Episode 29
Bridget Romanes - Cultural Shifts with Global Mobility
This week, Trisha interviews Bridget Romanes, founder of New Zealand business, Mobile Relocation Limited. They discuss Bridget's experiences living in India and Singapore as a diplomat, her insights into cultural intelligence, and how her company supports people relocating to New Zealand. Bridget shares personal stories of adapting to new cultures, the importance of accepting and understanding local ways, and strategies to help expats thrive, including recognising the relocation cycle and building friendships. The conversation also covers the evolution of the global mobility industry, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the shift towards prioritising the emotional as well as practical needs of relocating employees. Bridget highlights the critical role of empathy and professionalism in her team's work and how these values help new arrivals to settle effectively. They also touch of neurodivergence (ND) and how the process of understanding how someone with a ND brain is experiencing the world is akin to exploring a different culture.
In this episode Bridget and Trisha referred to Dr Shireen Chua, they discussed TEMI, The Employee Mobility Institute and Bridget's company Mobile Relocation
To connect with Bridget reach out to her on Linked in or email her at bridget@mobile-relocation.com
Transcript
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.
[:
[00:01:24] 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.
[:[00:02:26] 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.
[:[00:02:43] Bridget: Indeed.
[:[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?
[:[00:03:17] 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.
[:[00:04:04] 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.
[:[00:04:34] 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.
[:[00:05:23] 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.
[:[00:06:01] 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.
[:[00:06:39] 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.
[:[00:07:15] 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.
[:[00:07:56] Trisha: It was very much how you were in relation to others.
[:[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.
[:[00:08:42] 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.
[:[00:09:30] 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.
[:[00:10:07] 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,
[:[00:10:35] Bridget: yeah, I find it very exciting what's happening in New Zealand now, um,
[:[00:10:44] Bridget: Yes.
[:[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?
[:[00:11:35] 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.
[:[00:12:17] 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,
[:[00:12:30] 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.
[:[00:13:00] Bridget: Um, they seemed, you know, somehow easier,
[:[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.
[:[00:14:03] 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.
[:[00:14:40] 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.
[:[00:15:10] 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.
[:[00:15:36] Trisha: I love that.
[:[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] Trisha: And so what are the biggest shifts you think that they need to make as they move?
[:[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.
[:[00:17:23] 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.
[:[00:17:59] 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.
[:[00:19:07] 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.
[:[00:19:31] 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.
[:[00:20:21] 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.
[:[00:20:58] 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.
[:[00:21:32] 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.
[:[00:22:27] 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.
[:[00:23:17] 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
[:[00:23:31] 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.
[:[00:24:10] 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.
[:[00:24:52] 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.
[:[00:25:30] 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.
[:[00:26:10] 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.
[:[00:26:57] 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.
[:[00:27:38] 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.
[:[00:28:15] 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.
[:[00:29:03] 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.
[:[00:30:29] 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.
[:[00:31:12] 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.
[:[00:31:30] Bridget: Yeah. That's right.
[:[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?
[:[00:32:12] 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.
[:[00:32:48] 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.
[:[00:33:37] 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.
[:[00:34:14] 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
[:[00:34:28] 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.
[:[00:35:11] 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.
[:[00:35:52] 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.
[:[00:36:34] 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.
[:[00:37:50] 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.
[:[00:38:23] 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.
[:[00:39:19] 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
[:[00:39:38] Trisha: Oh, People do, People do, Bridget, but yes.
[:[00:39:44] Trisha: No.
[:[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.
[:[00:40:13] 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.
[:[00:40:54] 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.
[:[00:41:33] 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.
[:[00:42:20] Trisha: hmm, absolutely, mm
[:[00:42:34] Bridget: But, you know, the human, the human touch is really the key to the experience.
[:[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?
[:[00:43:22] Trisha: Excellent.
[:[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.
