Thriving Abroad: The Definitive Guide to Professional and Personal Relocation Success

Moves like this are never without their fair share of risk. It's certainly true that you can't prepare for all eventualities, but the authors of "Thriving Abroad" have written a book that helps you make a success of global relocation while minimizing the risks that go with it.

So who's this book for? Well, it's primarily aimed at anyone with the ambition to move their career offshore. Crucially, though, it's as much for the so-called "trailing spouses" who accompany them. The authors stress how important it is to balance the careers and the well-being of both partners and their families, so they make a point of walking through relocations from both perspectives.

But the book also has wider relevance. Corporate mobility teams and service providers can find out about the expat experience from reading it, and offshore recruiters will learn about the hurdles that relocators have to jump. Managers who send people overseas will also gain from the book. They'll be able to use it to understand the outcomes that everyone needs to achieve from overseas postings.

Louise Wiles and Evelyn Simpson are well qualified to write this book. Between them they have 40 years' personal and professional experience of working as transition coaches and living in different countries. In 2012 they published the Career Choice and the Accompanying Partner Survey Report, which shone new light on the expatriate experience. "Thriving Abroad" is their first book together.

So, keep listening to hear about the importance of thorough preparation, the emotional side of international relocation, and the dangers of relaxing too soon.

"Thriving Abroad" is spread across 11 chapters. Each one is categorized according to the authors' "Framework for Living Abroad," which identifies the five main stages of change involved in international relocation. These are decision-making, preparation, relocation, settling, and thriving, and they all keep your personal, professional and family considerations at the center of your thinking.

There's also a jargon-busting glossary and a list of additional resources tucked away at the back, and a website you can turn to for extra support. So let's dive straight in to some of the authors' ideas.

One of the main reasons that international relocations can go wrong is that assignees often fail to consider the whole picture before they go. It's understandable, because moving abroad can be an exciting prospect, but it's avoidable, too.

The first chapter helps you avoid that pitfall by encouraging you to think about outcomes that you and the people around you might want to achieve.

A good place to start is with your organization. Some of your colleagues will have a vested interest in making a success of your relocation, but they'll define success differently to you. They'll focus on the return they get from their investment in you, and on the value of seeing your assignment through to the end.

Your boss, for example, might consider your posting a success if you win a certain number of new contracts, whereas the global mobility team will be pleased if you keep your relocation within budget.

And then there's your partner and your family to think of. You need to know what will make the move a success for your nearest and dearest, because their lives are being uprooted too. The viability of continuing in work, for example, might be a key measure of success for your partner.

If so, it's one to pay close attention to – the authors have found that only 16 per cent of expat partners find a full-time job in their adopted countries. Children will also need to feel that a move abroad has worked for them. If they can assimilate into new schools and social groups then the move is more likely to be successful for the whole family.

On the face of it, this all seems pretty basic stuff, and you may not feel you need a book to guide you through it. But being blasé about overseas postings can be a big mistake. If you don't take time to consider how a successful relocation would look for everyone affected by your move, you won't be ready to start building that success when you arrive – and failure becomes more likely.

At a time in life when it would be easy for anyone to get carried away with unrealistic expectations, Chapter One is a salutary reminder of that.

The chapters that follow expand on this message, that your preparations determine how well you'll fare. One factor that gets covered, for example, is how a sound understanding of the challenges you could face is helpful in keeping the risks of moving to a bare minimum.

These challenges can get obscured by the excitement of global relocation, as we assume that our future will be better than our past and present. But we ignore the risks of relocation at our peril, because they are real, and dangerous.

Change occurs in every area of life when you relocate abroad. You have a new environment to adapt to, changing relationships to wrestle with, unfamiliar education systems to navigate, and a whole new role to learn.

These changes will have behavioral, psychological and emotional impacts upon you and your family, so you need to prepare for them. The best way to do this is to stay aware of our natural human tendency towards optimism and to take a balanced view of the challenges you might face. If you can identify these before you leave, and plan strategies to lessen their impact, you'll be better equipped to deal with them.

Chapter Three shows you the way. It groups the most common "hotspots" into four areas: career, practical, relationship, and adjustment challenges. But rather than delivering a structured or a prescriptive plan for dealing with them, it proposes "thinking points" – suggestions and ideas for strategies you could adopt.

We like this approach. It taps directly into the authors' broad experiences to identify the challenges you could face, but it then invites you to devise your own best practices for dealing with them. The authors put the ball in your court, but they give you enough insight to pick it up and run with it.

When you've worked your way through these chapters about decision-making and preparation, your next step is to make it all happen, and in Chapter Six we learn about the logistics of moving. It's a fairly straightforward chapter, covering things that most of us might think we know already, but chances are you'll be surprised at what's here.

Again, you'll benefit from the authors' experiences. They prompt you to think about things you might never have considered, and they offer insights about everything from creating systems to help you track everything, to getting your finances, your children's education, and even pet care in order before you go. It's an exhaustive list, and one that we're sure plenty of international relocators will find valuable.

There are more surprises in Chapter Seven, which looks at preparing for the emotions of moving.

Understandably, emotions often get overlooked in the maelstrom of activity that comes before a big move. Cases need to be packed, bank accounts need to be closed and opened, and the paperwork you have to deal with can seem endless. In amongst all that, who has the time to deal with their emotions, or their family's emotions? Not many of us, perhaps, but taking the time to prepare yourself for the emotional impact of moving can make all the difference.

Relocation is, after all, a life-changing event, and it's easy to feel disoriented when so much change is going on around you. As the predictability of everyday life gets replaced by unfamiliarity and uncertainty, you'll experience a rollercoaster ride of emotions. Relief, perhaps, as your plane takes off, followed by fear or anxiety when you land in your new home city, and then depression or elation as your new role beds in and reality takes hold.

Emotions are complex, and whatever emotional preparation works for you may not work for someone else. The authors rise to this challenge by offering a range of issues to consider and a variety of approaches to try – for yourself and for your family.

They talk, for example, about "leaving well." This is the idea that instead of slipping away quietly to avoid the pain of emotional goodbyes, you make time to acknowledge the sadness and loss that comes with leaving one place for another. It's an essential prompt to look out for yourself and your loved ones at a time when you could quite easily be distracted.

So, you've weighed up the pros and cons of accepting a post abroad and you've prepared yourself and your family for the move. What then? Well, next comes a period of transition and adjustment as you settle into your new environment, with the hope that you'll all soon find yourselves flourishing within it, just as you did at home.

Chapter Nine asks how you can then reach the point of thriving, once you've made it through that initial transition phase where you're still finding your feet.

It may be tempting to relax a little after you've settled into your new life and role. Unfamiliar new settings and tasks have gradually become routine. You've gotten preoccupied by the "here and now" of your new role, and you feel comfortable falling back on your organization, relying on them to take care of any relocation issues that remain.

This is dangerous territory, though. You could fall victim to career drift, where your future gets determined by your organization. You could disagree with your partner over what comes next, or return home at the end of your posting to a more lackluster position, all because you took your eye off the ball for a while.

The book makes the point that relocating abroad can be risky in so many ways. For example, "out of sight" can mean "out of mind," and you could potentially find yourself overlooked at home and "leapfrogged" by colleagues who get ahead of you while you're away. So you really need to be proactive about managing your career if you're going to thrive. Even if your organization really does "have your back," it's wise to keep a firm grip on the reins of your own career.

As in other chapters, the authors have plenty of ideas about how you can do this. To counter the risks of international relocation by keeping yourself current, for example, they advise you to keep your résumé, your social media profiles, and your networks up to date, and to keep learning by engaging in professional development.

These might seem obvious things to do, but would you trust yourself to remember them when you're in the middle of an exciting new posting abroad? The real value here, as it is throughout so much of this book, is in having these reminders laid out for you, succinctly and comprehensively, accompanied by wise advice.

So what's our last word on "Thriving Abroad"? We think it's an excellent book. It's well-written and clearly structured, and it has a friendly, engaging tone that makes it easy and enjoyable to read.

But it's much more than just a good read. "Thriving Abroad" is full to the brim with useful advice and real-life experiences from real expats who've been there and done that. It covers all the essential considerations when contemplating a work move abroad, and we agree with the book's subtitle: it's surely the definitive guide to international relocation success.

What "Thriving Abroad" is definitely not, though, is a manual. More than anything else, it's a collection of checklists, ideas, thinking points, and suggestions. It nudges you to consider things you might never have thought about, and it prompts you to act in ways that you might not have considered.

The book puts you in the driving seat. It supports and guides you, tapping straight into the authors' long experience, but it never directs you. It offers solutions and strategies, but it asks you to reflect on what would work best for your situation, inviting you to find answers of your own.

Another strength of this book is the emphasis it gives to partners and families, so that you consider every decision and every strategy with your nearest and dearest in mind. By the time you reach the last few pages, you should be well prepared to make decisions based on a sound understanding of what you're doing, to move feeling practically and emotionally ready, and to thrive – all of you – once you're there.

We wholeheartedly recommend this book.

"Thriving Abroad," by Louise Wiles and Evelyn Simpson, is published by Practical Inspiration Publishing.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.