Maybe you have thought about going abroad, but you feel like it is selfish. You must leave your family behind, your friends, your community. Everybody at home will miss you. How can something that is such an individual experience and journey bring any value, anything positive, to the people you care about?
You see, when you start to learn, and you will learn so much every single day you spend in a foreign country, when you start to grow and develop individually, it is essentially a service to your community.
“Why?”, you ask.
Well, what do you think is going to happen when you come back? You have had so many new experiences. You have developed your skills and NOW it is time to give back. What could you have given them before? Now you can actually change something. Now you can contribute to your hometown and community. These skills, the knowledge you acquired, the difficulties that you have overcome will give you the strength and endurance needed to develop projects that will benefit your communities, your family and friends.
So, in a sense, leaving you community, your city, your country might be the best way to serve it.
“But why do I need to go abroad for this? Why can´t I stay here in Indonesia?”
Globalized World: Intercultural Skills
Today we live in a highly-globalized world where intercultural skills are essential. If you want to be successful in almost any imaginable field, you need to be able to accept and understand different cultures. You need to be able to think out of the box, and communicate effectively with people who live their lives differently from you without judging.
Every CEO, every employee of international companies needs to be able to understand the diverse needs and diverse ways of thinking of people coming from different parts of the planet. If you live with the people of a completely different culture for some time you hone your ability to understand their needs better and you can ultimately adjust your product to their needs.
“But, if I study in Germany, won´t I only be able to understand the Germans better?”
To a certain extent, yes, you will be an expert in how the German culture works. But because you went out of your own cultural structures, you will detect, understand and adapt to other cultural structures a lot faster.
Let´s say you never went abroad and always stayed in Indonesia. You have climbed the ranks in your big international company anyways. Now you have a great job that pays really well and that you enjoy. One day your boss asks you to close a difficult deal with an American company, because he trusts you and you have always been great at negotiating with all your other Indonesian clients. You most likely will use the strategies that have worked all those years, the strategies that won over all your Indonesian clients.
And you will probably fail.
Not because you are not competent, or inexperienced, but simply because you are not aware what a huge impact cultural differences can make in the way people communicate with each other, the way people do business.
Now, let´s say you are in that exact same position, except that you studied in Germany for 3 years. What do you think you will do differently?
Yes, before preparing the pitch to your potential American clients, you will probably research and study how Americans do business, how they communicate and what they value highly.
It is this AWARENESS of cultural impact and difference that will give you an edge to your competitors. You see, studying abroad gives you the chance, to not only study your subject of choice, but also the people and way of life there. It opens you up to different ways of thinking and by understanding that you can later in your professional life adjust your way of communicating your message according to the person you are talking to.
Networking: Create Your Own Personal International Safety Net
This skill of communicating effectively that you will learn, will also support another essential part of building a successful career, if not the most important part.
NETWORKING!
Networking basically means, meeting people, sharing ideas, making friends and building relationships that last. It is proven that good connections will get you so much further than even the best of grades. Humans are social animals and a remark from an employee, that he knows you and studied with you in Germany, or France or wherever you would like to go, will get you so much further than a great CV.
“Why is that?”
Employers will remember you more easily, “Ah yeah that´s the one soandso studied in Germany with”, and they will probably look at your application more closely.
“Well now”, you say, “I don´t want to work abroad, I want to work in Indonesia, so I better stay here and build up my network here.”
Yes, you can do that. But the most important part of a network is its quality.
The people that go abroad, people that take the initiative
Source : Kim Jenifer Gorchs (Praktikant Euro
Management Indonesia)
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