My dear friends, colleagues, clients and students:
It is fun to recap some of CareerQuest's attempts and achievements during 2007 in the last issue of this year.
We appreciate your interacting with us and sending in your feedback on the November 2007 newsletter pertaining to the article on Generation Y. One reader sent in some very thoughtful comments. Here they are:
"I just finished reading your article on Generation Y, and I think you omitted one very important factor that affects Generation Y: The Iraqi War.
We have deployed over 1 MILLION soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. The majority of those soldiers are from Generation Y—young adults age 18-25. Many of them enlisted to help pay for that increasingly expensive college education. This war is going to have a HUGE impact on them, and it's not going to be a positive one.
The Baby Boomers are the ones who initiated this war, yet it is my generation (Gen X) and Gen Y that is doing the fighting. Stating that...'Generation Y has not been subjected to sufficient struggles and sacrifices in life to mature them'...seems like an unfair statement to me. That generation has been doing a LOT of sacrificing!"
We thank our wonderful clients who trusted us for directing their careers and for providing several referrals.
We thank Rev. Richard Nelson Bolles for having the confidence to mention us in
What Color Is Your Parachute? for six years in a row!
It is a real pleasure to thank our colleagues at Association of Career Professionals International, Career Counselors Consortium, Society for Human Resource Management, International Coach Federation, American Society for Training and Development, and Career Masters Institute, for mentoring us and providing critical and unselfish guidance.
We thank the journalists at The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Star-Ledger, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Union Leader, The New York Post, Fortune, Money, WorkingSmart and other publications, for featuring us prominently in several of their articles and studies on career issues, throughout the years.
"Career Doctor Don Answers Your Questions" appears as a regular feature in the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) - New Jersey Chapter newsletters. Go to
www.ispe.org, and then to New Jersey Chapter newsletter.
CareerQuest was very active this year in The Gateway Regional Chamber of Commerce (GRCC), The Networking Professionals of New Jersey, The Workforce Education Committee and The Somerset Hills Business Network. Our special article,
Did you know...It is hard to discover your Passion and Calling in the World of Work? appeared in the June 2007 newsletter,
Inside Business, a publication of GRCC, and was a big hit!
The fourth annual "Boost Your Career" Day, Five-Hour Marathon-Telethon, offered by CareerQuest as a public service on Wednesday, December 27, 2006, was a great success. "Career Doctor Don" provided free career advice on the telephone, limited to five minutes per caller, because of the heavy call volume. Surprisingly enough we did not just have calls from within the United States but also from Europe. We plan to repeat this Marathon-Telethon, an annual feature at CareerQuest, on Thursday, December 27, 2007.
In March 2007, CareerQuest gave a talk to graduating seniors at Stevens Institute of Technology, in Hoboken, New Jersey, on
How to Make a Successful Transition from Backpack (academia) to Briefcase (world of work). Audience participation was excellent. We thank AIChE (American Institute of Chemical Engineers) North Jersey Section, for the invitation to speak.
CareerQuest's special report released in March 2007 on
Big Pharmas—Quo Vadis (Wither Goest Thou)? was well received.
In the August 2007 issue of CareerQuest's Newsletter we had an article on:
How to Integrate International Professionals Into the Work Life of America. In this issue we have a complementary article,
How to Prepare Yourself for Working Successfully Outside the USA.
In our regular feature,
Food For The Soul, we are reproducing here once again a piece which has touched many,
Unconditional Love.
We at CareerQuest plan to publish a book by December 31, 2008, titled
Career and Life Counseling From The Heart (Your Career Is A Pathway To Your Soul!). There is no comparable book in the market, and this book is expected to contain a series of thought-provoking essays and musings. Without encouragement and nudging from you, dear readers, this venture would not have been possible. Our sincerest thanks to all of you.
CareerQuest is very grateful to Leslee A. Beldotti of
VA-Lab Designs, our Web Designer, without whose fabulous work we could not have published our attractive monthly newsletters and special reports. Thank you very much, Leslee, for your superb contributions and keep it up!
All of us at CareerQuest would like to wish you a Happy Hanukkah, a Merry Christmas, a Proud Kwanzaa, and a very Happy New Year!
Until we meet again through the magic of e-mail,
Peace! Love! Shalom!
Don Sutaria, MS, IE (Prof.), PE
Founder, President & Life-Work Coach
CareerQuest
From Insider to Outsider: How to Prepare Yourself for Working Successfully in Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi, Sao Paulo, or Any Place of Your Choosing Outside the USA
by Don Sutaria
American managers sent overseas by U.S. and International Corporations are not able to absorb the "culture shock" quickly and satisfactorily. The social and economic adjustments which are necessary for them and their families also take an unduly long time.
Contributing factors which impede adjustments in host countries are a failure to understand foreign cultures and sets of values, language barriers, inadequate factual information about these countries, failure to understand national motivations and inadequate psychological maturity of these candidates and their spouses.
Americans go abroad for many reasons. Some of these are: to improve professional position, greater financial rewards, a foreign-born spouse, missionary or military assignments, or a desire to escape from uncongenial surroundings at home.
There are at least four important intermeshing systems in which an international manager must function. These are: economic, cultural, political, and technical. In my opinion, the most difficult system to understand, control and master is undoubtedly the cultural system. (Editorial comments: See previous essay in the Newsletter Archive on the website, August 2007:
How to Integrate International Professionals Into the Work Life of America, for a deeper understanding of "culture shock.")
American managers sent overseas by U.S. and International Corporations are not able to absorb the "culture shock"
quickly and satisfactorily.
It is interesting to note here that in extreme cases there are two different types of reactions to culture shock in Americans who go abroad—the Americans who "go native" and the Americans who "never left home." Those who "go native" at the physical and emotional level find their effectiveness blunted. They have been sent by their companies, after all, not to embrace the whole of the local culture but to effectively adjust to that culture. The Americans who "never left home" are those who in their single-minded ethnocentrism never do learn even the rudiments of adjustment. They do not even try, for they are preoccupied with a different problem: how to adjust the ways of others to the American norm. Fortunately, for most Americans working abroad, in spite of some clashing of psychic gears, they are somehow able to adjust in a cross-cultural context.
Among the culture shocks that are associated with overseas assignments is the discovery that different peoples have widely differing concepts of time. The color line is even more shocking to some. Another shock is the realization that human relations and interpersonal relationships and trust are a much bigger part of the job than would be true of the comparable activity at home. This includes gift-giving and subtle bribery to get the job done. Still another is the recognition of the fact that such useful American virtues as clarity of expression, equality of treatment, informality of manners, and the concept of democratic freedom may strike others as neither useful nor virtuous but merely American.
American executives and their families are required to adjust to foreign situations with its frequently more difficult climate, poor sanitation, problems of obtaining adequate diet, lack of formal entertainment facilities, circumscribed social activity, inadequate medical facilities, and limited schooling and housing facilities.
Sometimes, with a minimum of training, technical experts are required to move into an entirely new situation and to effectively adapt and modify their technical knowledge into the indigenous work situation.
When overseas personnel fail in their mission abroad, the failure is almost always related to that person's family's inability to adjust to the local conditions, or the executive's inability to adapt his/her knowledge and skills to the new and difficult work situation.
In addition, the total physical demands on a person abroad are much greater than in the U.S. This leads to people with a lower vitality being unable to cope with the situation and points to the usefulness of a thorough medical examination for executives and their families being sent overseas. Psychological testing dealing with social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and personality assume due importance.
To complicate these adjustments further, living in an overseas post sometimes requires the type of person who can live in a small closed community. Most posts are so set up that it is necessary for a few Americans to live, work, and play together to a large extent. It is therefore necessary for all Americans to solve their emotional relationships with each other and to learn to get along with everybody else. A person who is unable to do so in an overseas assignment becomes a real burden to his staff and associates.
It is interesting to note, based on many observations, that there is a wide variation in the degree of contact between the American staff and the indigenous people. Some Americans immediately establish wide contacts outside of the American community, and spend a lot of their leisure time entertaining or being entertained by people in the host country. They take full advantage of being exposed to a different culture.
The four major areas of the anthropology of manners and the silent language in overseas business is rather complex. Edward T. Hall in his book, "
The Silent Language," discusses these four areas as follows:
- Quality of the voice (high, low, etc.).
- Subtleties of stress and intonation.
- The postures and distances one assumes while talking.
- Time system structure and punctuality.
Failure to observe these subtle qualities of behavior builds up feelings of frustration and hostility in other people with a different culture.
Perhaps the hardest adjustment for Americans working or doing business overseas is learning to appreciate the place of elaborate formalism in other cultures. One clue to the significance of form, procedure and protocol is to note what kinds of form must be associated with a matter of substance to ensure that it will be regarded as important. In the American society, important decisions are often made in an atmosphere of personal informality and by comparison with other countries, with little time for preliminaries and accompanying ceremonies. In many other cultures the importance of a deal is measured by the amount of formality in which it is encased, and by the duration and complexities of the preliminaries which lead up to it.
Regardless of what we think and feel in the U.S.A., the American image through many foreign eyes is not very rosy. Just a daily scan of television news and newspaper articles proves this point.
The looking glass of alien opinion resembles one of distortion mirrors. The image undeniably looks familiar, but the proportions are awry. The very qualities which Americans regard as the noblest virtues are clearly discernible in foreign comments and unfortunately, they are reflected as vices. But this may be changing slowly.
An American is a person with energy and desire, strong and self-confident, yet friendly and straightforward in manner—this is what Americans say about themselves. Yet the composite American described by peoples of other cultures is awkward, well-meaning, embarrassingly friendly, and, most irritating of them all, perpetually impatient and possessed of an annoying sense of superiority.
In my opinion, the image of America held by peoples of the world is not, of course, all derived from watching Americans overseas at work and play. Hollywood movies, the Internet and international newspaper headlines also shape the image of America abroad.
Thus it is that the overseas Americans carry with them not only the responsibility of their own behavior but also in some measure, the guilt for say, racial intolerance. Many play the part with a feeling of acute embarrassment. Some learn quickly to relax in the presence of their own power. Not a few take too seriously the notion that their image mirrors America to foreign eyes, and feel they must settle every outstanding issue of American policy every time they talk with a stranger.
Until recently, there was a lack of effective formal training programs for U.S. managers assigned to work abroad. Most of the training emphasized a general indoctrination into a company's operations and policies rather than instructions in the problems of foreign business or the specific conditions of the area to which the person is assigned. A few companies provide language instructions either before an executive's departure for a foreign post or after his arrival there. The spouse and children are also encouraged to study the local language. Due to this lack of training, reliable sources state that at least 10% of executives assigned abroad end in complete failure.
Some experts feel that the orientation of Americans to overseas service should be done in most cases by colleges and universities. This is because the elements of effective overseas performance seem to be predominantly the kinds of skills and understanding that comes from higher education and experience with real-world complexity.
It is encouraging to note here that several multinational and international companies have experimented with training programs such as Octagon Groups (eight people from different backgrounds and departments), International Personnel Work Groups (international managers meeting once a year for three weeks), and Sensitivity Training Laboratory (utilizing international students studying in the U.S.A.).
On the whole, American executives abroad are viewed with a combination of confusion, awe and antagonism, modified by a degree of generalized admiration and confidence. This situation is not a very happy one, especially for a people with an overriding desire to be liked—but this is facing reality. At least the executives overseas sincerely try to establish local goodwill, but can't win 'em all! In some areas of the world anti-U.S. feelings are strong prejudices always in the background waiting to magnify specific issues as the opportunity arises. Undoubtedly some of this behavior is also fueled by hidden jealousies, motivated by the riches and power wielded by the U.S.A.
On a positive and optimistic note, here is what a Frenchman, J. J. Servan-Schreiber has to say in his national best seller, "
The American Challenge":
"Americans are not more intelligent than other people. Yet human factors—the ability to adapt easily, flexibility of organizations, the creative power of teamwork—are the key to their success. The American 'art of organization' which is unrivalled in the world, is the mobilization of intelligence and talent to conquer not only invention but development, production and marketing."
Food for the Soul: Unconditional Love
This is a true story about a soldier who was finally coming home to New York after having fought in Vietnam. He called his parents from San Francisco. "Mom and Dad, I'm coming home, but I have a favor to ask. I have a friend I'd like to bring home with me."
"Sure," they replied, "we'd love to meet him."
"There's something you should know," the son continued, "he was hurt pretty badly in the fighting. He stepped on a land mine and lost an arm and a leg. He has nowhere else to go
now, and I want him to come live with us."
"I am sorry to hear that, son. Maybe we can help him find somewhere else to live."
"No, Mom and Dad, I want him to live with us."
"Son," said the father, "you don't know what you're asking. Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden to us. We have our own lives to live, and we can't let something like this interfere with our lives. I think you should just come on home and forget about this guy. He'll find a way to live on his own."
At that point, the son hung up the phone. The parents heard nothing more from him. A few days later, however, they received a call from San Francisco police. Their son died after falling from a building, they were told. The police believed it was a suicide.
The grief-stricken parents flew to San Francisco and were taken to the city morgue to identify the body of their son. They recognized him, but to their horror they also discovered something they didn't know, their son had only one arm and one leg.
The parents in this story are like many of us. We find it easy to love those who are good-looking or fun to have around, but we don't like people who inconvenience us or make us feel uncomfortable. We would rather stay away from people who aren't as healthy, beautiful or smart as we are.
Thankfully, there's someone who won't treat us that way. Someone who loves us with an unconditional love that welcomes us into his family forever, regardless of how messed up we are. He is the man from Galilee whose birthday we will celebrate soon!
(Author unknown—received on the Internet; slightly modified by Don Sutaria)
Don Sutaria is Founder and President of CareerQuest (formerly New Life Career Counseling), located in New York and New Jersey. CareerQuest is also mentioned in "What Color is Your Parachute?" Sutaria is a consultant to individuals and various corporations, offering executive coaching and career management services. He has developed unique methods for capturing jobs in the new millennium. He appeared on a Phil Donahue TV special on unorthodox methods of job hunting. Known as "Career Doctor Don", he has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Star-Ledger, The Union Leader, WorkingSmart, SmartMoney, Fortune, Money, and on WINS and WOR radio. He specializes in counseling of international professionals, Generation X (age 20-29), career changers, freelancers, consultants, mid-career executives and people over age 50. He really believes that your career is a pathway to your soul.
Mr. Sutaria has over forty years of diversified industrial and management experience, complemented by training in career development and hands-on experience in career advising. He is an international cross-cultural trainer. He has also served on committees of several organizations, and conducted courses, seminars and symposiums at Columbia University, New York University, Nyack College, Alliance Graduate School of Counseling, Rutgers, and Stevens Institute of Technology. He is a member of the Association of Career Professionals International and the Career Counselors Consortium.
Don earned his MS degree in Management from Kansas State University, an IE (Professional) degree in International Management and Personnel Relations from Columbia University, and obtained New York University's postgraduate Certificate in Adult Career Planning and Development.
