Chapter 11: Living in a Different Country or Culture

Overview

Previous sections have focused on adversity and diversity of professional experience. Now we’ll address these topics from the personal side.

As you consider these personal passages, remember that it’s actually impossible to separate the personal and the professional. Years ago, many companies required that leaders keep their personal life out of the office. Many executives in the fifties, sixties, and seventies believed that what went on at the office should always be left there and not affect family or other relationships. Today we know that such a separation is impossible, at least psychologically and emotionally. If you’re going through a divorce or, in the case described in this chapter, your family accompanies you on an international assignment and does not adjust well, your focus and energy will be affected. By the same token, a career, job, or assignment that does not provide challenge, fun, and fulfillment will have a negative impact on your relationship with your spouse or partner over time.

The good news is that a personal passage is also an opportunity to grow and learn, both as an individual and as a leader. In our research, many executives fortunate enough to be posted outside their home country describe this particular passage as one of the most meaningful, transformational experiences in their lives. Whether they moved to a different country for work or simply lived abroad on their own, the immersion in a different culture caused them to look at all aspects of their life from a fresh perspective. You no doubt know someone who returned from time abroad a changed person—more reflective, more open-minded, and more aware of his or her values and priorities. These insights and perspectives can also occur when people don’t leave the country but spend time in any “foreign” environment; they move from their affluent suburban home to teach and live in the inner city, or they move from the city to live and work in a rural area. In Action Learning leadership development programs, we work to create these types of experiences, for example, by taking highly paid executives into the inner city for two days to work in an AIDS clinic or build a home with Habitat for Humanity. Effective leadership development challenges assumptions and traditional ways of viewing the world and are often designed to achieve that effect. But experiences that challenge and stretch are available to leaders throughout their lives if they resolve not to become prisoners of their own experience. Nothing embodies this more than living for some time in a different country. Although we are looking primarily at geographically foreign experiences, everything we write about applies to immersion in any culture that is alien to your day-to-day experience.