Worldwide - The Conference Board

Worldwide Article

Culture Shock in America?

For foreign expatriates, absolutely.

By Martha Finney

Martha Finney is co-author of Find Your Calling, Love Your Life: Paths to Your Truest Self in Life and Work (Simon & Schuster). She can be reached at MarthaFinn@aol.com.

Imagine you're embarking on your first foreign assignment. You had an outstanding academic career and are now in great demand in your field. After only a few years on the job, you're an undisputed star at your company. You've become so stellar, in fact, that with your ability to speak the international language of business-English-you're the obvious choice to be sent abroad. It's a developmental assignment, shall we say: five, maybe 10, years overseas. Then you'll return home with a skill set bulging with international savvy and your own personal spotlight on the world stage of business.

With confidence, you accept that exotic assignment abroad. Destination: the United States of America.

But you soon discover that the Land of Opportunity is really the Land of "What's Your Social Security Number?" Without that nine-digit track record of your material viability, it doesn't matter where you came from or where you're going. You find yourself struggling to open accounts; to get an apartment, a phone, and electricity; and to figure out the bus route while you're waiting for a car loan to come through. You have somehow dropped into the Dead Zone; you're stuck in Culture Shock Purgatory.

It's ironic that this would be the case in a country with one of the world's most-traveled populations. Still, being sent to the United States on foreign assignment is not just a stressful business-it's a lonely one. From New Delhi to Cape Town to Minas Gerais, the observation is the same: Americans are friendly but hard to make friends with. We gregarious Americans don't truly bring international assignees into our lives, because we don't bring them into our homes after work.

What about corporate support? With rare exception, Corporate America is still focused more on making Americans' adventures abroad successful than on providing the same levels of support to those coming here on corporate assignments.

This perspective will eventually come at great cost to any U.S. corporation with international ambitions, says Willa Hallowell, a partner with Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Cornelius Grove and Associates, a consultancy emphasizing cross-cultural support. You have to regard this person coming in as a business investment, and you therefore must guard that investment in every possible way. "If you don't, the mess you will have to clean up will be an even greater expense," Hallowell says. The costs associated with the mess include loss of productivity, the diminishment of the employee's self-confidence, the potential destruction of the employee's home life, and the corrosion of the company's reputation abroad.

"If things aren't going well, the returning employee will spread the seeds of discontent," Hallowell says. "Then, the next round of employees brought here will be prepared for problems, or they might choose to come here to look for another job."

The good news is that companies are moving toward seeking support services for their expatriates from all nations. "More and more companies are bringing expats to us," says Franchette Richards, until recently manager of Arthur Andersen's International Employment Solutions group. "We're helping them deal with visas and other immigration issues-financial obstacles, cultural differences. It's important for companies to realize that they must be consistent in the support of their expats, whether the employees are coming here or going outbound. An expat is an expat is an expat."

And no matter where they come from, expats share a critical concern: how well their spouses adjust to their new life. "It is the main reason why employees go home early," says Cornelius Grove, partner at Grove & Associates and an expert on the physiological effects of the stress of culture shock.

Most damaging to a spouse's accommodation: Under U.S. immigration laws, most spouses are not allowed to find jobs while they are "in country," so they are without the automatic social network that the office provides the employee.

Following are the personal accounts of several expats assigned to the United States-what works for them and what does not; what they leave at home in the morning and what they worry about all day.

Dalton Moraes, 29
Development Manager
LHS Communication Systems, Miami
Country of origin: Brazil

I have been here six months on a developmental assignment with my company, which is German-owned. Down in Brazil, we spend all our lives learning about the United States, primarily through television and movies. From what I've seen so far, most of what I learned growing up is true.

The way American people do business here is very aggressive. I'm used to being able to think about purchasing decisions. But here they force you to buy at once; they sit with you and try to squeeze your brain until you have no option but to buy something.

Americans also talk way too fast. There are so many accents here. It's hard for us to learn them and understand quickly. I also find that Americans don't have the patience to repeat things or explain what certain phrases mean. Americans also tend to think I speak Spanish because I'm dark and speak with an accent. But in Brazil we speak Portuguese, not Spanish.

My wife also works for LHS, and because of the timing of her visa application, she was able to get a working visa before I was. So she's the one who can have a Social Security number right now. Without a Social Security number, it's really hard to build a credit history. And without a credit history, it's really, really tough to find a home or buy a car.

Fortunately, my company has a relationship with a credit union. So we were able to buy a car with a tolerable interest rate. But then we shopped around for insurance for our new Rav 4. Because we don't have a record here, we were quoted $4,500 by one insurance company!

I find that Americans are so money-oriented that they have little time for friends and family. It seems they only get together with their families for holidays. Here, when kids turn 21, they must go out and work and live by themselves. But in Brazil, we get together on weekends with our parents and siblings and have a barbecue. We're very family-oriented. Sure, I want my children to be independent and have their own lives, but I also want them to be with me until they're 50 years old.

Still, America is the Land of Opportunity. We had the choice between São Paulo and Miami when we discovered that we were going to be transferred. We chose Miami for the opportunities here. There are 27 nationalities represented in the Miami office. And here we can have a nice house and happy kids. Here we can begin to learn to live around the world but still be connected to the people we love.

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