Book Description

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Strange Lands -- we were all born into one. Most of us over the years have by choice or necessity molded ours into the much more familiar and predictable place we call "home." But strange lands are still out there, everywhere. By "strange lands" I mean those relationships, teams, organizations, or foreign lands within which we must deal effectively with new peoples, cultures, places, and technologies. Increasingly we confront these lands abroad on global assignments for multinationals, in foreign study, or intercultural marriage, or even as tourists. We encounter them face-to-face or online as we participate more and more in geographically dispersed teams. And, of course, we encounter them at home every time we wander into our culturally diverse office, classroom or bar. Presence in Strange Lands focuses most significantly on those literal new lands encountered on sojourns abroad, though it deals significantly with these others as well. "Why do we journey to such lands?" That, in a nutshell, is what this book is about. In spite of ecoshock, frustration, fatigue, failure, and sometimes danger what lures we sojourners from home to the road? What causes us to journey to these strange lands for an assignment, a career or a lifetime? What keeps us there? And, what entices us back there, again, and again–the job, the money, the adventure, the people and cultures we find, the challenges we encounter, the stories we can later tell? That is what this book is about. It is also about the tools we need to take with us to be optimally effective in these lands. But most particularly, it explores the experience of a "sense of presence" -- the heightened immediacy, broad awareness, vividness, responsivity, and clarity so commonly described by sojourners on these journeys. It explores what a sense of presence is, what induces it, what nurtures it, and its key role in helping us deal with the challenges to success encountered in these lands. It introduces the “presence-seekers” -- sometimes presence “junkies” -- for whom a heightened presence is the allure of a life on the road. And it describes what happens as we return to that once familiar land we called "home." Presence in Strange Lands unfolds through the words of numerous sojourners on a broad variety of journeys to very diverse lands (an excerpt from one such opens this prospectus). These descriptions of a sense of presence were elicited through several research projects with methodologies ranging from informal interviews, to focus groups, to web-based forums. They are intertwined with interpretation based on current research and theory to guide readers to a better understanding of their own experiences and to better deal with the challenges encountered in their own strange lands.