Crisis! It appears out of nowhere and tosses us into a dark valley of confusion, stress, and chaos.  Whether it’s receiving shocking news from back home, experiencing a terrorist attack in a nearby city, or owing a huge sum in unexpected taxes, we experience similar reactions. 

What’s that expression? “Hindsight is always 20/20.”

If only we had eyes to see. If only we had eyes to see inside our team. If only we had eyes to see the health of our team.

If only we could have seen the weaknesses, the gaps . . . perhaps we would have been able to save our team, our work, our project, and ourselves from all the pain and hardship.

Our team was young and grew fast. We went from four to ten in six months. We had colleagues ranging from age 19 to age 60—some with decades of overseas experience and some without a single day.

We needed help, and we didn’t know it.

We needed eyes to see. We needed a tool, a resource, a coach.

Our team didn’t make it. Only a few months after growing exponentially, our team and our project exploded and died. There were casualties along the way.

It could have all been avoided.

If only we would have known. If only we could have seen. “Hindsight is always 20/20.” If only we would have known the path to take, the road to walk on to build a healthy team.

Making a mountain out of a mole hill!  

This is an English idiom used when someone appears to be exaggerating a situation.  It can happen externally where others see it, or it can happen internally where only I notice the mountain growing inside of me. 

I stepped off a plane into the summer heat of Casablanca, Morocco with my two boys (3 and 5 years old). It was August of 1997. My boss and his welcome committee all ended up on vacation the week we arrived. 

“That’s ok, we can do this!”

We were excited for the adventure before us and easily sloughed off getting lost in a taxi with no cell phone. We didn’t get outwardly frustrated trying to find food in a store where we couldn’t read the labels. Even trying to find our own housing with no native English speaker to help was ok . . . for about a month. 

We started off with the honeymoon (link to culture shock graphic) excitement and joy that you may remember. But over time, the stress of cross-cultural living settled in, and we began to carry around the weight of it. Now, after all these years, we not only can look back and identify the stress we faced, but we can more easily see it in the new people that arrive each year. 

So what are the common stressors we see?