Culture shock can affect even the most veteran of expatriates, and potentially can derail what otherwise would be a successful assignment. Gokun Silver writes that there are three main steps to mastering culture shock, and outlines each step.
The Five Stages of Culture Shock
Stage I—also known as the “honeymoon stage.” During this stage, everything in the new place seems fascinating, interesting, and exciting.
Stage II—during this stage, we begin to encounter daily struggles of living in the new environment and realize the great differences between the life we have known and the life we live now. This is the stage where most negative feelings surface because it is a time when we begin to set up our household, start grocery shopping for the first time, have a plumbing problem, and the like. Daily struggles, difficulty communicating and, in general, differences between our home life and our new life is often what produces deep dissatisfaction, hostility, anger, sadness, and feelings of incompetence.
Stage III—during this stage, we begin to feel better because things are looking up. We are learning ways to live our new life, we start gaining some understanding of this new place, we know how to ask for what we need, and problems no longer seem grandiose.
Stage IV—during this stage, the new place starts feeling a little like home, we succeed in making local friends, we no longer fret a lot about bad things, and we enjoy the good things.
Stage V—also known as the “re-entry stage,” the stage when we have to return back to our home country. Many things we encounter on our return might be new to us because we have been absent for a number of years. Our friends have moved on and we still miss the “old” friends and connections we have made in the country we left. This stage is typical for “perpetual”expatriates in particular.
Full Article: http://www.worldwideerc.org/Resources/MOBILITYarticles/Pages/1010-Silver.aspx
Silver, M. (2010). Three steps to managing culture shock. Mobility Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.worldwideerc.org/Resources/MOBILITYarticles/Pages/1010-Silver.aspx
No comments:
Post a Comment