By Lisa Ann Jackson
Your boss comes to you with the opportunity of a lifetime: there is a problem in the Hong Kong office, and she wants you to go for a few years to steer the operation on a better course. You will be nicely compensated for your trouble, and if you perform well, chances are good that you will come home to a significant promotion. How can you pass it up?
D
espite the adventure and ego strokes that come with an
nal assignment, potential expatriates need to think twice before packing their bags, say a BYU professor and a BYU alum who recently co-authored So You’re Going Overseas and So You’re Coming Home, handbooks for employees and spouses taking international assignments. Hal B. Gregersen, associate professor of international management, and J. Stewart Black, director of the Center for Global Assignments in San Diego, Calif., have spent almost two decades researching overseas assignments. They have found that while overseas assignments can be rewarding, if not carefully managed they can also damage both career and family.
“The likely process in choosing someone to go overseas is, ‘We’ve got a marketing problem in Malaysia. Who do we send to solve the problem? The best marketing person we have,'” Gregersen says. “Rarely is the question asked, ‘Are his or her personal characteristics compatible with the foreign culture and working environment?'”
Would-be expatriates need to ask the question themselves before accepting an assignment, the researchers caution. “Most companies don’t care about cross-cultural competency when they choose you,” Gregersen says. “But if you are the person going, you’d better care. You may be getting set up for failure.”
Gregersen and Black have pin pointed characteristics that an employee must have in order to be successful in an overseas assignment, including a willingness to learn, social skills, and persistence. These characteristics are vital because of the challenges an employee will face in a new culture. “You can’t find your way on the subway, you can’t find your way on the freeway, you mess up a business meeting because you don’t know proper greetings,” Black says. Such experiences can make an employee feel inadequate, he explains, but the people being sent overseas are often the company’s best. So the potential for success is just as great as the potential for failure if the employee manages the assignment carefully.
Gregersen and Black have developed a self-assessment test, G-A-P-S (Global Assignment Preparedness Survey), that rates an individual in categories such as cultural flexibility, conflict resolution, and sociability. The results alert individuals to potential problems. “We don’t find a lot of people who are destined to be inevitable failures. Most people have strong and weak areas,” Gregersen says. “If they are able to see their weaknesses, then they can improve them.” Potential expatriates should also consider family strengths and weaknesses, says Gregersen. An international assignment can have a tremendous impact on a family because of the pressures involved.
“If your marriage is good before you go, then it tends to be great while you are there. But if it’s bad before you go, it tends to be worse or even destroyed,” says Gregersen. “The conflicts and pressures are exponentially higher than they are back home. Overseas is not the place to figure out how to work together.”
Gregersen says that a couple needs to enter an assignment with the same level of commitment they had the day they were married. “They are in it together. This is ‘us’ not ‘you.’ If they have that attitude going into it, the probability of their family succeeding is very high.”
Employees also need to consider how going abroad will impact their careers. Gregersen and Black have found the data to be less than encouraging.
“About 75 percent of expatriates were told before they left that the assignment was a positive career move and might lead to a promotion. Yet the data for Americans coming home is that around 10 percent get a promotion. Between 60 and 70 percent get a relative demotion, and about 25 percent leave the companies that sent them,” Gregersen says.
Gregersen and Black say the unfavorable outcomes occur because the employees are out of sight and out of mind. While employees are away, their names are often missed in promotion discussions and their work loads are assigned to others.
Managing this aspect of an overseas assignment means maintaining close contact with the home office. It might also mean being prepared to leave the company upon returning, so that valuable international skills are not squandered.
Gregersen and Black caution employers to not let these critical resources walk away. In an article to be published in the March/April issue of the Harvard Business Review, they argue that since an overseas assignment can cost a company more than $1 million, corporations should fight to keep their investments.
“I don’t know a lot of managers who would watch a million-dollar piece of equipment just walk out of the factory,” says Gregersen. “Yet it happens all the time when expatriates come home.”
Gregersen estimates that with businesses becoming increasingly global, international work experiences are becoming imperative for employees with their sights set on senior-level management slots. Some employees find it difficult to say no. If properly managed, however, an international assignment can be a thoroughly positive personal and professional experience, says Gregersen.
“Begin with the end in mind,” he advises. “Know yourself. Know your family and their needs. And have a clear picture of what you are coming back to before you ever start.”
