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      Elizabeth,
      Working with people from different cultures can certainly be a good preparation for an overseas assignment. I would be careful, though, with claiming that it is a comprehensive training on how to be successful as an expat. Being able to work well with foreigners and/or people from cultures other than your own is definitely a good prerequisite to have when becoming an expat. A multicultural work environment in your native culture (and I’m assuming that is what you are referring to) does not model the experience of actually living abroad. Many challenges expats face have little to do with their work environment and are more related to the daily routines which turn out to be everything but routine activities at first.
      Are you planning to go on an expat assignment?

  1. I’m always distrustful of those failure statistics – there are so many different ways to measure success/failure of expat assignments. Of course it’s good for us interculturalists to have the numbers high, but in 20 years of looking at such statistics I’ve come to understand that they’re at best guesstimates.

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