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The Relational Element in the Partner’s Adjustment to a Global Assignment

October 17, 2010 by MSI

If you are reading this blog entry you are likely familiar with the term “culture shock” and its common symptoms of disorientation, depression, helplessness and fear. Google the term, and you will be rewarded with several pages of listings, most of which will tie the phenomenon to the experience of global relocation.

Observant and concerned companies realize that culture shock typically affects the accompanying partner more than the employee, partly because the employee immediately joins a preexisting affiliation group--their workplace—that is not available to the partner. So, companies have developed programs and policies to help their partners cope with the travails of global relocation, motivated partly by humanitarian impulses and partly because a partner’s severe or prolonged distress can upend a global assignment into which, according to recent figures, they have invested as much as $125,000,000.

Despite this financial incentive, however, companies have not found the magic answer to failed assignments. There are several reasons for this, but one is that many companies often try to address a relational malady through transactional programs that rely too heavily on the provision of information, whether through printed material, electronic means or by an unfamiliar voice from the company back home. These means of support appear cost-effective and can be instructive for unusually resourceful partners facing only modest cultural adjustments, those, in other words, unlikely to suffer from culture shock. But, the phenomenon we are discussing is characterized by the kind of isolation and aloneness that are beyond fixing by information.  Programs and policies that don’t aim at preventing and ameliorating these symptoms are doomed to ineffectiveness.

Rather, the antidote to serious culture shock lies in the creation, cultivation and support of relationships inimical to isolation. While only the partner can generate healing relationships that hold culture shock at bay, companies can play a vital role in facilitating favorable conditions:

• Well before the assignment begins, arrange for gatherings between families preparing to go on a global assignment and former expatriate families who have returned from the same country.
• The purpose of these sessions should not be chiefly to impart information but rather to facilitate honest conversation in which the repatriating family can tell their story and discuss how they’ve navigated through this transition.
• Once a family goes on assignment, introduce the accompanying partner to another expat partner who has been in the host country for some time. These relationships need to have a predetermined structure (e.g. regular monthly interactions) so that contacts are not left to chance or the whim of the two people.
• Most global locations have at least informal if not formal groups of expatriate partners and many are very active. The newly arrived expatriate partner should be quickly and firmly brought into the nearest group, with any protestations of disinterest politely overlooked.
• Many companies provide expatriate partners with intercultural support, destination services, language training and career and transition assistance. While these services can be delivered from anywhere on earth, they are most effective when provided by a local consultant or representative whose presence and companionship may be more important than the content of the programming.

Since the end of World War II survivors of the Nazi death camps have been interviewed about how they endured when so many others perished. Luck is usually part of the answer. But another factor commonly cited by survivors is the development of a close relationship with even just one other inmate. This single relationship could provide meaning and fuel the will to prevail amidst the most horrible circumstances imaginable. While even the most arduous of expatriate experiences is not on a level with life in a concentration camp, the testimony of those who survived the camps underscores the power of individual, personal relationships to sustain us amid seemingly hopeless circumstances. Facilitating and encouraging the partner’s participation in such relationships can spell the difference between a successful and unsuccessful assignment for the partner and thus for the employee.