How would you define a 'Good expat'?
There are two views on being a good expatriate; yours and your employers.
An employer will usually have a specific result that an expatriate employee is expected to produce, and that requirement may take precedence over a whole host of personal considerations that the expatriate employee may have. If you have a well-informed and understanding employer you are in a much better position to enjoy a successful posting than if your employer has little or no experience with expatriate employees. Additionally, if your home office contact has no idea what the working conditions are abroad, problems can also arise due to the divergence of expectation and reality of getting a job done abroad.
An employer will know what they expect their expat to achieve and it is not uncommon to recruit primarily on the basis of professional suitability, but the personal suitability of the employee should also be considered. The best person to realistically consider that personal suitability is you, before you apply/accept a job overseas.
Tony Turton of Arnett Associates (International HR Consultants) discusses what a good employer should consider when choosing an employee for an expatriate posting on his website: http://www.btinternet.com/~arnettassoc/e...
The rest of this article raise issues that at an expatriate employee (or potential employee) shoudl consider for themself. Over the next few months Tony Turton and I will write a complimentary set of articles covering expatriate living - from the two perspectives of employer and employee.
So, what would make a good expat? From the professional point of view you are going to have to get used to a change in working practices. Very rarely do standard procedures translate from one country to another, even within a global multinational company. Local laws and standard practice will always impinge on your working life and demand your acceptance.
Acceptance of local practice can often create as many problems as it may appear to solve. On the one hand you do need to be sensitive in the way you interact with local colleagues and bureaucracy. But on the other hand you are likely to have your home office demanding to know why you cannot complete that simple task they want done and your spouse and children wanting to know why you have started coming home so late from the office. Explaining to head office that the local way of doing things means that it will take a month instead of a day to complete a task is never easy. And telling your family that you are expected to socialize with colleagues after work instead of going home can result in whole pile of other problems.
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