WHY BUSINESSES NEED
LANGUAGE STRATEGY
Organizations
that effectively marry language strategy with their global talent
management process gain a leg up on the competition, say Tsedal
Neeley and
Robert
Steven Kaplan
Lost sales. Friction. Inefficiency. These are dirty words in the
world of business, and they are inevitabilities for companies that
don't watch their language, so to speak.
Harvard
Business School Associate Professor Tsedal
Neeley
believes
that to accommodate the communication challenges of a global
marketplace, it is imperative for multinational
organizations to have clear language strategies. Neeley has
coauthored a September Harvard
Business Review article with
HBS Professor of Management Practice Robert
Steven Kaplan on
how companies can turn language from a profound challenge into a
distinct competitive advantage. While sometimes difficult to
implement, Neeley and Kaplan argue that organizations that
effectively marry language strategy with their global talent
management process gain a leg up on the competition.
Christian
Camerota: How
do you take people who are working at the highest levels of their
industry and ask them to learn the basics of another language that
you want to make the basis of communication in your company? Aren't
they going to feel like a student in high school?
Tsedal
Neeley:
I've written about this for years, where you have these incredibly
competent employees who are experts in their various areas of work.
They say they feel "childlike" when they have to switch to
the working language. It affects how they contribute. Managers
primarily tend to worry about things like culture and geography, but
every global manager also needs to worry about language. Too often,
talented professionals don't get the support or the training
necessary to bring up their level of language competence, and that is
why organizations need a language strategy. It's so fundamental and
it drives the way that their global teams interact. Without
appropriate levels of language skills, communication and performance
suffer.
Q:
You
have written about English becoming the primary lingua franca in
global businesses. Do you see any dangers in that proliferation? Are
there cultural assumptions that are made in that process?
A:
Lingua
francas have existed for centuries. English has become the global
business language mostly in the last 30 years. Linguists believe it's
the fastest spreading language in human history because of technology
and media like MTV. So the scale and scope and rapidity with which
English is spreading is unprecedented and staggering. Many global
companies have accepted it. It is now important to equip employees,
whether they're English speakers or not, to communicate effectively
in the English language in a multinational, multilingual environment.
This includes helping native English speakers learn how to temper
their pace and vocabulary so that they are more inclusive while
others migrate to their native language. Today, all global companies
need to address the language dilemma head on.
Q:
Is
it realistic for companies that choose a lingua franca to expect
everyone in the organization to learn a sufficient amount of what may
be a totally foreign language for them?
A:
Needless
to say, you want the right people with the right skills on any job.
Rob Kaplan and I argue in our article that you want to be sure
employees' language skills meet the demands of their work and that
employees aren't over- or underestimated based on their language
skills. Interestingly, language skills can seem abstract or
amorphous. In reality, for most global work you only need a
relatively limited number of English words in your knowledge
base—3,000 or 4,000 words at an intermediate level. You're not
asking people to have native-like mastery in English, which hovers
around 10,000 words. You're simply asking them to develop enough
skill to function effectively.
A
language strategy coupled with detailed training programs is akin to
any technology or software people are trained in. People won't flinch
to make sure that their employees have the right tools and
technology. Language is no different.
Q:
How
are talent evaluation methods driven by a language strategy? Or how
should they be?
A:
A
clear strategy starts from the top of the organization and cascades
down to every single individual. The strategy has to be tied to the
firm's vision and, in some cases, integrated in annual reviews. This
is done in a variety of ways, from making foreign assignments into
prestigious postings to raising awareness about potential
organizational blind spots regarding language to something as simple
as managing individuals' airtime in meetings.
Regardless
of how it's done, it has to start with managers being trained and
held accountable for their organizations' language and cultural
skills, and it has to be about how global managers are leading their
teams in a way that ensures there's equity of contribution and
evaluation. There's a great deal of performance anxiety in global
organizations, where people are worried about how they are being
appraised, whether it is on their language skills or their job
skills. It's important to make sure people (managers in particular)
don't get seduced by others' speaking skills. For example, in the
article we discuss a manager for a global bank's Japanese subsidiary
who promoted an individual he believed to be charismatic, based on
his speaking skills, only to find out later that that person's peers
didn't respect him. His lack of leadership ability was masked by his
good speaking skills.
So
I hope our article will cause every reader to go back to their
companies and teams and say, "We're a global company, or a
globalizing company. What is the language strategy that we have that
is directly tied to the vision of our company and our global talent
management?" Every manager needs to ask that question and act
quickly to put a strategy in place.
Q:
Are
there organizations that are excelling in this area?
A:
There
are many organizations that are managing language deliberately, and
some of my other writings have described those. Companies like IBM
have dedicated people working on their language strategy, and part of
the reason is that they have 420,000 employees, representing 184
languages and 96 nationalities in many markets worldwide. They spend
millions of dollars doing it - and they have to. But they also save
millions of dollars by equipping their employees to perform well in
English or another relevant language. That said, they would be the
first to say that implementation continues to be a problem because
they're so big.
Another
interesting thing I've learned over the years is that the language
dilemma never goes away, because language is about people. It
dictates and influences identity and professional competence and
communication on a moment-to-moment and day-to-day basis. For as long
as you have these identity and communication ties, especially when
mediated through communication channels like email, there are going
to be challenges. However, if you have people who are intelligent
about language, know how to manage, and know how to think about it at
all levels in an organization, it can become an amazing asset.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christian
Camerota is Harvard Business School assistant director of
communications.
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