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I’m encountering two types of individuals keen to develop a portfolio executive workstyle that involves engaging Middle Eastern or Asian clients.
Expats
Is this you? As an English expat, you have a significant career in the Middle East or Asia and have reached a life stage where you want to return to the UK. Perhaps you must be available to look after ageing parents; possibly your teenage children need enough UK education to enter UK universities as local residents rather than paying international fees. Maybe you have decided for whatever reason that the place that you want to retire is the UK.
Middle Eastern/Asian heritage
The second group of people are Middle Eastern or Asian, either by birth or through parents who have come to the UK, and you want to rebuild and develop their relationships overseas.
Returning Expat
Each of those two options presents slightly different challenges. Let me give you an example of a returning expat. Imagine you are an individual who has built up an efficient career working in the Far East and has developed many exciting businesses. But you have got to a life stage where it’s essential to be back in the UK to support elderly parents. On the face of it, you should be firmly positioned to support Far Eastern businesses wanting to build their presence in the UK and to help UK businesses that want to engage with the Far East. The challenge for you is that you need to develop a new network in the UK or the Far East for either of those two strategies to be successful. This must be done after some time.
If you can retain part-time work as an employee in the Asia Pacific as you transition, that will help. If you can maintain some presence in the Far East to regularly go backwards and forwards, that will help. If you are moving lock, stock, and barrel from the Far East to London, there is significant reverse culture shock, and considerable activity is needed to build the network you need in the UK. You may need to focus on the UK diaspora from the region you’ve left.
That doesn’t mean it’s impossible or a bad idea, but it can be challenging. For you, a better strategy to engage with the Middle East or Asia is to start with UK businesses looking to go overseas rather than with Asian or Middle Eastern companies seeking to build in the UK. Your UK network will be vital to the quality of offers you can make to people overseas.
Building on Your Heritage
Imagine you have had an international career and are looking to transition from the Far East to the UK for a fresh future. Now, you have a massive advantage in that you have been working in overseas territories, often as a native language speaker and with a strong appreciation of the local culture. Usually, if you’ve moved to different countries, you know the diaspora from those other countries. You may have developed a facility to adopt new languages and adapt to cultural nuances from your experience. When you return to the UK, mainly if you come to
London, you’re immediately in a multicultural environment. You can immediately engage with the diaspora from those different countries in the UK. This gives you a huge advantage.
Barriers to Success
What are the barriers for you? The barriers can be three-fold.
1. There is still a culture shock coming to London and the UK. It’s not quite the same as the place you’ve come from.
2. Transitioning and establishing your family in London can take a lot of effort.
3. You may find that the business English that served you well when you were overseas needs refining and improving to be entirely accepted with your written English in a London-based environment.
As a senior professional, peers will expect you to be able to use metaphors, similes, and clichés relevant to the context of the UK and London. That may require you to have some intensive entry training around your written and spoken English. Beyond that, you do have a vast range of opportunities.
Conclusions
Experience or cultural heritage from Asia or the Far East can provide a powerful differentiator as you build a workstyle that meets your needs in the second half of your career. However, as a portfolio executive, ensure that you invest time and effort to position yourself as firmly as possible to build most suitable client base. Hoping for the best is unlikely to be enough. Select a compelling niche and then develop a network of relationships that will deliver you success.
Charles McLachlan is the founder of FuturePerfect and on a mission to transform the future of work and business. The Portfolio Executive programme is a new initiative to help executives build a sustainable and impactful second-half-career. Creating an alternative future takes imagination, design, organisation and many other thinking skills. Charles is happy to lend them to you.