I bet that you could say that you want to feel respected, want to be trusted and trust your co-workers, or that you want to behave professionally and be a good leader. Many of us would have that in common. But do we mean the same things by trust, respect, professional behaviour, good manager? Building […]
What do others know about you that you don’t – and why does it matter?
Do you sometimes wonder what others think about you? Or why won’t they just get what you mean? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. I’ve got an exercise that can help you make sense of it!
How is emigration similar to detective work?
Detective meets various people in various difficult points in their lives. He has to try understanding their emotions, their ways of being, how they live. He has to gather a lot of information and make sense of them. He has to draw parallels between various clues he found…
Discovering your expat identity
You moved abroad. You experience all these various different (weird?) things. People tell you to adapt to the new culture. You feel uncomfortable, not even sure if you are you anymore. Everyone else around you seems to know better what you should do, how you should adapt, how quickly you should do it (surely if […]
Getting closer to the local community
There are various ways of getting to know the local culture, people and customs. You can read about it, you can go to all the recommended places, but you can also learn more about the parts that are forgotten also by some locals… I’m writing this having just come back from a really great and […]
Does expat personality exist?
Recently I started wondering whether there are some common personality traits that would define an expat or would allow us to predict the possibility of different people going abroad. I don’t know the definite answer to this nor I have done any quantitative research about it, but I have been observing myself and my fellow expats […]
Culture shock is more than you think
Culture shock is more than just differences between where you’re from and where you arrived. It has its origins in our childhood environment, in the social groups we’ve been surrounded by and a part of, in our everyday life that we have been leading until the moment of moving abroad.
Stereotypes – a negative attitude or the way our brains work?
Stereotypes can be a good thing, can give us knowledge about other cultures and be a good conversation starter. They really don’t necessarily need to be bad.