expat insider 1 InterNations

The World Through Expat Eyes – The Good, The Bad, and The Challenges

Working outside of your comfort zone can be a challenge. Relocating to a new country for work can be taxing. Life as an expat typically means working in a different environment, with new colleagues, settling into a new area and making a new city home, and needing to establish a new social life. The insights from the latest InterNations expatriate …

expat management

Money, Time, Manpower – Stinginess With a Tiny Slice May Cost You the Entire Expat Pie

Any cost-conscious organization sending employees abroad needs to be prudent and justify all the expenses of an expatriate assignment. Smart organizations know that a small percentage of the overall expat management cost protects their investment in global talent. International employee relocations can fail for various reasons: A company may have chosen the wrong team member for the overseas job. The expat …

The Best (and worst) Countries for Expat Job Assignments

Relocating to a new country can be a challenge. It typically means working in a different environment, with new colleagues, settling into a new city and making it home, and needing to establish a new social life. The latest InterNations expatriate survey might make it easier to decide which destination will be best for an international job assignment. According to global …

expat spouse

The Secret to Managing Expat Assignments for Modern Families? Start with the Spouse

Skilled professionals are increasingly likely to have an equally skilled partner at home. This makes it harder for companies to fill overseas positions when the move affects two professional careers. Multinational corporations are starting to recognize and try to understand the complexities of managing talent globally. But we wondered whether they are considering the “right” scope of complexities. As an …

Why knowing Spanish isn’t good enough to be successful in Latin America [The Culture Guy Podcast]

Adjusting to cultural differences between Spain and the Spanish-speaking parts of the Americas Spanish is the world’s second most common language with more than 400 million native speakers. Comparable to English it has been a lingua franca for centuries and you’ll find people on five continents whose first language is Spanish. This linguistic commonality, however, does not translate into cultural …

Why the Japanese concept of Nemawashi affects leadership in a Western context [The Culture Guy Podcast]

Working with professionals from Japan, Mexico, and the USA For three decades Jack Parsons worked for a Japanese car manufacturer who is building vehicles in the United States. In fact, Honda was the first automaker from Japan which established a production subsidiary in the U.S. In his functions at Honda Jack was responsible for training and supporting his company’s network …

What do expatriates want?

Take the survey Are you currently an expatriate on a foreign work assignment? Have you lived and worked abroad in the past? Are you considering taking a position overseas? Then this survey is for you! Please take a minute to answer these short questions for expats. This brief questionnaire is designed to help us better understand how people who live …

Culture is not shocking – unless you want it to be

Are new encounters really shocking – or simply unfamiliar? When preparing people for life and work abroad cultural trainers often address the issue of culture shock. Sometimes this may sound like there will be a wave of negative experiences and emotions crashing on the shores of expat existence. Let’s set the record straight on this: The idea of a shock isn’t …

“Chinese bastards”: What we can learn from Daimler’s cross-cultural incident

When emotions hit a high, intelligence drops to a low Whether we like it or not: Sometimes people lose their temper and act out against others. And it is usually not a pretty picture. When this happens to company leaders on foreign assignment it can create a ripple effect with far greater reach than the untamed emotional release itself. In 2016 a cross-cultural incident …

How to become a cultural chameleon [The Culture Guy Podcast]

On this episode Pellegrino Riccardi explains how he reconciles his three cultural backgrounds Born in the UK to parents who came from Avellino in Southern Italy, and raised in a bicultural family in Bath – an English city which first experienced visitors from ancient Rome as early as AD 60 – Pellegrino now lives in Norway with his Norwegian wife …

How a global traveler discovered the B.A.N.K. code [The Culture Guy Podcast]

Cheri Tree is the founder and CEO of B.A.N.K.code, a company which developed a unique personality-based sales training approach. On this episode she shares the story how her nomad upbringing lead her to crack personality codes. Coming from a U.S. military family, Cheri traveled a lot during her childhood and when she was a student. Now, as an adult, she …

How to build cross-cultural rapport by leaving your food comfort zone [The Culture Guy Podcast]

When he moved within the United States, from Maryland to Arkansas, Michael Spencer realized that some of the stories about the U.S. South are sometimes more than just stereotypes. Or, as he found out, Southerners like their tea sweet. Which meant that rapport building in the Ozarks is different than at the Chesapeake Bay. Then his company offered him an …

When the expat dream turns into a career challenge [The Culture Guy Podcast]

In the past few weeks we have been posting several useful articles on our Facebook Page about life abroad, the challenges of expatriation, raising children overseas with two languages, and repatriating back home after having lived abroad for years. So it is time we let someone who has been through all of these stages share her story. Meet Germany-native Tina …

The Table of Elements for Global Business Readiness

What do expat families need away from home? Which components make a community a desirable destination global business and foreign assignees? Our clients trust us and rely on us that we will lead their teams to more success across cultural borders. We are the aspirin to your expat headache. So we researched the most important success factors and compiled them …

Balancing different leadership approaches as an expat boss [The Culture Guy Podcast]

As the daughter of first generation immigrants to Australia, Stephanie Barros learned from childhood on how to balance the cultures of her birth country and those cultures represented in her family who, hailing from the Philippines, combines roots from England, Spain, Portugal, and Germany. Today, living in Singapore with her family and working as an executive for a U.S.-based, multinational …

Follow your passion to deal with the challenges of living abroad [The Culture Guy Podcast]

Living abroad as an expatriate family comes with privileges and challenges. Belén Galindo Lizaldre and her husband Roberto Goñi Ruiz uprooted their family of four from Pamplona (Spain) to move to Chattanooga, TN in the United States. Three years in the Tennessee Valley have left a lasting impression on this expat family and on this episode Belén & Roberto share …

What do expat families need away from home? Join the conversation!

You may have heard the phrase: Companies don’t go global, people do. And the people who go global to take their companies with them want to be as successful abroad as possible. Who is responsible for their success? There are many factors: The expatriates themselves have to do what’s in their power to get the skills, tools, and support they …

Why hiring for “cultural fit” is usually a bad idea

Hiring for “cultural fit” has been a buzz word for the human resource and talent development field in recent years. Search for the term on Google and you’ll get more than 22 million results. If you follow this topic you’ll see that the concept appears to be widely accepted across many industries. The idea that sorting for compatibility with an …

Why the smell of lions can be misleading [The Culture Guy Podcast]

In this episode Christian talks to Joe Lurie, author of the book Perception and Deception – A mind-opening journey across cultures. The book is is an engaging and insightful introduction to cross-cultural communication in a globalized world. It contains dozens of intriguing intercultural experiences, gathered from Joe’s research and his decades living abroad and managing UC Berkeley’s International House, a …

Why time zones suck when working globally [The Culture Guy Podcast]

In this episode Christian talks to Kyle Hegarty, who is the Managing Director of Leadership Nomad, part of the TSL Group, where he focuses on helping companies expand across the globe. Kyle has spent the past decade living in Southeast Asia and tells people: “From what I’ve seen and experienced first-hand, the area where companies fall short the most seems …