A few weeks ago, the Economist featured a short report on research indicating that people who had lived in cultures beyond their own were generally better able to “think outside the box” than those who hadn’t, though they weren’t sure why this was true. "Researchers looked at traits that might influence this connection such as openness to new experiences but found that there was still something gained from living in another culture that helps foster creativity." Actually, with a little understanding of human development research over the last 50 years, it’s pretty clear why living and working internationally makes people “smarter.”

Let’s look at this from the perspective of cognitive development. Learning to interpret and become effective in a second culture requires that we take in an entirely different way of organizing and valuing human experience as we slowly learn to act effectively within an unfamiliar framework. We have to build a new cognitive map of human society that only partially overlaps our old one. That is, we are literally creating a second “thinking box” that provides an additional perspective on almost every situation. Bringing this back to our first culture presents not only a second way of considering any issue, but also the ever-present understanding that “there are surely other ways of looking at this.” Our problem-solving skills are greatly enhanced.

Another aspect of human development is social emotional (of the many developmental bands of human intelligence, the cognitive and social emotional are the most heavily researched). From this perspective our development as human beings is the result of being able to make more and more of ourselves the object of our own reflection, as Socrates advised in his famous dictum “know thyself.” The better we know ourselves, the more effectively we act in the world with other human beings.

Perhaps no experience more powerfully fosters this self-knowledge than inserting ourselves into a second culture. While the naïve expatriate expects to learn a lot about another place and people through a foreign assignment (and this can certainly happen), the greatest growth of understanding is of our first culture and ourselves within it. Like a fish out of water, we suddenly see the medium of our experience from the outside and we are forever changed.

In our new environment we become excruciatingly aware of how different we are from the members of the new culture, and how different they are from ourselves. Slowly we learn to reorganize our thinking and behavior in order to communicate, collaborate and build relationship. The “people skills” we bring home from this experience are invaluable.

The world is beginning to recognize the power of multicultural experience, and that recognition is realized in President Obama and in his selection of cabinet members, a majority of whom have a multicultural background (as discussed extensively in Newsweek earlier this year). From the perspective of human development, an international assignment is one of the greatest opportunities available to adults today (not to mention its powerful effect on the children in such families), and one of the best investments a corporation can make in the development of its work force and its global effectiveness. We at IOR are privileged and proud to assist our clients in their preparation for these powerful learning adventures!

Source: May 14^th edition of The Economist

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