Managing Re-entry Home: Evaluating new abilities acquired overseas

In the blog last week, we evaluated several practical strategies that could help returnee sojourners to minimise re-entry challenges. This week we will begin to explore key areas of personal and professional development acquired while living successfully for an extended period in a host cultural context.

Reflecting on personal and professional abilities

One of the most significant benefits of living overseas for an extended period is the opportunity to develop a unique and diverse set of new skills. Moreover, the experience of navigating and adapting to an unfamiliar cultural environment helps to significantly improve a range of invaluable personal self-management competencies. This is partly due to enhanced self-confidence combined with a sharpened and enhanced level of problem-solving competency.

Then, in addition to personal and professional issues, long-term sojourners also often acquire several new skills, hobbies, and interests that can enhance attractive personal characteristics and a more sophisticated perspective on social interaction. This, in turn, will facilitate them becoming considerably more interesting in career, social, and interpersonal contexts.

However, it is important that returnees are encouraged to positively reflect on such learning, as many can rather frustratingly remain unaware of the fundamental changes in their character and the importance of their newly acquired skills, while also undervaluing the relevance of these developments in the home context.

Examples of key new learnt abilities

Some of the development issues that will be explored over the next two weeks include personal growth, professional development, cultural sensitivity, improved communication awareness, confidence enhancement, and more nuanced interpersonal behavioural interaction. We shall also examine some common newly acquired interests, hobbies, and life skills together with their immediate applicable value in the home context.

To conclude, while considerable support is typically provided by organisation to help sojourners with their entry into an unfamiliar host context, it is becoming increasingly understood that the same employers must support sojourners on their return home. This includes facilitating an understanding of all the personal changes and new skills acquired during the sojourn together with how they can be applied positively in the home context.

Next week, we will evaluate personal development and abilities while in the following week we will evaluate enhanced professional development learning.

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Question 1

What adaptation challenges in the host nation might help improve self-management abilities?

Question 2

Why do some returnees fail to recognise changes in their personality and interpersonal behaviour?

Question 3

To what extent would the new skills acquired in the host nation be transferable to the home context?

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We will discuss Question 3 in more detail next week.