The Coach - bridging the gap between training and reality

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With the level of investment required for an international assignment and the failure rates that still exist, it is important to set up an assignment for success. The proper cultural training provides a great starting point for this, but you can go further...

With skilful training, assignees leave armed with a clear idea of what to expect and what is likely to be expected of them by local people. They will have an understanding of the cultural and linguistic challenges with which they will be faced personally and professionally.

However, once on the plane, they and their families are isolated from their support networks, putting all the training into practice can be difficult to achieve.

Hiring a professional Coach who specialises in supporting individuals to make the transition to live and work in a new cultural environment can provide a link to bridge the gap between what assignees have learnt in the classroom and the realities of achieving their goals in the real world.

Career challenge for Julia

Setting off for Dubai with her husband who was going to be starting a new job, Julia Wallace felt confident and optimistic. Having lived abroad before and attended a cultural seminar, she felt positive about her abilities to deal with the challenges she would face. The domestic challenges didn't phase her in the least. However, the difficulties of landing an interesting job which would further her career proved daunting and she enlisted the help of a Coach to assist her.

Working by telephone, fax and e-mail with her Coach over three months, Julia assessed the market and put a plan into action to find and get the job she really wanted, and after two months she achieved her goal. "My Coach helped me to create a plan and keep a positive state of mind," said Julia "and when there were setbacks or I felt defeated she was there to pick me up again and help me laugh off the situation and my reactions, I learned such a lot in those few months."

On top of the external challenges come the internal ones. Each person will react to change in a different way, but most people will experience culture shock in some form at some point. We often don't appreciate the extent of the roller-coaster effect upon one's emotional and mental capacities that result from the combination of coping with change and the move to a new and different culture. Interestingly, those people who suffer the worst actually end up adapting and learning the most.

Objective Held for David

David Jordan is a commercial lawyer who took up the position of In-house Counsel last year for a European Firm whose HQ is in France. He relished the intellectual challenge he was faced with and the delights of living in Paris. Some months into the job, however, he found himself feeling inexplicably "down" and couldn't understand why.

David had worked with his Coach through all the challenges of moving to France and settling into the new corporate and national cultural environment, and had found the support "marvellous, to have someone entirely on my side and not have to worry about everything I said was a boon while I got my feet under the table."

As the Coach questioned him deeply, he realised how much he had achieved, how much that effort had taken out of him and of the need to take some time to relax and reflect upon all the changes he had managed day-to-day and now needed to really take into his heart and understand. Over the next couple of months the coaching shifted focus and helped David to explore and construct meaning out of his experiences and consider that meaning in the wider context of his life and his view of the world. Today David says "that time was crucial for me, I thought I'd arrived when I got into the job and felt on top of it, but in fact that was only the beginning; the introspective approach my Coach pushed me to stop and take was what transformed me and the way I now look at the world."

Coaching Support Leads to Sucess

The opportunities of an international assignment are manifold: fantastic experiences, new people, a new culture, new challenges. Most people who return from successful assignments say they are different people, more confident, more self-aware, and able to see life and its challenges in a whole new light. The support of a skilled Coach during the first crucial months of an assignment can be the catalyst to help individuals break through the barriers they encounter and engage fully with the opportunities to grow and learn that an assignment can offer.