How to Select Personnel for Overseas Assignments

Identify the Skills Needed for Success in Global Business

Oct 29, 2008

Traits and skills that are vital for global business managers may be quite different from those needed in North America. What are the criteria for success overseas?

Business is stretching around the world and managers cannot afford to concentrate on only one region. However, selection criteria used by human resources offices in American corporations do not always take the requirements of cross cultural communicative competence into account. Here, managers who are goal-driven, forceful, self-confident and independent are generally seen as the best, but it is precisely these skills and traits that can undermine success in overseas assignments.

Conducting business in a multicultural environment requires managers to be flexible, perceptive, open-minded and tolerant of ambiguity. Often called “soft” skills, these approaches to the processes of interpersonal communication enable expatriate managers to function in foreign situations, where they may not be sure what the priorities, values and needs of people around them are.

Emphasizing process over achievement, however, is not popular in business. Particularly in the fast-paced environment of today’s global business, where managers frequently fly in for short assignments, the home company may expect quick results, and the typical, bottom-line driven expatriate executive may encounter frustration as the decision-making process appears to slip out of focus without warning.

Coping with Ambiguity

Managers who are sensitized to listening for differing perceptions of a situation and who have learned that their own ways of working are not necessarily the best ones have a much better chance of attuning themselves to the concerns and priorities of planners in a new, unfamiliar environment. Those who cope well with frustration and failure are better equipped to plunge into a situation filled with ambiguity, at least from the point of view of a newcomer or outsider.

To suggest that an international business manager must be “sensitive” may be off-putting, even offensive, to many in today’s hard-hitting corporate environment, but sensitivity is not the capacity to shed tears easily at another's pain. Consider a spy satellite: the more sensitive its information pickup, the better. This is the sensitivity that expatriate managers must work to develop. A manager from one culture cannot assume that she understands the motivations of her staff or partners from another. She must listen harder, ask more questions, observe body language more scientifically, and seek more independent confirmation of her conclusions than she would at home. These are the skills that human resources offices need to look for when ready to select personnel for overseas assignments.

Cross Cultural Communicative Competence

People management at the global level needs to take multicultural factors into account. Managers who exemplify cross cultural communicative competence: flexibility, ability to fail, sense of humor, perceptiveness, open-mindedness, and tolerance of difference and ambiguity will be more successful and more in demand in the global marketplace.

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