A Guide to French & American Expat Integration, Part 1
FRENCH AND AMERICAN CULTURES ARE DIFFERENT.
A foreigner who is able to intentionally integrate into a new country, society, company, culture, etc. quickly is perhaps the goal--for the person and for the receiving entity.
Hopefully, this article will expedite the process of helping French and American expats, employers and employees to see each other with open eyes and open hearts.
Photo by Jessica Ruscello on Unsplash
Different is a good thing--we want the world to keep its nuances and its specialness. And we want to successfully learn from them, and share with them in symbiotic relationships.
We love global but often need shared experiences as bridges to help us understand and appreciate the local. When we successfully assimilate within a foreign culture, we all experience the benefits of glocal.
French and American work cultures seem to further exacerbate cultural differences because there's a lot at stake for employers, employees, and the company culture itself. It's not just a one-off adventure, it's a career and a company. And time is of the essence!
When an American walks into a new job at a French company, chances are you'll see someone charged up, radiating excited, hopeful energy. They're showing that they're happy to be there, fortunate to be part of the team, and ready to learn how they can help--with intense eye-contact, a huge, whitened smile, and a politely extended hand.
For the American, they may not realize their conditioning until the energetic gesture isn’t reflected back, time after time after time, as the French value a different sort of energy. Ideally, both parties can take a moment to observe and contemplate the dissonance.
In my experience, a French person who receives an American's energetic intensity becomes overwhelmed and uncomfortable, withdrawing, further closing-off and becoming colder the more intense the energy is available. This is an opposite reaction of what the American likely expected.
The French do not project their energy in the same way that Americans do.
The American who puts their best aura forward expects to be well-received. Offering a filtered, intensely positive energy is an American instinct. We’re conditioned this way and it generally works in the American culture. It takes energy to be energetic. Filtering and projecting positivity is valued in American society. (This is starting to change, however; with authentic expressions of vulnerability gaining more value in American cultures within recent years, perhaps we are witnessing the integration of French influences in America.)
The French carefully curate their boundaries and they expect them to be seen and respected. It seems that French people perceive the surge of the American's openness as projected inauthentic energy and therefore perceived as untrustworthy, or worse, false, manipulative or deceitful. Which, from their unfiltered perspective, makes sense.
Instead, intense, enthusiastically positive energy literally feels like an unwarranted attack to the French, even though that is the last thing the American anticipated or intended for you to feel. For the American, the unfiltered French energy can feel like a drag. Authentic but dissatisfied energy, complaining or seemingly spewed misery is heavy for the American’s high-vibe filter.
As an expat in France, I didn’t know what to do with the negativity I received--I didn’t know if it was for me to collect and hold on to for them (it wasn’t). For me, the generalized societal venting was shocking and depressing. I received it with such gravity, I absorbed it and took it on and tried to fix it, because that’s what an American would do.
Awkward.
When energies between two people, two cultures, or environments are not aligned or do not match in intensity, we create discomfort. What happens next depends on what we do with this discomfort.
When we take pause to become aware of how our energies or intentions are received, we begin to see how we are aligned or misaligned. We create space. Space allows discomfort an alternative course from destruction, toward a path of harmony and connectedness or understanding. Harmony is a much more comfortable place to be and is worth exploring.
Differences create opportunities for open-mindedness, growth, expansion, creativity, and transformation. Unless intentionally practiced, none of these opportunities are comfortable. The point of exercising intentional discomfort, so that it may be de-conditioned as discomfort and simply register as change.
For one to understand the cultural context of another culture, one must first realize the context of their own conditioning in their own culture. This is much harder done than said. Contextual gaps in cultures are complex, and vastly uncharted, at least in a first-person, person-to-person way. There are so many nuances, assumptions, customs and rules that we may or not even realize we hold true, for our own cultures and assume for others’ cultures as well.
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Please note, this is a grossly (French word for largely, though one of those weird words in an American context) blanketed statement and overview to comparing cultures biased by my own experiences and perspectives and privileges. It is my hope that it helps to create bridges of understanding, to connect and transform people (with love) across the world.
With love and light,
Jennie Souiade
CEO & Founder, Magentic
HelloMagentic.com
jennie@hellomagentic.com
