Expatriate Coaching



Life coaching is a whole-person, client-centered approach. Coaching the client’s whole life is the operating system working in the background. No matter what kind of subspecialty a client may seek, all coaching is life coaching says Patrick Williams and Diane S. Menendez in their book “Becoming a Professional Life Coach”.

[legend title=”Life Coaching is” style=”1″]… a future-focused professional relationship between a Coach and the client. It is based on mutual trust and confidentiality and is guided by ethics and code of conduct.[/legend]

Expatriation, Repatriation, TCKs and Cross-Cultural Coaching

Expatriates are often international entrepreneurs or diplomats who migrate for their employers. There is another group called “self-imposed expatriates”, because the decision to migrate is made on their own volition for economic or other reasons.

Their thrilling and enticing conditions of service also has a challenging and adventurous aspect (self and family integration, adaptation, Culture shock, own prejudice). Perseverance and determination are important qualities for expatriates. And cases where employees prematurely terminated their assignments due to their inability, or that of their families, to integrate into their new local environment is rampant.

An Expatriation & Global Executive Coach is an expert who specialises in helping global mobility agents and their families deal with the challenges that emanate from crossing cultures, due to relocation. He/she provide clients with the necessary support in adapting to new cultures, identity issues created in relocating families, difficulties pertaining to professional goals. They work with the different members of the family (Expat, Spouse and Children) in order to equip them with the resource to immerse into their new environment.

To counter the numerous faux pas enumerated above and enjoy a fulfilling expatriation I, Winifred Gaillard, ICF ACSTH certified life Coach specialised in Expatriation, a trailing spouse and mother of 3 Third Culture Kids myself is proposing an all-inclusive pre-departure or post arrival programme for Expats and their families.

Don’t hesitate, contact me today.

Considerations for Expatriation

Spouses: Oftentimes referred to as “The Trailing Spouses or the accompanying partners”. Their immense contributions to the completion of assignment and through supporting and facilitating the transition towards the local culture, for their partners and children. In her dissertation Adaptation of trailing spouse: does gender matter?

Anne M. Braseby, Doctor of Philosophy at Florida International University, Miami, Florida, wrote that Stewart Black (a leading expatriate business scholar) extensively researched the adaptation of expatriate wives with the main purpose of preventing early returns. He and his colleague Hal Gregerson (1991:463) indicates “Firms want to reduce the substantial direct and indirect costs of expatriate failures in overseas assignments and employees want to reduce the probability of failure overseas and the negative impact it would have on their careers”.

Because spouse adjustment can be a substantial factor in the completion of successful overseas assignments and given that most American expatriates have spouses who accompany them overseas (Black 1988, Black and Stephens 1989, Harvey 1985), it seems crucial to comprehend more about the cross-cultural adjustment of spouses.

Children: Third Culture Kid (TCK)“A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any.Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK’s life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background.” (Pollock and Van Reken, 1999)

Post-expatriation or Repatriation: This is when the assignment comes to an end whether prematurely or full term. Although most returnees experience one form of post-expatriation or re-entry anxiety or another, the circumstances surrounding repatriation plays a role, e.g. an expat who returns prematurely is likely to be more vulnerable for the simple reason he/she did not have time to prepare his/herself emotionally or mentally, he/she might think people will consider them a failure for not being able to complete their assignment and the fact that the record might affect them in future if they want to apply for a foreign assignment.

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