Managing Re-entry Home: Key areas of professional development

In the blog last week, we explored key areas of personal development arising from the sojourn experience. This week, we will shift the focus to examine enhanced professional development abilities that are immediately applicable, relevant, and valued by employers in the home context.

Professional development abilities

The experience of successfully completing an extended sojourn overseas inevitably results in a range of enhanced professional abilities that are immediately transferrable to the home context. Following extensive discussions with returnees, six key commonly reported development areas will now be evaluated.

1. Managing Change

Given that almost every aspect of planning to live overseas for an extended sojourn requires the management of innumerable changes in nearly all aspects of daily life, it is unsurprising that this is the most frequently reported professional development skill by returnees.

Moreover, living in an unfamiliar host context also facilitates learning the importance of accepting that not every challenge is ultimately manageable. This then shapes an understanding that it is essential to become flexible when facing obstacles while modestly acknowledging when to seek help from others. These are subtle professional qualities that will assist the returnee to re-adapt successfully to the domestic context.

2. Project Planning

Planning for both the initial sojourn to an unfamiliar cultural location and then repeating the process for the return home inevitably sharpens a broad range of planning abilities. Moreover, another sojourn enhanced planning skill applicable in the home context arises from the requirement to anticipate challenges in advance by critically researching issues more comprehensively.

3. Decision-making

From the initial decision to undertake the extended sojourn, the experience becomes an endless sequence of decisions in terms both every day and life changing. This commences with what to take to the host nation to eventually things that have been left behind on the return. Furthermore, the experience of living in an initially unfamiliar context tends to facilitate the skill of becoming increasingly sophisticated about where, when, and how to engage in decision-making without triggering conflict.

4. Problem-solving

The process of re-adaptation in the home cultural context will inevitably include the challenge of overcoming a plethora of irritations, difficulties, and even reverse shocks that require immediate practical solutions.

Examples of the kind of issues that will require creative problem-solving will be learning about changes to the transportation system, establishing new routines, becoming settled again in the local community area, and developing new friendship networks. One interesting factor is that the problems that need to be solved in the host context are not particularly that much different from everyday problems in the home context. However, having succeeded in managing these issues in an initially unfamiliar culture, the returnee should have gained insights and confidence to applying these enhanced problem-solving abilities in the domestic environment.

5. Communication skills

Most returnees will enter organisations in the host nation that are primarily multicultural in terms of the international mix of colleagues. However, the sojourn experience will typically have facilitated the learning of a more nuanced approach to written, verbal, and non-verbal communication. This should include the development of a more sensitive reader- and listener-centred approach to the transmission of information. More importantly for the returnee, this development should also incorporate increased empathy for the perception of the recipient and an awareness of the endless risks of misunderstanding leading to potential interpersonal conflicts.

6. International sensitivity

The overwhelming majority of returnees are typically employed in large scale enterprises whether in the private, public, or educational sectors that often have relations externally with international organisation or partners. Consequently, the experience of successfully managing an extended sojourn overseas can make the returnee a very attractive employee given their increased international sensitivity and cross-cultural awareness.

This blog concludes our series evaluating issues relating to managing the return home after an extended sojourn overseas. In the blog next week, we will begin an exploration of new topic of the contrast between groups and teams that includes a focus on several cross-cultural factors.

---

Question 1

Could some skills acquired in the host culture not be transferable to the home situation?

Question 2

Why do returnees often feel restricted in expressing sojourn developments in the home context?

Question 3

Might returnees be required to learn new skills to re-adjust to the domestic work environment?

---