Managing Re-entry Home: Personal development from living overseas

In the blog last week, we explored a general overview of personal and professional development factors that can be shaped by living overseas for an extended period. This week we will focus on some typical examples of enhanced personal abilities that are relevant and immediately applicable for the returnee in the home context.

Examples of sojourn personal development issues

The experience of successfully managing an extended sojourn in an unfamiliar cultural environment will inevitably influence subsequent changes in personal characteristics, perspectives, priorities, and more deeply held value orientations. The following six most frequently reported development issues are based on my personal experience combined with comments from several returnee colleagues.

1. Displaying increased self-confidence

The most frequently reported personal development experience is a positive perception of increased self-confidence in all areas of daily life routines. This is unsurprising given the daunting task of preparing for an extended sojourn together with the innumerable challenges that need to be successfully addressed once in the host nation.

The only negative perception occasionally associated with this development is that it can be experienced by others as either a somewhat irritating performance of overconfidence or even outright arrogance.

2. Demonstrating adaptability and flexibility

Next, overcoming inevitable challenges followed by a successful adaptation to the host culture requires significant cognitive flexibility. This is typically expressed in relation to continuous thoughtful emotional, attitudinal, and behavioural adjustment in all areas of interpersonal interaction. Moreover, such abilities are also invaluable in the often-challenging process of re-adaptation in the home context that can be even more exhausting and debilitating than the outward sojourn.

3. Projecting greater tolerance and empathy

Then, as sojourners frequently find themselves working in a cross-cultural environment in the host nation, the majority develop a notably more sophisticated level of tolerance for an audience with widely contrasting behavioural expectations, perspectives, options, norms, and value orientations.

This in turn also tends to gradually mould an ability to empathise with others. Such characteristics are universally recognised as being of immense value in the establishment of positive, constructive, and creative interpersonal interactions in all national contexts.

4. Listening more to others

After this, sojourners from the English-speaking nations (ESNs) with an orientation towards direct communication will eventually feel motivated to familiarise themselves with the indirect style, in which opinions are expressed more subtly accompanied by highly nuanced body language signalling.

One significant requirement is that members of the ESNs need to control their interpersonal interactions by speaking significantly less often while learning the skills of active listening. This can present an important advantage in the home context where people often fail to carefully consider the comments made by others due to focusing more on their next contribution. Interestingly, the Japanese call this highly sophisticated orientation the ability to read or listen to the air.

5. Managing interpersonal relationships

Another frequently reported enhanced personal development characteristic is the ability to relate positively during interpersonal interactions with people from across a broad range of cultural contexts. This is important for both the gradual building of new relationship networks for the recent returnee and for conflict avoidance once back in the now unfamiliar home context.

6. Navigating a multi-cultural context

Finally, developing the ability to interact positively with people from diverse cultural backgrounds in the host nation is immediately transferable to the typical domestic multicultural context in the ESNs. Indeed, this is yet another example of a personal development characteristic shaped by the sojourn of immense value in everyday interactions as well as with colleagues in the work context.

To conclude, in the blog next week we will explore some of the key professional development abilities acquired by the experience of successfully living overseas for an extended period. Here the focus will be on issues that would be valued by employers and immediately applicable in the work context. Naturally, there will be some overlap between personal and professional development abilities.

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Question 1

What might prompt some people to comment critically on personal changes in the returnee?

Question 2

Why should returnees only talk about the sojourn with a selective interested audience?

Question 3

Are there significant differences between cross-cultural and multi-cultural professional contexts?

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We shall explore Question 3 in the next blog.