize in the near future.
Lawrence Chi is a coach for expatriates and cross-cultural consultant. His mission is to grow expatriates professionally and personally and to make organizations more international. Visit his website www.TheExpatCompass.com.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/china-strategy-trade-economy-ambassador-1.3557489
The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada has always touted that Canada needs to be more Asia Competent as it rightly states, “a number of Canada’s friendly competitors have taken important steps to improve their own strategic and economic positioning within the region”. So it was with great interest that I followed Toronto Mayor John Tory’s recent trip to China and Japan. A delegation of 35 spent went to Shanghai, Hong Kong, ChongQing, Tokyo and Sagamihara to drum up business, heighten awareness of Toronto and generally build relationships … an understated but essential means to successfully do business in North Asia. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s recent China mission and India mission netted $1.7B and $250 million in signed deals respectively.
Asia has to be top of mind for Canadians beyond trade missions. This “out of sight, out of mind” approach has repeated itself far too often and is one of the reasons why Canada falls behind the United States, Germany, Australia and New Zealand in its Asia Engagement. There was great enthusiasm with every trade, government and media delegate I met during my 20 years in Asia and every time, I had hope that the momentum would continue after the mission; that there would be additional questions, discussion, queries, requests for information and networking. The words I heard afterwards were “there are other priorities right now”, “we’re continuing our due diligence”, “we’ll reach out if we have additional questions” … but the messages I heard were “Asia’s too far away”, “we don’t get it”, “engaging sounds really hard”. I grew to be unsurprised by such responses … no one would argue that Canada has and continues to rely on traditional economic and political partners in the United States and to a certain extent, Europe, because they’re not far away, its’ cultures are relatively similar and engaging them isn’t as hard.
Two calls to action come to mind. First, the Canadian media and other information outlets need to do a better job of heightening the attention of these trade missions and its results. A Google search of Mayor Tory’s recent mission resulted in an article about the cost of the trip, a $3.5mill deal but nothing about the Mayor’s mission debrief on 27 April (a search on Premier Wynne’s missions netted better results). Heightening the importance and awareness of these trade missions and deals is a first step towards building Asia Competence.
All participants on the trade mission should be held accountable for follow up. What actions need to be taken to realize the return on the investment of time, effort and money of the trip? How do we keep the conversation going? If we were to measure the progress, constructive engagement and goodwill gained on these trips a year from now, what would result?
I applaud the government and business officials who have taken the important step of proactively engaging with Asia, but now what? After the fanfare of an Asia trade mission … we all have a responsibility to keep the momentum moving, keep Asia top of mind and build our Asia Competence.
Lawrence Chi is a coach for expatriates and cross-cultural consultant. His mission is to grow expatriates professionally and personally and to make organizations more international. Visit his website www.TheExpatCompass.com.
High performing expats have the ability to demonstrate both humility and agility. In fact, these characteristics are absolutely interdependent. When an expat is faced with a new or uncertain situation in international management, they have to be open to admit to not knowing what they don’t know, change longstanding mindsets, and quickly change tact or behaviours.
This ability to pivot and change leadership styles may prove initially difficult in cultures that exhibit high power distance or strong uncertainty avoidance. Teams in these situations generally prefer leaders who exert themselves over those that are unsure or flip-flop in a management situation. This is when humility again plays an important role. A leader who is open and transparent about their uncertainty and in fact, solicits advice from their team seeks what is best for the group and builds trust and relationships.
An effective expat has a high level of self-awareness and confidence to change their behaviours to adjust to their host culture. A culture steeped in 5000 years of history such as China’s won’t change for foreigners’ preferred styles and losing sight of this often derails expatriate executives during international assignments.
International hotel executives are highly transient; their postings usually last a couple of years before they get promoted or posted to a property in another country. One Food and Beverage Director, John, was selected to move from the United States to a hotel in China because of his long track record of success in the United States. He had a brashness that served him well in past postings but his style was counter to all the mentoring and coaching he received during his on boarding. John’s exact words were that “his job was to lead and to take the hotel’s Food and Beverage to the next level”. He was blinded by his previous success and his American employees’ positive response to his maverick style; his Chinese staff didn’t know how to respond or were inadvertently offended, resulting in low morale and costly turnover in his team. His inability to pivot and change his style eventually lead to his forced resignation six months later. John had false underlying beliefs and wasn’t able to pivot these beliefs; he didn’t believe he was the one who had to change.
In another case, Steve, was relocated to China to save a business that was neglected for the longest time. He is an American who had a long list of accomplishments and experiences with multiple consumer products companies in the United States and Europe but he had never been to, let alone operated in, China. His remit was to save the business, so he was bold with his business goals and strategy and his team. The initial implementation was bumpy and not well received by his team or his business partners. He received coaching to deal in this new foreign business environment. His big learning was to manage through relationships, not objectives. This was a major paradigm shift for Steve as he was used to working in organizations that were driven by achieving goals. Though it took time and with a couple of stop/starts, Steve heeded the advice and adjusted his style successfully.
Lawrence Chi is a coach for expatriates and cross-cultural consultant. His mission is to grow expatriates professionally and personally and to make organizations more international. Visit his website www.TheExpatCompass.com.
Successful Expatriates have these Four Mindsets:
- Curiosity;
- Humility;
- Agility and;
- High EQ.
The second theme, humility, shares a number of behaviours with curiosity. Humble individuals recognize that knowledge is infinite and an open mind is a prerequisite to understand different perspectives. Humble individuals also seek first to understand before making themselves understood; they listen and ask questions to learn rather than pontificate.
There used to be an assumed practice that hiring Mandarin-speaking Asian nationals to serve as expatriates for organizations in China was the most effective. This was predicated on the assumption that Asian cultures were similar to China’s and that speaking Mandarin made communication and management easier. While this generally can be a predictor of success, the element to increase its probability still lies with the individual.
I was in a position to observe and work with a number of successful Asian nationals but also coach and mentor Asian nationals who were not effective. The overseas Chinese who were most successful in their careers in China were extremely humble. They saw themselves as part of the host country’s team, not as an outsider parachuted in to lead.
Ineffective overseas Chinese leaders separated themselves from their Mainland Chinese coworkers and business partners. These individuals came from Asian countries that, at the time, had a higher level of commercial development than China. On multiple occasions, these Asian expatriates operated under the notion that their Chinese counterparts did not know any better. In our conversations, these professionals would be heard asking, “what can I learn from the Chinese?”. The judgment behind this question blocked them from endearing themselves with local teams and business partners. The majority of these Asian expatriates were unable to release these underlying beliefs or it was too late for them to do so; their careers in China never recovered.
The theme of humility reminds me of a highly successful senior executive that I recruited to China from the American Midwest. Peter had travelled and worked elsewhere in the world, but had limited experience in China. He became recognized as one of Shanghai’s most effective executives and was highly sought after by executive search consultants during his 15+ year tenure in China. His success could have been foreshadowed in his first meeting with the executive team, when he declared early on, “I have as much to learn from you as you have from me.” He admitted to me that he asked this question to all of his new teams, that it wasn’t intended for his China team. He was quick to admit to his new team that this was his first assignment in China, that he was fascinated by the what he had heard about doing business in China and was eager to learn everything he could during his assignment.
The example of the transplanted executive illustrates both curiosity and humility. His initial interactions with Chinese employees and customers were geared towards listening and learning rather than speaking and persuading. His approach ultimately was the first important step to prevent judgment and towards establishing trust. While this was clearly an expat success story in China, the lesson can be translated to success in other host countries.
Globalization of our world has made it a smaller place. People need to have a high level of cultural sensitivity as they are travelling to and spending more time in new countries and cultures. Expatriates may experience challenges with integrating into a new culture which lead to professional and personal challenges, productivity costs as well as hard costs for the sponsoring organization.
Successful Expatriates have these Four Mindsets:
- Curiosity
- Humility
- Agility and
- High EQ
The first theme, curiosity, was not the most obvious at first but over time, stood out as the most important. The behavior of “seeking” is related to this concept. Successful expatriates go beyond their genuine curiosity about their next international assignment and will proactively seek out questions and answers. When I speak to first time expatriates and their families prior to departure, successful cases will always have a battery of questions about the lifestyle, the city and history of the culture. They also take the initiative to thoroughly prepare for their move by doing things such as researching details and customs, speaking to other expatriates, and trying food from the new culture.
In addition to seeking and asking questions, there are other behaviours that underline this theme of curiosity. These individuals lean into new or uncomfortable situations and are the first to admit that they don’t know what they don’t know. Underlying all of these behaviours exists a confidence, an open mind and a sincerity to understand and appreciate diversity to let go of preconceived notions and assumptions.
Clients who have successfully navigated cross cultural relationships have an intellectual wonderment about the “newness” of the international assignment on which they are about to embark. While these individuals may have a strong affinity to their home culture, they also understand and more importantly, embrace, that there are multiple and different experiences to which they have not been exposed to yet. They recognize that the scope of the world is beyond their set of blinders.
I had coached a newly stationed business head from Germany. Upon his arrival, Gerhard and I spoke about his adjustment to China. To his credit, Gerhard did not take his previous expatriate experiences in Europe for granted and was deliberate in structuring his integration in China. Before we had our first meeting, I could tell that he was constantly looking around his new environs, exploring the city, talking to people. We eventually came to the conclusion that for Gerhard to successfully lead a large Chinese team and business (with associated relationships with local nationals), he had to understand how they thought and what motivated their behaviour. The best way to understand was to invest time and effort outside of the workplace to build professional and personal relationships, further explore the city through food, culture and local people. His effort to understand, learn and immerse in the culture with such reckless abandon, courage and enthusiasm, endeared himself to his team and local business partners.
Stories around the other themes will follow in subsequent weeks.