Why Being a Member of the Global Elite Sucks
What is the global elite? Well, they are people who travel all over the world representing their companies in upper management positions.
Bankers. Global CEO’s. Marketing executives. Foreign correspondents. International traders. No matter what they do — they are the one’s who are leading a truly international lifestyle.
You can find them in places like airport lounges. Hotel lobbies. Chambers of commerce. Business delegations. Luxury apartments. Sky-rise offices.
Sounds good so far, doesn’t it?
I agree. It sounds good. And it feels good, too.
Having lived in three different countries over the past seven years and having a lot of expat friends, I have met a ton of people who I would call as members of the global elite.
Not only does being a member of the global elite bring a luxury lifestyle with itself, but it also gives us a feeling of being international. Of knowing the world better than most other people.
Members of the global elite see themselves as cosmopolitan
They pride themselves in their ability that they can move to any new country and become effective managers there, pointing to their intercultural skills.
But do they really have intercultural skills?
On our first move overseas, we are forced to adapt to a completely new environment. We can only become effective if we learn new modes of behavior, learn to live our live’s in a second language, deal with completely different expectations of the people around us.
All members of the global elite have successfully gone through these steps. In that sense, we could say that they certainly do have more intercultural skills than the average population.
But the problem is that the majority of people who are part of the global elite only ever learn how to deal with other people from the global elite.
Our contact is mostly with two groups of people:
- People who are similar like ourselves — other members of the global elite
- The managers of our company, who we select in a way that they are well-versed in English and have international experience, or at least those who have worked in international work environments
Members of the global elite know how to deal with different cultural environments. But at what price?
Yes, we fulfill our duty to our companies. We do manage to build up effective systems in the new cultural environment and achieve our companies’ financial goals goals.
And yes, we are cosmopolitan in the sense that we learn how to deal effectively with new cultural environments.
But what members of the global elite are missing is the one most beautiful aspect of living in a foreign country: the aspect of constant learning.
On our first overseas assignment, we still had high rates of learning. We really were forced to change our mode of behaving; we needed to learn new skills; we needed to adapt a new way of thinking; we needed to remain mentally flexible.
If we didn’t do this, then we would have had to return home as a failure.
On our second assignment, however, we only need to do an absolute minimum of adjustment. We have already learned how to interact with other people from the global elite, and how to build a company that is running on managers who have the capability to interpret between ourselves and the local staff.
In other words, we become dependent on other people to do the main job of interpreting for ourselves. If not language-wise, then at least culturally.
Ask yourself honestly:
- Today, are you still learning new things about your host culture every single day?
- Today, are you constantly learning how to adjust your behavior in a way that is suitable for the host culture?
- Today, do you have constant contact with local people, especially those who have never lived abroad?
- Today, do you expose yourself to cultural situations that make you uncomfortable on a regular basis?
- Today, are you still trying to improve your language skills every single day?
- Today, do you you really feel like you are growing constantly as an intercultural communicator and learning new ways of behaving and thinking?
If you have answered any of these questions with a “no”, then it is likely that you have become lazy in your position as somebody from the global elite.
Yes, you understand the culture of the global elite. The culture of being a cosmopolitan. But do you really know how to adapt to a new cultural environment? How to deal effectively with local people who have no international experience?
The beauty of a life abroad is constant cultural learning
If you really want to make the most out of your life as a cosmopolitan, don’t use cultural interpreters that do the job of understanding the local cultural environment for you. Become the cultural interpreter yourself.
With this, I don’t mean that you should not get help from other people in understanding the local cultural environment. You certainly need both advice and feedback from others who understand the place better than you.
But you should really learn to understand the local cultural environment yourself.
You should understand the assumptions, values, beliefs and behaviors of the local people. You should be able to act effectively in ways that you can create an effective communication between yourself and locals who have never had the experience of living abroad. You should learn to adjust your behavior in ways that doesn’t make people in the new environment uncomfortable.
Cultural learning is such an amazing aspect of life. If we are moving abroad and really trying to understand a new culture, we are constantly growing as a person while simply living our lives normally.
We learn to see aspects of our own culture of origin critically. We learn to be reflective of who we are and what we really believe in. We constantly learn new types of behavior that allow us to be much more flexible in our responses and thus achieve better outcomes in any international encounter. We become much more authentic in that we ourselves choose which actions and beliefs are most congruent with our own self.
I know how hard this is as companies demand our loyalty
Not only among other members of the global elite, but also in one’s own company, people who are learning to become effective intercultural communicators are often brand-marked as traitors. As people who are disloyal to their own company and the country they represent.
In my point of view, this is complete non-sense.
If we adjust our behavior to the new cultural environment, this doesn’t mean that we are “becoming native” and that we are “loosing our roots”.
Cultural adaptation essentially has three goals:
- Achieving the results that we are trying to achieve through out behavior
- Learning to understand the beliefs, values and ways of thinking of the local people
- Developing the ability to choose from a wide range of behaviors that will be suitable each situation that we find ourselves in
None of these goals of cultural adaptation require us to “loose our roots” and force us to act against the values and beliefs of our culture of origin.
In fact, this is not desirable at all. The values and beliefs that we have grown up with will always influence who we are. We simply can not deny them or try to suppress them.
But by learning to integrate a new way of thinking and acting into our own belief system, we essentially expand the range of behavioral options that we have.
“Value shopping” is the ability to pick and choose between assumptions, values, beliefs and behaviors of the different cultures that we have internalized based on what we feel is more in line with our own authentic self
In other words: I do not advice simple “assimilation” into a new culture, or what members of the global elite call “going native”.
Rather, I advice that we expose ourselves to the new cultural environment as much as possible, learn about it as much as possible, and develop the ability to act within it without damaging our relationship to the local people while at the same time achieving our desired results.
In doing so, we ourselves choose which beliefs and behaviors are more in line with who we are, helping us not only to grow, but also to act in line with who we really are.
So, what are the next steps?
If you feel like the idea of being a “cosmopolitan” has become so ingrained into your psyche that it prevents you from continuing to grow and learn more about the new cultural environments that you expose yourself to, then do not worry.
Here are three steps that you can take to learn to make the most out of your stay overseas and really enhance your intercultural learning:
- Make sure that you have the right mix of international- as well as local friends (including those who have never lived abroad): Both of these groups are necessary. The first in order to feel comfortable with your life, the second to really enhance your learning process.
- Become more reflective of your cultural learning: make sure that you constantly observe the behavioral patterns of the locals. Try to understand which beliefs are underlying these behaviors. Try to imitate their behaviors and see how people respond to you. Talk to people who understand the culture better than you and learn as much about it as possible.
- Make the active decision to become truly intercultural: if we want to become truly intercultural, then we first have to honestly adopt the belief that all cultures equally have the opportunity to help us to learn and grow. Each culture in its own way can influence our behavior and way of thinking. But we first need to embrace that possibility and actively decide that we will work towards becoming intercultural.
Lastly, if you are interested to read more about intercultural communication, feel free to visit my website here:
