Engagement

Workstation 3: Engagement

You have successfully adapted to new environments many times in your life. While you may recognize and understand cultural differences, you also need to thrive in the midst of them. To feel comfortable in your new environment — energized, competent, effective, productive and happy, you need systems and strategies to stay engaged and motivated — and take the steps you need to take day after day, week after week.

Through a perspective of acceptance, we will support and guide each other to develop customized systems and strategies for achieving engagement:

• Acknowledge discomfort, frustration and confusion – and move forward anyway.
• Acknowledge fear – of failure, of success, of losing your identity, of not knowing – and move forward anyway.
• Acknowledge a lack of confidence in becoming competent in the new environment – and move forward anyway.
  • Overcome obstacles that are holding you back from adapting, surviving and thriving,

In addition, you will

• Exchange resources and tools, and reflect on personal experiences.

To take a perspective of acceptance, you may have to remove a few obstacles.

• Fear of betraying your deeply held personal and cultural identity – the one you didn’t even know that you had until you stepped outside your cultural comfort zone and came up against some very big differences.

Through the whole-brain, whole-body workout, you will gain tools and strategies to overcome these obstacles and open up a route to adapting to your new environment.

The big bonus:

Capacity to take action in the midst of uncertainty, ambiguity and unpredictability,

Openness to new experiences and taking risks,

Greater empathy,

Move from cultural incompetence to competence,

Cope, with humor,

Manage expectations — accepting them for what they are, expectations, not reality,

Maintain personal identity,

Focus on goals, and persevere,

Bounce back from bad days and move forward with drive and energy.