For many professionals, relocating to another country can cause their initial productivity to suffer due to the mental, emotional and physical effects of culture shock. This can cause frustration, disorientation and overall unhappiness to the employee and cause the employer to lose time and money.

Let us answer two questions here:  What is culture shock and how do we overcome it?

What is Culture Shock

Culture shock is the effect of being cut off from familiar culture, environment and norms, and having to acclimatize to new and sometimes seemingly strange surroundings. The period of adjustment can cause stress, frustration, confusion and even depression.  Culture shock can have a yo-yo pattern where the feelings of anxiety may lessen in time, but later most unexpectedly resurface. Therefore you should expect phases of adjustment starting with the initial excitement of the honeymoon period, through the confusion and worry, the recovery, repeated culture shock followed by re-recovery until there is a breakthrough. In time, with proper support and using the right strategies, the negative feelings can be overcome until you adjust, adapt and accept. In some cases, be prepared for reverse shock when you relocate to your own country.

How to Overcome Culture Shock

First, understand and appreciate your own culture and business practices. This self-awareness and reflection helps in gaining a deeper perspective of what and why some things are different as well as knowing how we are viewed from the outside. Understanding differences and their reasons gives us more empathy and tolerance, imperative for building rapport, the keystone of maintaining relationships.

Next, learn about the other culture ideally both on your own and through intercultural training.  On our own, we can quite easily understand the obvious differences like appearance, accent, manners and habits. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The real differences are often unseen and therefore quite often unappreciated. These are attitudes, beliefs, values and perceptions.

Finally, apart from the support of the management and the training, we also need to develop our own strategies to overcome culture shock. Here are some tips

  • Avoid constant comparisons with home
  • Make friends with positive-minded people
  • Start a new hobby or pastime which isn’t possible back home
  • Keep in regular contact with home, family and friends
  • Share your own culture with your new friends and neighbours
  • Communicate your feelings
  • Travel and see new places
  • Use things local – local medicines, newspapers and even toiletry. Cut off the apron strings of the mother country.

 

Much-travelled people often have one thing to say in common – with all the differences in cultures and norms, we are deep down all very similar. If we can learn to connect to people as individuals, we can start to look forward to and enjoy our cross-cultural experiences.

Bio

Alastair Kane is a writer and blogger on business related topics. He supplied this article on behalf of Communicaid a culture and business communication skills consultancy.

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