January 17, 2024
Agonising over on how to actually start speaking
Getting stuck on how best to say something
Overthinking how something might be received.
Searching for a “perfect’ way to phrase something
Taking sole responsibility for the success of the conversation
Believing that you’re embarrassing yourself and your team with your language skills
Presuming that everyone else has better language skills than you
Worrying that any small mistakes in your language will count against you… forever.
Assuming that everyone is laughing behind your back at your accent
If you’re using any of this 'false thinking' you’re probably also blaming yourself when you don’t get the response you’re looking for.
For some reason non native speakers insist on trying to take on sole responsibility for successful communication. If this is you, you need to stop this way of thinking.
The fact is that there’s no single correct or incorrect way of saying anything, in any language. There are many different ways using different vocabulary, different grammar and different sentence constructions. Each one will send a slightly different impression of the emotional state of the speaker. To a native speaker, each one will put the emphasis on a slightly different aspect of what’s being said.
But no one sentence will be the single most perfect way to communicate something. That’s because communication is a two way process, and we can’t know how the other person is going to receive the information. And, what is received positively by one person could well receive a different response from another person. In fact the same thing expressed in the same way can receive different responses from the same person on different occasions!
Of course you know this. You get it in your native language. It’s just that when you start speaking English as a non native, you forget it and start over complicating things.
That’s a big motivator for me to do the work I do. To help people get out of their heads, out of there own way and just start communicating in English without fear. Communicating in a way that they can pass on their knowledge and go further in their work, get more recognition without overthinking, and getting overwhelmed. Because when you’re communicating within a multinational team the ‘what’ is so much more important than the ‘how’.
Yes, when you’re representing your company publicly any inaccuracies in your language can have a negative impact on the professionalism of your company.
Yes, when you’re writing emails that could be seen outside of the organisation the same things apply regarding inaccuracies.
Yes, you need to be understandable and no you don’t want to cause offence to any of your colleagues.
But when you’re communicating within your team, your team want to hear what you have to say. Your team want to benefit from your knowledge, experience and skills… because you’re part of the team. That’s what a team is, right? If it’s not, then may I suggest that you have other bigger problems within your organisation than just language barriers.
If you’re interested in hearing more on this theme, subscribe to this newsletter and tune into my podcast ‘English Talk - Speaking up in English at work for introverts’
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