After graduating from high school, you simply have to go abroad. It would be best if you spent a semester somewhere as an exchange student. It is the only way you can learn to cope with the challenges you will be facing as a manager or entrepreneur in our globalized world.
This is the kind of advice I hear “experienced managers” give young people during various events. To me, that seems a little one-sided. If young people go abroad, the basic objective is not for them to become better managers. Rather, they should get a little experience in life and gain a little wisdom. To be sure, this is not bad news for a future manager, either.
I think it is a great opportunity for young people to be travelling abroad early and often. A longer stretch is certainly also nice. In that case, you should really “catch the spirit” of life and culture of the foreign land and immerse yourself in it.
A mere ghetto situation as you often get it in business environments abroad or during the short Robinson Club vacation is less then perfect. Even if it lasts several months.
I was lucky enough to have been given the chance of staying with a French family for quite a long time early in my life through the “exchange program for railroad worker’s children”. My experiences included many novelties, both nice and not so nice. And I learned to appreciate France and the French people.
However, I also made the experience that some people did not like me very much for being German. Once in a while, I was just the evil “Boche”. After all, WW-II had only been over for 20 years and the wounds of the war had not yet completely healed.
The most important thing I learned at the time to appreciate the tolerance I experienced and to try and get a little more tolerant myself. I understood that people living in another country and culture are different. They think differently and they behave differently. And there are totally different “societies”.
Immersing oneself singularly into a foreign country and living among strange people means truly learning about multi-culture. It has nothing in common with the “global village” mentality some smart young executives display in our jet-set era.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
Today, I still enjoy going abroad – these days mostly by bike. In this way, I experience a very close contact with radically different cultures and people. Their problems are often totally different from ours.
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