How was your week? Are you starting to feel the cheery holiday atmosphere? That nice blanket of snow I found Friday morning sure did jumpstart that magical feeling for me! Christmas lights and snow always bring an enchanted mood to Zurich, and after a week away at our RockMeRetreat, I feel even more present than usual and less anxious about the daily tasks. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still concerned about the state of the world, the health of my loved ones, and all the fatigue I hear from clients and colleagues. However, in this state of presence, with renewed energy and this joyous state of mind, it is a lot easier to focus my energy on what is really important.

Presence is important as we are constantly pulled in so many directions, and “energy flows where our attention goes” (Robbins, T n.d., para. 2).

I would like to share with you a small confession: Before I launched my business and when I started to blog I had a tendency to spend a lot of time on social media. There was a time when my family was concerned that I was getting addicted to Facebook or Twitter. Luckily, I got over this by developing healthy ways of interacting with social media. However, last week during our RockMeRetreat I enjoyed not engaging for a few days and now I feel ready for the online world again.

If you are like me you can hardly survive a day without your smartphones anymore, let alone access your bank account, google account, or any account for that matter.
When we are offline or have low batteries, it creates feelings of anxiety. I have an ongoing experiment where I am trying to increase my productivity and get more done by using less and fewer resources (money, paper, time, people). I would like to summarize the learning for you and you might want to follow me in this experiment. In my Mastermind Group, we are all considering getting a paper planner again because we feel that our digital tools are just not doing all the tricks. I also feel that often paper gives me a higher sense of security than an app. Obviously, I am trying to reduce paper where it is not needed but there are areas where paper just beats digital tools.

1 – Start with an Inbox List

To write this I started an inbox list I am regularly checking. The list became very long. I am not even sure I finished it yet. I’m not surprised that I am occasionally concerned about inbox anxiety. Once you have completed your inbox list, review my simplification principles and check which ones apply to you. Once you have completed your list review my simplification principles and check which ones apply to you. 

2 – Develop Your Simplification Principles

Here are examples of your simplification principles.

• People over Robots! Any personal message is better than an automated response.
• Move from DIGITAL to ANALOGUE on purpose. Use paper strategically.
• Delete unused apps from your smartphone.
• Turn your phone off from 9 PM to 6 AM. Give it a space for the night outside of the bedroom. (You will still hear the alarm!)
• Use Post-it for visualizing what is important to you. The idea is One thought, one post-it.
• Say “No, thank you…” or “yes, if…” to any proposal for meetings, work, and tasks right away. Commit fast and decline fast. Don’t ponder on decisions forever.
• When asked for meetings give two time-slot options only.
• Always set a deadline by when another person should come back to you.
• Wear black most of the time. On Wednesdays add a color. Stop ironing during a pandemic.
• If you don’t know what to wear because you don’t know if the occasion is formal or not, wear a black suit.
• Choose your social media channels wisely. You probably have more than necessary.

3 – Write your 2021 Accomplishment List

Go through the RockMeApp archive and review all that you have accomplished in 2021. For those who are not on our RockMeApp, go through your daily planner or your journal: I’m sure you have accomplished more than you realize in your professional, as well as in your personal life. Check if there are open items that you wish to close within the next two workweeks.

4 – Participate in our Online Workshops

I bet you’re wondering how participating in our online workshop is going to simplify your life? HireMeExpress is not just a course, it’s a group of people wanting to evolve on the Swiss job market. Global People Transitions is a community of people with connections always willing to give a helping hand.
There are many advantages to joining our online workshops: this group offers the opportunity to meet others who are in a similar situation, looking for a job. Together, you will acquire and exchange knowledge, practice networking techniques, give each other feedback. The shared journey offers you peer support, fresh points of view, encouragement through collaborative work. Personal and professional development is not always easy, but these online workshops will help you grow confident, are motivating, make the journey less lonely, and give you the keys to make it easier. Who knows! you might even meet people who can introduce you to someone who knows someone… You might even make long-term friendships!
To simplify your life in 2022, start right away with a few simple changes like getting rid of the apps you are not using (or shouldn’t use), go back to analog, where it’s relevant, think of your achievements and reflect on what you want to achieve in the upcoming year, and think of the HireMeExpress program if one of your goals for next year is looking for a new job in Switzerland! You won’t regret it!

Please join us and celebrate your accomplishments and let’s practice what we preach. Let’s build even more personal connections this December, make friends, work on our fame and improve our finances. I look forward to seeing you on 1 December in our first free workshop.

Workshop 1: Partnering Masters – Building Effective Relationships (FRIENDS)

Wednesday, 1 December from 17:00 PM CET till 18:00 PM CET

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Workshop 2: Powerful Missions – Having a Voice in a Sea of Noise (FAME)

Thursday, 9 December from 17:00 PM CET till 18:00 PM CET

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Workshop 3: Persisting Mindsets – Designing Work to Support a Global Lifestyle  (& Gluehweinparty)(FINANCES)

Wednesday, 15 December from 17:00 PM CET till 18:30 PM CET

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All dates and updates will be shared if you sign up on our #HireMeExpress list. Please sign up here by SATURDAY to get further updates and our 19 FRESH RESUME CHECKPOINTS.

What beautiful sunny weather, we have had the chance to enjoy these last few days! You might, as I do,  make a point of benefiting from the last golden rays of the sun to soak up as much vitamin D as possible before the days become even shorter. Who doesn’t need that energy to accomplish everything that needs to be done, everything you want to do?  You might be in a position right now where either you are worried about losing your job, or you are already looking for a new job (or any kind of work). Maybe you have even been looking for a while already. Perhaps you feel it’s time to update your resume and your job searching skills, just in case. Anyhow, I thought you could use this reminder from my older publication, “The Global Career Workbook,” on how to get a Swiss recruiter’s attention.

What beautiful sunny weather, we have had the chance to enjoy these last few days! You might, as I do,  make a point of benefiting from the last golden rays of the sun to soak up as much vitamin D as possible before the days become even shorter. Who doesn’t need that energy to accomplish everything that needs to be done, everything you want to do?  You might be in a position right now where either you are worried about losing your job, or you are already looking for a new job (or any kind of work). Maybe you have even been looking for a while already. Perhaps you feel it’s time to update your resume and your job searching skills, just in case. Anyhow, I thought you could use this reminder from my older publication, “The Global Career Workbook,” on how to get a Swiss recruiter’s attention.

Getting a Swiss recruiter’s attention is almost like asking her out on a date. 

When you write a cover letter, you want the other person to like you and find you attractive enough to read your resumé. The cover letter is your appetizer, and the resumé is your main course. If you get to the interview stage, then that’s like having dessert on the first date. And after three interviews, you might get kissed. I mean, you might get the job offer you are longing for.

Don’t spoil the Swiss recruiter’s appetite by presenting the main course in the cover letter.

Imagine you are on your first date, and your counterpart tells you for half an hour how great they are. Rather boring, right? You zoom out of the conversation and wish to run away. The same is true if a recruiter reads your whole resumé already in the cover letter.

What could you do to make the conversation more interesting?

Cover letter writing is an art. With modern technology, applicants often do not see the need to write a cover letter these days, but in my opinion, it is the most artistic part of a good application. Emphatically,  in Switzerland, IT’S A MUST.

Many recruiters want to read it. They would like to see that you made an effort to get that interview. I receive considerable amounts of cover letters, and most of them sound like they were copied from a textbook. Nobody gets excited reading some sort of ‘copy and paste’ write-ups, void of personal touch.  Only the more personal ones gain my attention. They have to be personal, crisp, and show me who you are.

Here are rules for fresh cover letters:

• Use the correct name of the recruiter instead of Sir or Madam. Take out time to research the recruiter’s name. This portrays you as serious. Make sure you also spell the names of references correctly. Be respectful and address recruiters formally.
• Make the letter appealing and nice-looking by using one font only and adhering to standard letter writing style in the country you are applying to.
• Speak about the needs of the other party before you speak about yours. This is so important because the prospective job is about what you can bring to the table.
• Find a personal connection between either you and the company or you and the recruiter. Maybe you use one of their products, or associate positive feelings with the brand because of a personal story.
• If you copy and paste (which is not a good idea in general), please check that you did not use the wrong company name or contact person. It helps to read the letter out loud.
• Use active language and complete sentences. When I say active language, I ask you to use more verbs than nouns, avoid passive constructs and keep sentences short.
• If you are not an English native speaker, check your translation and let a native speaker review your grammar. Most recruiters get irritated when they find grammatical errors in cover letters.
• Be brief and stick to a maximum of one page. Five paragraphs are sufficient.
• Add your contact information in the last paragraph, especially your phone number and email ID. Make sure your email sounds respectable, and the name is memorable. Email addresses like ‘sexynancy@gmail.com’ are not acceptable.
• Avoid slang and casual writing style. You are a professional, so behave like one! Even if you are from Generation Y or Z, remember that this is a letter and not a chat. The person you want to date might be the age of your parents.

Here’s to the sunny weather, boosting your energy to take that next important step: preparing your application file. I hope these tips help you write the best cover letter you can write to catch the Swiss recruiters’ attention, get to the “dessert” stage, and get you the job you are hoping for! 

HireMeExpress 2022 – Pre-Workshops for all Club Members

I will teach you insights on 

Workshop No. 1:  Partnering Masters – Building Effective Relationships

Workshop No. 2: Powerful Missions – Having a Voice in a Sea of Noise

Workshop No. 3: Persisting Mindsets – Designing Work to Support a Global Lifestyle  (& Gluehweinparty)

All invites will be shared when you sign up on our HireMeExpress list. 

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Reminder: Sign up here to find out everything you need to know in order to land a job in Switzerland or another market you are not familiar with. We will send you our 19 Fresh Resume Checkpoints and further material such as videos. In case you have any questions you can email us via angela@globalpeopletransitions.com.

As I mentioned last week I am starting the year-end processes a week earlier this year. This essentially means that I am dedicating a weekend to sorting out old stuff, decluttering and preparing the apartment for cleaning. I would like to do this before I start decorating for the holidays because it is giving us a fresher spirit and as I mentioned most of us get really stressed in the last few weeks before the year end as they wish to focus more on family and friends during the holidays. What I would also like to do is finish open ends and projects and before starting too many new ideas and projects reduce the “Pendenzenliste” (It’s one of my favorite Swiss German words and can be translated into the list of open tasks). Most of my friends and I keep laughing about the tasks that never seem to get off the Pendenzenliste and keep you feeling guilty even if you are highly productive all the time. I shared with you already that I’m a bit more relaxed when it comes to my home so “Cleaning out the drawers” would definitely be on the Pendenzenliste. But before I dive into cleaning the apartment there are issues in the order of my home office that urgently need attention.

1 – Start with the Old Paper Files and Reduce your Pendenzen

For many of us it is worse than any other five-letter word.  It’s because paper can weigh you down and hold you back. Getting rid of paper will make you more productive. You might have noticed that when you don’t feel in your comfort zone you need to have something in writing to hold on to. You can reduce complexity by having a plan or calendar of events on the wall. You might reduce your stage fright by writing down and scripting speeches and conference calls.

What it means to let go is that you need to remember more but also that you focus on what’s really important. In the name of productivity I am trying to avoid tasks that do not add value to my business or my clients. In the old days we used to spend hours sorting and deleting emails or filing documents. Being a business owner now I am trying to reduce such work to a bare minimum as I have found out that if I cannot find something it is usually because I am in FRANTIC mode. In RELAXED mode I find all my documents on the laptop by working with the search function or using our elaborate system (It’s just an excel sheet with links to the respective document). 

2 – Simplify and standardize by reducing clutter.

Simplifying can also be done at home. I don’t have an extensive wardrobe. Reading articles on productivity made me standardize my clothes even more so I don’t have to make decisions about what to wear. I also place matching clothes together on the rack. I try to have all clothes “ready to wear” because if I go out in the dark I might not see certain colors or holes or stains. So anything stained, holed or old has to go into the “Altkleidersack” (old clothes bag). The art is to throw the old clothes into the bin where they belong and will be picked up for charity right after you take them out. Otherwise clothes and other clutter have a sneaky way to find their way back into your home.

 3 – Use color codes, the three-box system and laminated signs to sort your office.

In my home office I use a very clean and color-coded physical filing system. It helps me find files that I need to see printed. It also helps me to grab the right file when I am on my way to a client. Most of the time I work without paper though. I also structure my wardrobe by color and even try to sort items by color. It doesn’t always work but gives me a great sense of order and accomplishment.

The three-box system is very simple. You need to have three boxes and give them three functions: box 1: bin / recycling, box 2: donations and box 3: treasures. You need to ensure that you go to throw away the bin right away. The treasures you can put in a box and leave them there until your next cleaning exercise.

4 – Take the first step by sorting for half an hour a day.

One important tip when you start to work on this process is to limit it to half an hour a day. Set the clock and reward yourself afterwards for example by buying yourself a bunch of flowers. Letting go of clutter means to learn to rely more on your brain.

Tell us what you do to sort out your clutter and find order in your life!

HOMEWORK

Read this related blog post.

Despite what is happening in the world I have been keeping myself really busy. Honestly, getting stuff done gives me deep satisfaction, and having a lot of great client conversations raises my energy level to the max. So, I personally feel that I work on my mission to bring the Human Touch back into Global Mobility and my team is helping me along.

However, many of you work in corporations and don’t have the luxury that I have where I can choose how I spend my time and with whom I am talking. Many of you still feel the pressure of having a boss or someone to report to and their demands sometimes drive you crazy.

However, being “busy” is not the same as being “effective” so I wanted to share a method that has helped me over the last few years to feel a sense of accomplishment over the holidays. You probably will notice that this year the annual Christmas rush and madness will be different. Not only because we work from home a lot more. 

Our common anxiety and fatigue level is a lot higher this year than in the past and working towards the year-end might even seem less stressful this year because your adrenaline has been high the whole year. 

I wanted to list a few topics that I am observing in projects and coaching conversations and give you a method on how you can deal with it in a playful way. This is also an activity where you can involve your family because

“Family Success is a Team Sport”.

Perpetual Machine

What I am observing inside corporations and what increasingly frustrates me is the lack of accountability and constant waste of resources and time. It reminds me of Jean Tingeluy’s artwork “Heureka” at my favorite spot in Zurich. Often it seems that many functions and positions are just there to maintain a well-oiled machine but the value they add to the client or company they serve is minimal. 

Data Squash

We also use a lot of time correcting or searching for data because the original source does not contain the data or the data is flawed. We have to rely on our brains to remember specific scenarios so we can cover all exceptional circumstances. We hire more consultants to help us administer a workflow tool that does not deliver the data we need instead of training the data entry specialist in the Philippines or in India so that the data is entered correctly. We implement three levels of controls instead of helping the first handler of the data to deliver a zero error quality report.

Process Porcelain

Do you often chase someone because they forgot to take action on an item they were supposed to deliver so you can continue your process? You might be correcting processes and mending broken process porcelain because the decision-makers do not understand the process and just run around like a headless chicken. Sometimes you might feel like a mother at work trying to collect the toys that the children left lying around all over the floor. You pick them up so that nobody trips but you are also not really noticed as you do your work quietly in the background.

Digitalization Babies

Many digital processes still are in the baby’s shoes so they often need someone to check them and make sure that they are completed. I have been in arguments with my bank because they don’t offer a draft function so that I can enter payments right when I receive the invoice and execute them later when I have enough funds in the account. My payments regularly get stuck because of cash flow issues. Then I need to build an administration around the digital process. And the funny thing is that here they always blame the customer. They hardly ever say: “This is an interesting idea and if we can help you with that we will consider it.”. 

Lego Fail

The more digital you work the more you miss the link between systems. Be it through platforms or API’s. However, often you work with many different tools and providers, and then it is your responsibility to link them all and like LEGO build a castle or a spaceship from scratch. Don’t get me wrong, I like IKEA approaches too, but sometimes I wish I had a more detailed understanding of programming languages so I could focus on important deep work rather than fixing the lego fail of my collaborative networks.

We lost all of our ideals of Total Quality Management from the good old nineties. At the end of a day, we often feel exhausted but haven’t achieved anything meaningful. 

What I have noticed is that I can live with certain flaws in my personal space. I can accept a less than perfect light in the bathroom but I cannot accept it in my work. 

One of the reasons why my apartment almost looks the same as five years ago is that my energy goes more into my profession. Now that we are spending more time at home it has become more of a priority for me so I clean up regularly and try to keep the recycling piles low. I also have a few home improvement projects to work on. 

As the paid work usually takes over and that leads to me not speaking to good friends forever, I have come up with a solution for you and me. Let me know how it works for you.

The 25 Priorities Kanban Board

In our team, we have developed a visualization method (The 25 Priorities Kanban Board) to help us prioritize work before we add tasks to Slack, Trello, and the number of G-Sheets that I use for planning. 

I am a big fan of planning and consistency, so this method helps me keep track of my priorities and get stuff done.

You need 

• A stack of colorful post-it notes.
• A few big pens
• A flipchart size (A1) poster or a blank wall.

Here is how it goes:

• Five Pink Post-It Notes (Work Projects)- Here, you write down your five most important work projects to complete until Mid-December.
• Five Green Post-It Notes (Home Improvement) – Write down five projects you wish to complete at home before the holidays. 
• Five Yellow Post-It Notes (People) – Write down five people you wish to connect with before the year-end.  
• Five Orange Post-It Notes (Love Tasks) – Write down five requests of your partner or children that you would like to fulfill until the year-end.
• Five White Post-It Notes (Self-Care) – Here, you write down five wishes that you will grant yourself before the year-end.

Homework: Send me a photo of your Kanban Board.

A study by Learnlight shows that four in ten international assignments are judged to be a failure. And yet the number of overseas assignments continues to rise. Global companies are under considerable pressure to determine what makes a successful overseas assignment and to understand why they so often fail. However, what has been so often overlooked is why it is difficult to measure expatriate performance. Since both assignment failure and success depends on how expats perform on the job, it becomes pertinent to consider how expats perform and why it is difficult to measure their performance. In the following points, I will highlight and elaborate on five reasons why it is difficult to measure expatriate performance.

• Goals for Expats are often not clearly defined. They are often conflicting as they have to take into account the interests of the home and host company, or headquarters and subsidiaries. It becomes difficult to work effectively when expats are trying to achieve the home company goals while simultaneously trying to fit in the expectations of the host company. More expats would perform well if the goals of the host company align with the objectives of the home company.
• Performance ratings have been calibrated for years. However, we know that there is an unconscious bias in the data. The first rater is usually a direct manager.  This person potentially judges their own weaknesses less and thinks that the expat is responsible for failure alone. However, often the manager in the host country does not help the expat to solve dilemmas. The home country manager should consider it a responsibility to make it seamless for the expatriate to integrate well into the system. One of the biggest factors that determine whether or not an assignee would be successful is who his or her line manager is. 
• Cultural concepts of performance are biased. Definitions of “high performance” have been largely influenced by Western values and did not take team performance into account. The gig economy will need stronger team collaboration and fewer individual players. Eastern values and approaches might have an advantage now.
• Management by Objectives is outdated. We need a new conceptual framework of performance. Even in the past setting annual targets was not always the best method of judging performance (irrespective of expat or local).
• Expat managers usually lack the informal network and access to the host culture so it is not surprising if their performance drops in Y1. It is quite impossible to know how to navigate in a terrain that you are not familiar with. Also, they are busy adjusting and have a family to integrate into the new life abroad. One might think that we can accelerate the cultural adjustment and then just go “back to the normal way of judging performance” but I would advise against such thinking. It takes time to fit into the system and culture of a new location. Hence, the whole process of cultural adjustment takes its tolls on expat performance.

Expatriate Performance and Potential Assessment

Scullion, Collings (2011) describe the performance assessment system at Novartis which will be used as a generic example for global companies. The system “…grades employees on (a) business results (the “what”) and (b) values and behaviors (the “how”). While the business results are unique to each business area, the values and behaviors (ten in all) are common across the entire firm.” Together with the potential assessment talents are assessed in a nine-box matrix. (Scullion, Collings, 2011, p. 29)

Basing expats’ performance solely on business results may not give the overall picture of all that transpires to make an assignment either a success or a failure. There should be a holistic overview of all the processes that go into cultural adjustment and family acculturation. 

Expat adjustment as a success factor – The Term “Expat Failure” and what it commonly refers to

When discussing the success of an international assignment or project a common way to measure “success” is expat adjustment which in contradiction to “expat failure” is often equalized with completing an assignment for the planned assignment period.

“The authors leave open how long it may take an expatriate to attain the same level of applicability and clarity abroad as at home, stressing that one or two years may not suffice. To reach higher levels, the person may very well have experienced an identity transformation far more profound than passing through a cycle of adjustment.” Hippler, Haslberger, Brewster (2017, p.85)

“A “comprehensive model of success is missing” and Caligiuri’s (1997) suggestion that future studies should clarify what is meant by adjustment, as opposed to performance, indicated the need for definitional and discriminant clarity when examining performance.” Care and Donuhue (2017, p.107)

Talent management approaches in Germany and Switzerland and most of Europe are driven by the U.S.-based ideas about talent identification and definitions and use the “nine-box grid” to select key talents with a halo-effect towards white males. 

Influence of psychological contract on expatriate retention

An issue in expatriation is often the lack of clarity around the role after repatriation. A psychological contract exists between the expat and the company but there is no written agreement or clear understanding of the next role or roles in the process. Expectations are not properly managed and often expats are disappointed with their title, pay or role content in the next role when returning from an assignment.

Two years after repatriation there are several factors influencing retention significantly. 

1. a) re-entry cultural adjustment, another 
2. b) role expectation mismatch and 
3. c) the lack of applicability of the learning from the previous assignment.

The Integration of Global Mobility and Global Talent Management

One of the reasons for this lack of synchronization is the missing integration of global mobility and global talent management activities and functions in today’s organizations. The only guidance focuses on academic concepts of expatriate return on investment.

A Holistic Competency Model is Needed

I claim that we not only need a better integration of Talent Management and Global Mobility (hence the term Talent Mobility) but we also need to look at our performance management systems, global competency models, recruiting and talent identification process under a new light. We finally need to advance HR to an interculturally competent function and reduce the inherent bias in all of our processes, tools and leaders. This will be a major task in a post-colonial BANI World.

My Global Competency Model has been an attempt to integrate Eastern and Western mindsets into a model. Our coaching approach builds on Eastern and Western coaching practices. We included the ethics by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). The holistic approach of my coach, educator Drs. Boudewijn Vermeulen, further developed by Dr. Eva Kinast into a holistic, body-oriented and intercultural coaching method. This method focuses on building and maintaining effective trust-based relationships, the body-mind-heart connection and is linked to the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. 

The model also assumes weekly reflection, regular practices, which originate from Eastern mindsets and concepts such as ZEN. We integrated body learning which was taught to me by Dr. Jay Muneo Jay Yoshikawa in a course of Eastern Mindscapes (back in 2005 at the Summer Institute of Intercultural Communication in Portland, Oregon). Reflected experiences are based on the single-loop and double-loop learning theory of Argyris and Schoen. Also, experiential learning that I first learned from Thiaggi about 20 years ago and have further developed into all of my programs.

Trust and Relationships are Collaboration Glue

In almost every coaching session right now leaders talk to me about the need to get better at building trust (also in a virtual setting) and relationships. Relationships in my view are the glue to working well together within a monocultural but also multicultural environment. Collaboration (as opposed to Cooperation) requires a higher level of trust among project team members. Agile needs it. And Diversity, Equity and Inclusion demand it. 

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR GLOBAL MOBILITY?

“Better alignment between global mobility and companies’ global talent agenda is a precondition for making mobility truly strategic and helping companies achieve a significant return on investment with their international assignments.”

• Widening the scope of Global Mobility to include international hires, cross-border commuters, international transfers, lifestyle assignments, global digital nomads and other groups of internationally mobile professionals.
• Reviewing all HR models and processes to reduce bias and White Supremacy should be on the priority list of every HR leader but you can also make it your personal mission. Help us create a world where everyone has a chance and invite those to the table that are often overlooked.
• Defining assignment objectives up front and tracking progress throughout assignment. You must ensure that not only the home company or headquarters have clear cut objectives for the expat  but also that the host company’s objectives are in sync and align with that of the headquarters. Coach the expat or send them to me for coaching. Help them be a success rather than a failure.

• Improving productivity by addressing development areas such as communication, process and culture barriers. Key problem areas should be identified. Oftentimes, expats complain about loss of connection to the home company. Nobody from the headquarters or home company is interested in how they fare in the new environment. If expats feel deserted, it could adversely affect their performance output. Proffering viable solutions to pain points of expats, such as cultural roadblocks would help improve expats performance. Give them the vocabulary to speak about their blockers, send them to intercultural awareness training. 

• Helping coordinate annual talent review of all expatriates. Reviews like this give expats the opportunity to express their perception of the international assignment. 

• Increase the expat’s self-awareness. Let expats learn more about themselves. We use the IDI (Intercultural Development Inventory) and ICBI™ (Individual Cultural Blueprint Indicator) for example for self-awareness assessment and the outcomes can be a great conversation starter in a coaching session.

You already know that I am on a mission to bring the Human Touch back into Global Mobility and therefore we would also like to contribute to research in the growing body of knowledge around Global Mobility. Our Academic Intern Monica Kim Kuoy is running a research project and I hope you would like to support us by being an interview partner or sounding board for our ideas.

We look forward to hearing from you.

RESOURCES

Who is an Expatriate Employee?

https://expatfinancial.com/who-is-an-expatriate-employee/ 

https://feibv.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Master-Thesis_Weinberger-Angela_Jan-2019_Final.pdf