When everyone doesn’t think in English
In international collaborations, English is often the lingua franca — the common language that is used to communicate.
The reality is that this is easier for people for whom English is their first language, harder for people who are less comfortable with English.
It can not only be more difficult to communicate. It can also be mentally exhausting when you are thinking in one language and communicating in another.
I had a colleague who was a native Portuguese speaker, and his English was great. But he would tell me during long meetings, “Glenn, I am tired. English is very tiring for me. Sorry I need a break. I am not going to communicate in English for the next 30 minutes. [Our other colleague] will translate as needed. I hope I am not offending you.” (I told him, “Não há problema! I’m sorry that I don’t speak more Portuguese.”)
Even native English speakers can get tired more quickly, as they might have to exert more effort to understand and clarify.
All this can affect our reservoirs of creativity, as we are exhausting big chunks of our brain energy in translation.
I wonder how teams — particularly creative teams — could be less limited by their ability to speak and write English to each other. How can we change our interactions so that the barrier of different primary languages is lower, so that the benefits of cognitive diversity can more strongly shine through?
Here’s a design challenge:
How might we help team members that have different primary languages have the deepest, most profound and productive exchanges possible?
I think there are a lot of technological advances on the horizon — from the increasing powers of Google Translate to AI-powered applications — that will be amazing. But I’ve even more interested in different things we can now to make a dent in this challenge.
Jason Bigman has some really interesting ideas around this. (Sidenote: Jason speaks 11 languages!) In a follow-up coffee after a Tech Salon on online learning in emerging economies, Jason and I kicked around some ideas.
One rough idea is to create a class for native English speakers on “How to speak non-condescending English to people who have a different primary language.” The exact topic and title needs work. It was born out of some humorous stories of funny (and sad) things we’ve seen people do in conversations.
For example, one danger for native English speakers is that they can subconsciously judge a non-native English speaker’s ability to contribute based on their ability to speak English. For example, there could be a native Spanish speaker who thinks at a PhD level but is comfortable speaking English at a 3rd grade level.
So the class could begin with an exercise we call “taste of depth.” You take an article/paper/post your teammate has written in their native language, run it through Google Translate, and find things that pique your curiosity, and then have a follow-up conversation where you get curious and start digging for more meaning.
The point is to have early experiences that help one feel “Hey, there are things I’d really love to learn from (and with) this person, and it’s worth going through the hard work to understand!”
A lot of this class could be on ways to dig for meaning that are comfortable and effective for everyone involved. The class could also cover topics such as:
- Learning to modulate your level of English
- How register and delivery of voice affect meaning
- Confusing components of language and learning how to helpfully simplify
- Learning how to what Jason calls “assertively pull back” to create space
- Allowing time for “error” and conversational repair
- Catching your use of idioms
So that’s one class idea.
Another class idea is helping teams with a structure to communicate visually so that they are less dependent on spoke and written language to communicate complicated concepts.
For example, one person who does this (though I don’t think so much in an international context) is Dan Roam, who has systems for “vivid grammar” based on simple drawing.
And finally, another class idea could be on various tips and tricks for international teams. For example, use a real-time Google Doc during a meeting as a whiteboard for the agenda and notes, so people can hear and and read… and be able to easily run through Google Translate as needed. Another example is multilingual brainstorming — brainstorm first in native languages, and then later translate.
Before any of these classes, it might be worth doing a little user research to better understand the nuances of how people feel in these kinds of international conversations. What specific things make people feel more or less comfortable?
