I would like to acknowledge the Dharawal people, the Aboriginal people of Australia, whose country I live and work on. I would like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and thank them for sharing their cultural knowledge and awareness with us.
[00:00:39] Trisha: Hi there, everyone. I'm Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and an explorer of cultural intelligence. I'm on a quest to discover what enables us to see things from different perspectives, especially different cultural perspectives, and why sometimes it's easier than others to experience those moments of awareness the shifts in our thinking. As those of you who have listened to some of the earlier episodes will be aware, cultural intelligence, CQ, the capability to be effective in situations of diversity, is made up of four areas. Motivational, the drive, cognitive, the knowledge, metacognitive, the strategy, and behavioral, the action. And all four of these capabilities can help us operate well in situations of diversity.
[00:01:24] Trisha: And in this podcast, we focus more on the metacognitive aspect, Thinking about our thinking and that's referred to as CQ strategy. Today's guest is a friend and colleague whose work I deeply admire. I first met Bridget in Bangkok at a Families in Global transition conference where we connected over our shared Kiwi nationality, our work in global mobility, and our deep desire for the assignees and their families who are moving around the world to have an experience that was life enhancing. Bridget runs a multi award winning business in Auckland, New Zealand, Mobile Relocation Limited, where she and her team work with organizations who are moving their people and the individuals and their families relocating to New Zealand to set them up to thrive in their work and lives there.
[00:02:11] Trisha: She's well placed to run this business. Bridget herself has been an expat in Singapore and in India, Working with the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. So, welcome to Bridget Romanes. Good to have you here, bridget.
[00:02:26] Bridget: Thank you very much, Trisha. It's a, it's a pleasure to be here and, uh, yeah, looking forward to chatting with you.
[00:02:31] Trisha: Yes, and although we are relative neighbours, Australia is just across the ditch from New Zealand, as we tend to say. Right now, Bridget is in, the USA, so we're crossing a little bit more of time zones.
[00:02:43] Bridget: Indeed.
[00:02:44] Trisha: We are going to speak about the shifts that assignees need to make as they move and how you help them with that.
[00:02:48] Trisha: But first, I want to ask the questions that we ask all of our guests. So Bridget, what is a culture, other than the culture you grew up in, that you have learnt to love and appreciate?
[00:02:59] Bridget: , well, there's, there's two, rafts of cultures that fit that category. The first, group is Singapore and India. Those are the places where I actually lived. India for two and a half years and Singapore for seven years. India was my first posting overseas, so it was a huge experience and I was quite young.
[00:03:17] Bridget: I was only about 24, so it just, it was imprinted on me that I had never smelt coriander until I went to India. And it is now just one of my most favorite herbs and my most favorite smells. I love it. Which I, so that wouldn't be part of me had I not gone to India. And Singapore, seven years is a long time.
[00:03:33] Bridget: I had two children there. So, you know, it's our kind of second home. My children were, we, we often say their first food was rice. We're a rice culture in our family. And then the another two countries, which I also have a relationship with are Malaysia and Canada. When I was a diplomat, I was working for a trade negotiating organization called APEC, and through the course of each year, we spent a number of we went about four times to each country and worked very closely with the officials of that country.
[00:04:04] Bridget: So actually had quite a sort of a longitudinal experience of it. So one year was Malaysia and another was Canada. So those would be my four countries apart from New Zealand. And then to be honest with you, working with expats, I'm always learning new things with not a deep affinity, but certainly an interest in many, many different countries.
[00:04:21] Trisha: Fantastic. And when you think about, you know, mental shifts or emotional shifts, can you tell me about a time when you've experienced that sort of shift when you suddenly became aware of something from a different perspective?
[00:04:34] Bridget: Yeah, I can. I've got a very strong but diffuse memory, about India. And to be honest with you, I sort of thought there must be some sort of trigger that I must be able to remember exactly an event or a circumstance where I suddenly made the shift. But to be honest with you, I can't. But I know I had it and I'll tell you what the shift is and may, maybe you, you'll unpack it for me.
[00:04:57] Bridget: I don't know. But the shift was, I got to a point, and I don't think I'd been in India very long, maybe eight months or so. Where I suddenly just had this realization that the way India worked was bigger than me. There were things around me that I was finding difficult or challenging, or I felt I needed to change, whether it was work, you know, those things when you first arrive in a country and you think people drive differently or stuff like that.
[00:05:23] Bridget: And yeah, suddenly one day I just thought, You know, this country, the culture is thousands of years old. There are millions of people here. Bridget Romanes, you are never going to change any of this. So there's two ways you've got to approach this. One is with, um, sort of radical acceptance. This is the way it is.
[00:05:39] Bridget: How do I fit in and get my job done? A sort of a practical, you know, problem solving strategies in some cases. And so there's that acceptance and then the curiosity, which really, I think I'm quite a curious person anyway. So that sort of switched around some of the difficult stuff to more of a question of like, rather than it being, why is it like this as a frustration?
[00:06:01] Bridget: It's more like, why is it like this? How can I understand? And I do have one very clear memory that relates to this realization and change and thinking and behavior. One thing I started to notice was that Europe, the Europeans around me were pronouncing very common place names in India quite differently to, the way that Indians were pronouncing them.
[00:06:22] Bridget: And I thought, okay, there's one in particular that I'm going to start trying to pronounce, in, so that's, you know, more, more in common with what I hear Indian people saying. And I started doing that. And one day, one of the staff at the office said to me, I've never heard. you know, European pronounce that in that way before.
[00:06:39] Bridget: And I just thought, oh, isn't that interesting? That was interesting for me, because maybe I'd got it right. Maybe I got it wrong. I still wasn't quite sure whether she was complimenting or just like, really? But secondly, that You know, there was a certain European way of incorrectly pronouncing a very commonplace name in a country that we all lived in, and I thought, hmm, that's interesting.
[00:07:01] Bridget: So yeah, as I say, I don't have any particular pinpoint moment, but it was quite a watershed shift at quite a sort of a strategic level in my brain that really helped me to learn to be more effective and to enjoy myself more.
[00:07:15] Trisha: So it's not just your own thinking changing, but it's almost your vision of yourself within that, that changed. And because of that, numerous of your behaviors did change. But and, and ways of thinking and, and managing of the frustration, but it's interesting, isn't it to think because a lot of the way that I've been speaking with people is about their own thinking.
[00:07:38] Trisha: And I think we often think of ourselves within ourselves, especially those of us who come from more individualist cultures. And yet what you were doing there was very much a collective way of thinking, of thinking of yourself as a part of everybody else rather than just your own change that you needed to make.
[00:07:56] Trisha: It was very much how you were in relation to others.
[00:08:00] Trisha: That is really interesting, isn't it? Because, there's an element of letting all of that in and, and recognizing it, like you say, it's been here for millions of years.
[00:08:11] Bridget: Well, and and to be honest with you, I think it was going to overwhelm me otherwise, you know, and, and I'm very conscious over the years of seeing, and I think this is one well, is one of my main motivations for starting the business. You know, everybody has their up and downs when they're overseas. But overall, I enjoyed it and I just could not, for life of me understand why there were so many unhappy expats.
[00:08:33] Bridget: You know, it took me a long time to sort of figure that out. And I think part of it is, you know, if you don't accept it, you just keep fighting it. And what a way to live. Not much fun.
[00:08:42] Trisha: No, and it does, you know one of the, and we may get onto this, I don't know, but it does almost, , describe the existence of that expat bubble. You know, within this bubble, we pronounce things like this, and within this bubble, we operate like this. And it's quite okay to be critical or to express frustrations without actually trying to manage them.
[00:09:05] Trisha: without anybody saying, hey, you know, you'd be better off if you could let go a little bit of that frustration and maybe diffuse from that, you know, um, and maybe that's more, you know, sort of the job of this psychologist than the, than the, um, fellow worker or the fellow expat. But, I do think That sometimes that thinking of where we sit within, again, we're coming back to that placement of us in relation to other people as well.
[00:09:30] Trisha: Yeah, that's interesting. Was also struck thinking about New Zealand, which, and I know you Bridget, so I know also, that Māori culture is a culture that you, have grown to know and love and probably, grew up with more exposure to it than I did in the South Island, but. You pronounce Māori words with intention to pronounce them correctly.
[00:09:53] Trisha: And New Zealand itself has been on a bit of a journey in trying to do that. And so I'm sure maybe that guided you in your recognition of, Well, these words are in these people's language. Why are we pronouncing them? Why are we anglicizing them?
[00:10:07] Bridget: Well, yeah, and I don't know that when, when I was growing up, that wasn't the case in New Zealand at all. I would say that my experiences living overseas have led me to try and understand, Māori, Te Ao Māori and Māori, Te Reo Māori in my own country, more than the other way around, you know, just because of my, my generation,
[00:10:33] Trisha: And I think I'm probably the same
[00:10:35] Bridget: yeah, I find it very exciting what's happening in New Zealand now, um,
[00:10:41] Trisha: Yeah, it is. Yeah. That's another whole issue. So,
[00:10:44] Bridget: Yes.
[00:10:45] Trisha: and maybe we can unpack that another time or you can point me to somebody else who should. I can imagine in your experience of moving internationally and you were working as a diplomat. That you had some moments of real shift and you know, I don't know because I've never been in these situations, but I'm imagining like trade negotiations or tensions that arose from diplomatic incidents.
[00:11:07] Trisha: Can you tell me about any of those that you are free to speak about? Um, and, and what helped you to make those shifts?
[00:11:15] Bridget: Yeah, well, it's really interesting being a diplomat because on one hand, you have to represent your country. So, you know, you are a Kiwi and you are seeing things through the lens of a Kiwi and representing the government's policy. But to be effective, you also need to be able to understand the perspective of the people on the other end of a negotiation.
[00:11:35] Bridget: So, it's quite a, quite a balancing act, really. my first posting in India was bilateral. So that's just the relationship between India and New Zealand. So that was reasonably straightforward. And then, you know, what I was learning about trying to sort of understand how to be in India was helpful too.
[00:11:55] Bridget: But the area of work where I had the biggest shift and which I ended up loving the most was multilateral work, you know, where you're working with a number of different countries at the same time to achieve shared goals, obviously with your country's interests at heart too. Um, when I went to Singapore, I, my job was, initially I was the only New Zealand, I was the New Zealand representative at the APEC Secretariat.
[00:12:17] Bridget: So I walked into an office, and this is quite funny really, For some reason, they put, the building was round. So the offices were all around the edge like a doughnut. And there were 21 different nationalities,
[00:12:29] Trisha: Wow.
[00:12:30] Bridget: in the office. Because every one of the APEC members had one person. So you would go around this doughnut and every office was like a little national treasure.
[00:12:38] Bridget: So you'd go into one office and you'd have to adjust to this culture and this and the next one. And to start with, it was quite confronting, extremely exhausting. But over time, um, and again, my shift there was, I guess, looking back, I probably started off gravitating towards you know, the Canadian and the Australian.
[00:13:00] Bridget: Um, they seemed, you know, somehow easier,
[00:13:03] Trisha: Low cultural distance.
[00:13:05] Bridget: yeah, but on the other hand, they were people and did I necessarily get on with those people? You know, I could professionally get on with them, but personally, maybe not. Um, and, and then there were other cultures that I had to work with, which were where I had no experience of those cultures, you know, sometimes and often I was, you know, I was quite still maybe 28 or 29, so still relatively young woman, you know, and so.
[00:13:27] Bridget: And these people were quite senior and older and so i had to to figure all that out. And my big shift there was the total realization that, you know, it's the personal relationship that drives everything. Um, and the whole benefit of that for me was totally different to a normal, when you're working multilaterally, you're going to a negotiating meeting and you sort of, You have a coffee with somebody or you see them, but I was working every day next to these people, you know, like the photocopy is not working and you're standing next to your colleague from Japan and the two of you have to figure out how to fix it, you know, so over time, you're just building up this relationship with people.
[00:14:03] Bridget: And I developed some of the most amazing friendships who are still my friends today, you know, there's I'm going to mention some names because they're so wonderful. It's for Dela from Brunei, who left the diplomatic services and is now the coffee brewing and roasting king of Brunei. That's what he's doing.
[00:14:21] Bridget: He's an amazing guy. And then, um, Sulyma, who carried on through the Singaporean foreign ministry is now one of the really senior trade negotiators. And they were all just, they're great, they're friends. And through, and then through that, they would invite us along to the, because we were internationals and expats together.
[00:14:40] Bridget: So to their sort of family events and cultural things, and it was wonderful. And, you know, that really led me to the place of just enjoying having such a diverse friend group. And then once you enjoy that, then working with people and, and I, I talked to my friend Shireen Chua about this, Dr. Shireen Chua, because she has just finished her PhD in, broadly speaking, in cultural intelligence.
[00:15:07] Trisha: I know Shireen listens, so I can, I can, echo that.
[00:15:10] Bridget: you know, at the end of the day, these personal relationships and getting to those are the most important things. You know, you can talk about DE&I and cultural intelligence and all the rest of it, but at the end of the day, having a personal bond with somebody that is forged on curiosity, shared interests, give and take is, is the pathway forward.
[00:15:31] Bridget: And I learned that from having to get on with 21 different nationalities every single day at the office.
[00:15:36] Trisha: I love that.
[00:15:37] Bridget: That's my Shift
[00:15:38] Trisha: Yeah, that's a great shift. Yeah. And, and obviously, I can imagine you, you know, completing that work and coming back and thinking about what you're going to do next. And I know you did a number of different roles within government within New Zealand as well. But now in your work, you're working within your business with people who are moving. Um, I think you're working mostly with people moving into New Zealand, is that correct?
[00:16:04] Bridget: Yes, that's right.
[00:16:04] Trisha: And so what are the biggest shifts you think that they need to make as they move?
[00:16:09] Bridget: Actually, when you mentioned earlier on, Trisha, about moving from sort of almost like depersonalizing things and some probably less emotional about it when I talked about that story about India, I wanted to highlight a couple of things that we think are really important for people to do. And these are based on my Personal experience because my ex, you know, I've talked about my shifts, but there were some down times and I suffered from depression as well.
[00:16:34] Bridget: And a lot of that was because I personalized it. I thought when I wasn't doing things well, it was that I couldn't be an expat. I was a failure, you know, there was some something wrong with me. Um, and then when I started doing this work, there were two things that we, that I discovered that I thought, I wish I had known this.
[00:16:55] Bridget: And that would have caused me to have a shift much earlier. The first one of those is the relocation cycle, Hofstede's relocation cycle, where basically the message of that is everybody starts off thinking they're having a wonderful time, they're really successful expat for the first couple of weeks because the sun's shining and you know everybody's really nice to them, and then they start to go into culture shock and you know things become harder, they feel things they don't like, and then gradually you know their life comes back into balance and they get it out of it.
[00:17:23] Bridget: You know, had I known that that actually happens to, you know, probably 90 percent of people, I wouldn't have thought that when I was in culture shock, it was me not coping. Um, and I might have more quickly got to the point of thinking, okay, I'm in culture shock, you know, I need to externalize this a bit.
[00:17:39] Bridget: And it's not just about me. And the second thing that we talk to people about is making friends, because that's another thing that's very demoralizing for people. And I've just talked about how I made friends with 21 people of different nationalities. I mean, it took a bit of time. It wasn't easy. I made mistakes and I felt dumb.
[00:17:59] Bridget: But to realize, and this is one of Shireen Chua's concepts too, is that every person has a friendship cup. So that, what that means is that you, have a friends and a family and established relationships. And for a lot of people, their friendship cup is pretty full. When you're an expat and you move to a new country, your friendship cup is empty because your friends and your family are all back in your, in your home country, you might know a couple of people. So it's very common, and we hear this from our clients all the time, to say New Zealanders are so unfriendly, you know, I just can't get past that first conversation with anybody. And again, if you can externalize it and say, well, look, you think those New Zealanders, they've got a very full social life already.
[00:18:39] Bridget: You just need to keep going until you find somebody who's got a bit of room in their friendship cup. Maybe they have relocated From Wellington, where their friends and family are, to Auckland, and they only know a few people like you, you know, and you can both fill each other's friendship cups. So again, it's moving away from the emotional, coming back to a bit of analysis and rationality to help you get through what is an incredibly major upheaval in your life.
[00:19:07] Bridget: I mean, there's no, no getting around that. And I think using some of those tools can help you achieve those shifts to then get onto a different plane to start looking at things in a way that can help you, enjoy them as opposed to being challenged all the time.
[00:19:24] Trisha: Yes. And, and the enjoyment is so important for feeling like you belong, feeling like you put down roots and, and working well.
[00:19:31] Trisha: And I I noted there that, the, the phrase, and, and we hear it often as people move, New Zealanders are so, or Australians are so, or, you know, Chinese people are so, and it's this tendency to lump everybody together, um, and to make a judgment that is based on an experience of one or two people, um, and is, is often inherent within something that was sad or unhappy or a negative experience.
[00:19:59] Trisha: We, we don't hear it as much about the positives. Um, and so it's usually, and so just helping people to unpack, you know, their thinking and their processes around that enables them also to make that shift as you just identified so brilliantly, you took it to instead of all of New Zealanders are like this, therefore I'm never going to make any friends down to, oh look, maybe they, that individual is, yeah.
[00:20:21] Trisha: So a wonderful example. So you have a team of people, and I know that it's a team who, you know, as I said in the introduction, you have won multiple awards, in the industry. So it's a team who are obviously working well. How do you and the team support people as they are moving and and support them in the shifts effectively.
[00:20:43] Bridget: Yeah. Um, well, the way I like to describe it is if you think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs at the bottom, you've got food, shelter and clothing pretty roughly. And then at the top, you've got self actualization. So if you look at that from the point of view of relocation, you arrive in a country, you've got nowhere to live.
[00:20:58] Bridget: You actually don't know where the supermarket is, and once you get in there you probably don't know the brands anyway, so food's a bit of a challenge. Um, clothing, and I often say this jokingly, you've probably arrived with the wrong clothing because you may not have been to New Zealand before in that season, and our seasons change in, you know, one day, in five minutes.
[00:21:15] Bridget: So you're pretty challenged on the basics of survival, yet you've come to this country where you've got an amazing job and you're so looking forward to it. So you're expecting yourself to be at self actualization, you know, living your best life, um, and you know, doing amazing things and you're doing everything your employer expects you to.
[00:21:32] Bridget: So our job really is to get you past about the first two levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs as quickly as we can. So, um, We're running a resettlement program that, you know, makes sure your children get into a school they're happy in, you know, finds you a decent rental property, helps you understand leaky homes and the terrible quality of New Zealand housing and make sure you don't get into one of those.
[00:21:51] Bridget: and beats the others in the queue, you know, helps you connect with people in the community who are potentially going to be your friends, you know, through shared interests, helps your spouse understand the job market if they're looking for work. So that's our basic resettlement program. And then we do introduce the tools I mentioned earlier, the, The relocation cycle, uh, and this idea of the friends, because that sort of helps move you up the pyramid, but really the employers and the employers who employ us want to get these people off the bottom of the pyramid because they want them to be fully functioning at work, if you're being really cynical about it, and individuals who employ us.
[00:22:27] Bridget: can see already that they're going to be challenged by those things. So they want to get past those first two parts of the pyramid as fast as they, as quickly as they can. So I quite like, although Maslow's hierarchy of needs is quite a, you know, it's a little bit controversial these days. It's a very simple way of looking at the huge dislocation that occurs.
[00:22:46] Bridget: And in fact, I do think it's valid because when you're living in your home country, you take for granted that those first two pillars of your life, first two layers of your life. are pretty static. You know, you might move house, but you're not arriving in a place with no house. So I think people sometimes, because they haven't had to practice re establishing those basic tenants of life, they, they underestimate what it is like and the impact it's going to have on them not to have somewhere to live and to know where to buy their food and to have the wrong clothes.
[00:23:17] Bridget: You know, it's, it's, you, people feel stupid. And they feel challenged and they feel discombobulated. So the quicker we can get that into place, the better they can move on to their cultural shifts and their work and, you know, just doing what they actually want to be doing with their
[00:23:30] Bridget: lives.
[00:23:31] Trisha: Mm. Mm. That's brilliant. I often use it exactly in that way to explain to an organization why I shouldn't be involved with people as early as they necessarily want me to, um, not for the whole program at least. So maybe an introductory session, but, you know, to come back when some of those other aspects are covered off on.
[00:23:50] Trisha: And, um, so it's working, you're working with the individual and you, because you are providing all of those services and you've got Shireen, you know, providing effectively the sort of work that I do. Um, and so it's that sense of people aren't their brains, their minds aren't able to focus on the social.
[00:24:10] Trisha: Or the self actualization, because they're busy focusing on, you know, where am I going to buy the milk? Which is, you know, one of the illustrations that I use about, just rethinking that process of buying the milk shows you how much you have to relearn. And so it's that, yeah, and, and milk itself is something that doesn't cross cultures.
[00:24:29] Trisha: So sometimes we have to change that as well. So I'm interested about your relationship with the organizations as well, because You know, we know that that's critical. It's not just, um, the person who needs to adapt, but the organization can do so much to support that as well. So how have you helped the organizations that you work with to better support their relocating people?
[00:24:52] Bridget: Yeah, well, I mean, most of our clients, we tend to kind of go on a journey with each other. You know, Deloitte is one of our first clients eight years ago. Actually, they were our very first client when we started the business. And we, over the years, we've sort of thrown quite a few things at them. And most of the time they go, Hmm, that's interesting.
[00:25:09] Bridget: Oh, yep. Okay, let's have a go at that. So we're, and I'm just going to use this as a bit of a pinnacle example, we have, we're just asked, and we've done one session so far, they have an onboarding program for everybody who comes into the organization. Obviously they run it four times a year and some of those onboarding sessions are purely for expats who are coming in.
[00:25:30] Bridget: So there are six sessions and there's one session, which is only for expats. And they had something that they called uniquely Kiwi, where they talked about, you know, um, Kiwi terms of phrase and, you know, what New Zealanders like and all this stuff. And they, they said, Oh, you know, they came to us and they said, it's not, not really landing very well.
[00:25:47] Bridget: And we've done, uh, we did actually an award winning, um, wellbeing program with them a few years ago. They said, do you think that you could do something, you know, two and a half hour session for every single expat that's coming in? So this is people who are not necessarily coming through our programs because there are a few who don't, say they're a spouse or somebody like that, so that they're all getting this, introduction.
[00:26:10] Bridget: And it happens a little bit further down the line. So you know, they're not brand new and exactly the way you said, but to have that level of organizational commitment, because one of my big things is in the , DE&I space, that People who are internationals are a group who have a diverse, different experience of life, of work, to other groups.
[00:26:33] Bridget: And that they have a specific sets of needs that go with that, and providing them with a resettlement and relocation program is one way of recognizing those needs and that their experience is different. And to have Deloitte carve this out In their onboarding program to say this group needs a different experience here was just like, Yes, you know, we've come along together and we're finally, you know, I didn't suggest it to them.
[00:26:57] Bridget: And I said, but yeah, we'll put something together for you. You know, we're, we're thinking in an aligned way about how we can support these really critical people for the business. Um, so, you know, that's really satisfying to, to have that happen. Increasingly, what I'm seeing is with global mobility.
[00:27:15] Bridget: You know, when we started the business eight years ago, I think the industry's been going for a long time, obviously moved away from the gold plated packages that that move was starting to happen anyway. Um, and there've been a lot of changes, but it was still very focused on, you know, the logistics, tax compliance and immigration and all this sort of stuff and, and shipping.
[00:27:38] Bridget: Uh, and what happened during COVID was That just got turned on its head, you know, and, Because it was all very well. I mean, the shipping is your stuff wasn't going to get to you for two years or something anyway. So forget that immigration was everything was case by case. So that all mean the logistics became a completely different ballgame.
[00:27:59] Bridget: But what was actually telling and even getting people to consider relocation during the pandemic, and we were actually quite busy bringing people into New Zealand, but for industries that could get people in even though the borders closed. Because we still needed, you know, engineers and doctors and people like that.
[00:28:15] Bridget: Um, what was crucial for those people was their experience. They weren't going anywhere unless they knew that somebody was going to be supporting them and their families to move across the world in the middle of a pandemic. So I think as a legacy of COVID, I've definitely seen an uptick in this understanding From corporates about how difficult relocation is perhaps in the past it had been easy to say yeah that's handled by the tax people and oh, you send them off to a shipper but they just couldn't ignore it um you know and and in some ways people were seeing it through their own families you know with people stuck in MIQ or being unable to go and you know visit their own family it sort of all became the the the difficulty of relocation just became so much more real um to everybody
[00:29:00] Trisha: yeah.
[00:29:00] Trisha: yeah.
[00:29:00] Bridget: I think there's been quite a shift in that sense
[00:29:03] Trisha: A hundred percent and obviously a broader shift within the organizations as well, which fit quite well with recognizing people as whole people with all of their diversity, um, and, and the needs for people to be able to work from home. Um, the needs for people to be able to acknowledge the challenges mentally that they might be facing emotionally, as well as, you know, the more physical side, which workplaces are often better at acknowledging. I was recently at an event where there was a psychologist speaking about, it was an AHRI a human resources event, but he was speaking about leadership and said, we know that leadership shifted to, leaders needing to be more authentic and being more caring and that that has continued, the expectation has continued and so we are seeing this fundamental shift in the workplace continue and anybody who tries to you know, say, sorry, it's all back to normal now. So you've all got to come into the office and leaders will now be, you know, managing your time and not really caring about you as a person. They're just going to fall out because we have shifted and we're not going back.
[00:30:09] Bridget: Exactly, yeah. And then also in global mobility, the other thing that I'm seeing happen too, we talk to people a lot, because I feel quite strongly about this, you know, what value are they getting for their relocation spend? I mean, I'm not, not wanting to diss shipping, but at the end of the day, a lot of people who are, and I've been in the situation myself, I was told, you know, you can have a full container.
[00:30:29] Bridget: So of course, we just threw everything in and took it there and then didn't use half of it. What value did that really have for my employer? I mean, I was kind of happy that I could do that. Um, it's now with the shipping costs being just so phenomenally high that employers just, they, they don't want to pay 20, 000, you know, towards shipping.
[00:30:46] Bridget: So we're able to have more constructive conversations with employers about, you know, what else could that money be used for, or could they bring a smaller air freight amount, or could we give them a budget to buy things in New Zealand once they get here. So, and then we can spend money on, you know, more resettlement support, which is actually going to be more productive for the employer and the employee in the long run than a whole lot of furniture that doesn't fit in the house or has gone moldy on the way.
[00:31:12] Bridget: Um, so there's just that sort of thinking about what, what's actually important rather than traditionally, yes, we've done this, this and this.
[00:31:21] Trisha: Yeah. And traditionally you try and recreate the exact home you had at home. So you're almost shifting people's expectations before they begin going home will be different.
[00:31:30] Bridget: Yeah. That's right.
[00:31:31] Trisha: When we've, um, reflected on past episodes, one of the things that has often emerged from people's shift stories was significant others and how some people helped them to make that shift, whether it's people that were mentors or whether it was just somebody who said something to them.
[00:31:49] Trisha: And there was often characteristics of those people that were really important that seemed to be common. And so I'm thinking about the people that you work with that have your back, that, that fulfill all these things you've been talking about in your team as they go to work with new arrivals, what are you telling them?
[00:32:06] Trisha: And what are the, The ways that you hope they show up to support the people.
[00:32:12] Bridget: we just did a values exercise, which is not really, I'm not meaning it to sound like a big corporate spec thing, but what we actually did was, Anne she works very closely with my operations guru, we sat down and we thought, who do we think exemplify mobile from our team? We did a big brainstorm of why we thought that.
[00:32:33] Bridget: And, uh, the things that came out were, you know, people who show empathy. Who are very professional and organized and the professional and the empathy sort of, I mean, that's kind of like talks to the further up the Maslow's hierarchy of needs and just sort of understanding everything that people want.
[00:32:48] Bridget: But I think the professionalism and organization is that, yes, we're going to get you sorted with a house. You don't need to worry about it. I've got it all under control, you know, that's, yes, I'm going to reply to your email now so you don't worry about it all night because all those little moments that matter is so important.
[00:33:04] Bridget: So those would probably be the main two. sort of areas that, that I look for when we're recruiting somebody and kind of reflects back into our values. But yeah, and then, and the third part of it is, You know that the relationship, every one of our team has a relationship with every expat, even if they've only got them for half a day, which some of them, we have, um, you know, we make sure that they're in touch with them well before they arrive so that it's not just, oh, you've arrived and you're stressed, it's we've done everything to reduce your stress before you arrive by making sure you know, What's going on, what you can do in advance, et cetera.
[00:33:37] Bridget: And, you know, you go out for a day and you're not just showing them houses, you're pointing out, oh, you like, you want to go to the gym. There's a good gym there. And just, they really feel cared for in the number of our, um, everybody is asked to do feedback form for us. And the word friend comes up. People say things that felt like I had been met by an old friend or I was looked after the way a friend would look after me.
[00:33:59] Bridget: And I just think it's so nice because we're not, we're not, Yeah. You know, we're not overstepping. We're not, they don't mean it in that way. We're not friends with them forever, but just that, you know, and imagine you're coming to a new country where you don't know a single person. You, you can't trust anybody.
[00:34:14] Bridget: And that's not because New Zealanders are untrustworthy. It's just, you don't know anybody to trust. So this is your one person who you've had, you know, a few phone calls and messages with them, they turn up, they look after you for a day. And that feels like a friend and that's what it should be. A
[00:34:27] Bridget: professional friend.
[00:34:28] Trisha: Yes. Yeah. And that fits with, you know, some of the themes that have been emerging, um, as, as people have spoken about, the people who were helpful to them as they made that shift that they're able to have real conversations with them and open up. And so that empathy is really important as well.
[00:34:47] Trisha: Yeah. Yeah, thank you. That's wonderful. So as a family, you've made many shifts over the years. You spoke about your sons being born in Singapore, and that's lovely to think about them and then bringing them home, which would have been like a whole new country to them. Um, can you tell us about some of the shifts and, you know, how you as a family are different, I guess, because of the experiences and, and who you are?
[00:35:11] Bridget: Absolutely. Well, um, yeah, I remember actually my, my daughter was born in Singapore too. And she came back and she, she was about three or four and she was got wandering around the area with my mother and we were going out for a walk one day and an elderly Chinese woman came towards us and my daughter was about three or four something, just stopped and looked at this woman.
[00:35:33] Bridget: And it was like, look on her face. It's like, Oh my God, somebody normal. She, that was what she was used to. And then when she was a little bit older, I think it was maybe five or six or so, and we'd actually come back to New Zealand, not very long back in the country. And she, she, one day she says to me, mum, I am just a little bit Chinese, aren't I?
[00:35:52] Bridget: You know, because her world, you know, was totally different to my world at the same age, you know, she identified with what was around her. And, and, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of elements of our life in Singapore that are just part of our family now. And just, yeah, just impregnated in our family, you know, We are a rice culture at home.
[00:36:13] Bridget: So there's, there's little things like that, which we just take for granted, but we're probably a bit unusual to some other families in that sense. But it's just us, it's who we are. Uh, and then another aspect of our life as a family that being an impact, being an expat really impacted on us was that my middle son has Asperger's syndrome.
[00:36:34] Bridget: And. When he was diagnosed, I suddenly had this thought, this is actually just like being in another country and having to understand another culture. So I did all my studying and, and because Neurodiversity for me at that stage was probably an even bigger leap than understanding another culture because I also had to learn, I mean, you will, you know, about this because of your training, but I had to understand how the brain worked and why the processing was different and actually be able to really get inside his head to understand what his reaction was to situations because his reaction was different to what a neurotypical person would be.
[00:37:13] Bridget: So in a, when you're in a different country or you're dealing with expats, you've got to be doing that all the time, but to a slightly lesser degree. Um, so I sort of felt that all my years as an expat has sort of brought me to that point. And then being able to, to do this, with Harry for Harry, again, feedback and made me even more flexible, fluid, whatever you want to call it when I'm dealing with expats, more agile would probably be the best way to describe it just to really work, you know, as much as I can be always jumping and curious and jumping into the other person, jumping into this person's perspective.
[00:37:50] Bridget: That's one of the things I really enjoy doing now. You know, seeing it through. Oh, yeah, that's an interesting understanding of that or getting an insight. And I think, you know, being exposed to neurodiversity, whether you're an aspiring expat or whether, like me, you've already been an expat, just must accelerate you.
[00:38:09] Bridget: Because if you can see the world through a neurodiverse person's eyes, you're so well set up to see the world through the eyes of a person of a different culture, because you've already got that ability to think, oh, they're seeing it differently. What is different about the way they're seeing it?
[00:38:23] Trisha: And again, there's that willingness to let go of this person must behave in this way. Um, because that's the way people behave, you know, the neurotypical way of behaving is the "right" way to behave in the same way that we often look at cultures as right and wrong because we've grown up in them and our parents told us this was the right way to behave and so being able to let go of that right or wrong just different and take on just different instead, um, from a neurodivergent neurotypical perspective is so freeing, um, and yet, you know, we feel for, we feel for children, And adults who have been forced, you know, into a mold, which requires them to mask, requires them to operate in a way that is really hard for them.
[00:39:09] Trisha: And sometimes they just can't, sometimes they can, but it's, it's not easy. And so, yeah, recognizing that, that as another culture is very freeing.
[00:39:19] Bridget: Well, and it's also, um, freeing in your mind too, because It is just, it just, it is another culture. It's another way of operating. It's not, you know, like you wouldn't say that another ethnic group or another nationality is somehow wrong
[00:39:36] Bridget: compared to you
[00:39:38] Trisha: Oh, People do, People do, Bridget, but yes.
[00:39:41] Bridget: Yeah, but I mean, you don't want to say that about your own child.
[00:39:44] Trisha: No.
[00:39:45] Bridget: So if you just see it as, as another culture, then, um, you know, as any different culture, really.
[00:39:52] Trisha: Yeah, which is wonderful. I know you're part of bringing changes to the global mobility industry, that you work with organizations within the industry, and we're both in, you know, TEMI, which is an amazing group of, um, individuals working in the industry, and I'll put that in the show notes.
[00:40:09] Trisha: What do you consider that global mobility needs to focus on in the near future?
[00:40:13] Bridget: That's an interesting one. You know, as I mentioned before, I think the industry has changed a lot. And I see that accelerating because, you know, for a number of reasons, when you look at all the research and the data, there's a global shortage of talent, so people are going to be relocating. There's huge demand for international experience, both from particularly younger people, you know, they just see that as an essential part of their, career.
[00:40:38] Bridget: And the businesses are open to it because, you know, they're short of auditors in New Zealand. Quick, we'll take those ones from Sweden who are on their off season and send them down to New Zealand, you know, that's some of our client base. So we'll do that. And then secondly, that sort of on the, on the, um, on the kind of demand side is.
[00:40:54] Bridget: You know, businesses are increasingly global. I mean, that's been happening for a long time, but that international experience is seen as really important, particularly as people want to move into leadership positions. , and, you know, the cheapness and the ease of travel just means that, you know, it's all possible.
[00:41:10] Bridget: So, you know, we're getting closer and closer to a global workforce, but at the end of the day, We need to be a bit careful from saying, you know, I'm an economist by training. So global, you know, labor mobility is one of the ideals of perfect competition. Um, you know, but when people are not just, you know, labor units to be plunked in here, there and everywhere, they're actually people.
[00:41:33] Bridget: So we're getting closer and closer to having labor mobility in a way that we've never had, increasingly exponentially each year, but we're still dealing with people who have the same sort of emotions and problems and joys, um, of moving internationally. So that just comes back to what we were discussing before, that it's less about the physical thing of putting somebody on a plane, it's more about their experience and And enabling them to reach self actualization, if we want to use Maslow's hierarchy of needs, or to be contributing as much as they can to their employer, if that's what the employer is concerned about.
[00:42:10] Bridget: And that all comes down to making sure that their basic needs are met and their emotional well being needs are met when they're plugged into that labor gap in whatever country. Um,
[00:42:20] Trisha: hmm, absolutely, mm
[00:42:21] Bridget: think that's where global mobility is going, to be honest. And, you know, technology and AI are really helpful in particularly in the logistics side of things, you know, making sure that your visa is compliant and all of that kind of stuff.
[00:42:34] Bridget: But, you know, the human, the human touch is really the key to the experience.
[00:42:39] Trisha: absolutely, yes. Bridget, this has been really helpful. And I think the listeners will really appreciate all of the things that you've been sharing. I really enjoyed the conversation. How would you like people to get in touch with you?
[00:42:50] Trisha: I will share your website details, but how, how would you like people to approach you if they're interested in working with you or if they are just wanting to ask further questions?
[00:43:00] Bridget: the two best ways as I'm quite active on LinkedIn. So if anyone who's listening is on LinkedIn, just connect with me and send me a little message and say, hi, love to do that. And then if you're not on LinkedIn, the best way is to email me, uh, at Bridget, B R I D G E T at mobile hyphen relocation with no S dot com.
[00:43:22] Trisha: Excellent.
[00:43:23] Bridget: I'd love to hear from you.
[00:43:24] Trisha: Thank you so much, Bridget. Really appreciate this. And thank you to our listeners. Thank you for joining us. Please make sure that you have pushed that follow button on your app so that you get every episode that is released of The Shift.