Multilingual Team Communication

Team Communication Is a Key Success Factor
“Never change a winning team.” Teams in both line management and projects consist of specialists bringing together their diverse knowhow and skills to achieve a common goal. When such interdisciplinary teams function well, they move mountains. At the same time, the range of different backgrounds also challenges team success. So, how do you successfully create and lead an interdisciplinary team?
By ensuring everybody speaks the same language. Literally. In this article, I describe possible difficulties of multilingual teams and propose five measures to ensure your team members understand each other.
The Challenges of Multilingual Teams
Multilingual teams face several challenges at once. They consist of an interdisciplinary and strategically assembled group of specialists, who are per se relatively difficult collaborators, as their specialization requires them to have specific conditions given for them to fully perform. It is thus advisable to find collaborators who’re capable of performing under the given conditions.
Second, specialists from different disciplines are like people from different cultures: they have different values motivating their solutions, as opposed to specialists from the same discipline, who usually have similar approaches. Two IT engineers from, say, Italy and Australia, are more likely to think alike than the Italian IT engineer and a salesperson from Italy.
Third, intercultural teams speak several languages. In today’s international teams, English is normally the lingua franca. In most teams outside English-speaking countries, the number of native speakers of English, however, is low. I once worked with a team of twelve internal auditors in an international company who were from eight different countries. Of the twelve team members, only two were native English speakers. This is the kind of team I’m having in mind here.
Status
Languages have status. English as the number one language of international business and politics has high prestige, and its colonial history entails that each country has a different and sometimes complex relationship with it. This implies that every team member sees English differently.
They may see it as a language they love, a language they hate, or a language they don’t really care about. Indeed, because of its international nature, English is sometimes just seen as a tool without personal identification, i.e. if you get your message across, that’s all you need. Speakers with this approach aren’t interested in having native-like competence as long as they make themselves understood.
Others, by contrast, believe that their competence in English says something about their smartness or competence in general. They identify with how they speak. Such speakers often believe that native-like language competence is the goal.
In my experience, technical people tend to have the instrumental approach, while creative people rather strive for skillful language. Each approach influences the way someone speaks and how emotional they are about it.
Status thus determines a speaker’s attitude towards English, and it’s helpful to consider these dynamics. But what happens at the level of the actual message when speakers communicate in a language they don’t fully master?
Insecurity among Non-Native Speakers
Non-native speakers are commonly less competent speakers of the target language than native speakers. For teams, this has latent effects that leaders should consider.
The more competent a speaker is, the better they can put their thoughts into words. This may result in more competent speakers speaking up or engaging in discussions more often.
Whether a speaker really has insufficient language competence to engage in discussions is subjectively evaluated by each speaker. Linguistic insecurity can actually be surprisingly high in competent speakers. So, don’t rely on your own judgment assuming that more competent speakers are more confident; you’re likely to be mistaken.
The consequence of linguistic insecurity is that some people refrain from speaking up because it would either make them feel uncomfortable or else be too much of an effort. At the same time, they may be perceived as less competent by others.
Successful team leaders know that for their team to unfold its potential, all team members should contribute either their judgment or their expertise, regardless of their first language. If a team is meant to perform, such dynamics must be considered.
Limited Precision
Linguistic precision is likely to be limited in non-native speakers due to limited pragmatic and lexical knowledge. This is because we rarely have enough time to learn a second language in all its facets. If we’re aware of this, we can efficiently deal with it.
Limited precision emerges from the fact that non-native speakers may simply not know that there is, in fact, a precise word that expresses what they mean in the target language. They may also translate an expression from their first language literally into the target language, which rarely works and creates incorrect or misleading calques. I have seen in a technical context, for example, the word “adoption readiness” being mistranslated into German as “Adoptionsbereitschaft”, a word which had nothing to do with the intended “Übernahmebereitschaft”.
Language competence also has an impact on brainstorming and solution-finding. It is linguistically challenging to express hypothetical statements in a second language. So, when hypothetical solutions are being discussed, unconfident speakers will rather withhold their thoughts or even be unable to explain what they mean and opt for saying nothing at all. That’s a loss, because multilingualism offers innovative perspectives on problems and is thus an enormous advantage in solution-finding. That’s why it’s important to hear everybody’s voice.
Finally, there’s an effect on speed. Non-native speakers are probably slower than native speakers. They could be overwhelmed, while native speakers are underwhelmed. Also in my reporting workshops, I must consider whether I am dealing with a team of native speakers or not, as it will impact their individual pace and understanding. Sensing, and responding to, such dynamics demands a high degree of empathy on behalf of the team leader.
Miscommunication
Miscommunication is the result of limited precision in speaking and listening. It is usually unintended and often remains unclarified.
An example that is relevant for teams is the verb “must”. Many German speakers don’t know that English “must” is always binding, even when negated, as in “you must not come”. In German, the equivalent “du musst nicht kommen” means “you have no obligation but may if you wish”, i.e. it’s optional. Such mistranslated orders are likely to cause misunderstandings.
Also apparently irrelevant factors play a role. Conversational cues, for instance, in turn taking or interruptions, differ across cultures, which requires multilingual teams to establish their own rules in order to avoid insecurities. Who answers when and how might need to be negotiated first.
In addition, many non-native speakers aren’t aware of the full range of a word’s meanings. Swear words, for example, are complex, and they have different meanings across languages. In Swiss German, the English f-word is common, and many speakers use it frequently when they speak English. I have seen more than one native English speaker in Switzerland getting irritated by the frequency of the f-word, because the f-word in English of course has a more complex range of meanings than in Swiss German.
How to Improve Communication in a Multilingual Team
As this shows, setting up functional team communication in multilingual teams is challenging. I recommend that team and change leaders be aware of these challenges and proactively consider working with a communication consultant.
Here are 5 measures that will help team communication flow:
- 1
Set communicative guidelines up early and explicitly.
- 2
Put language on the agenda of your meetings. Raise awareness of the fact that there are likely to be different understandings.
- 3
Ensure everybody has a say, regardless of their native language.
- 4
Conduct regular pulse checks on communicative practices to keep team members on board.
- 5
And an apparently obvious piece of advice: don’t swear too often.
If this works out, the effort will pay off. Because multilingual teams harbor immense potential and are a joy to work with!
About the Author
Consultant | Coach | Author
Danae Perez is a versatile language expert with vast experience in both research as well as the corporate world and a contagious passion for languages and people. She holds a PhD in linguistics and has published her research on the evolution of languages in multilingual contexts with the most renowned publishing houses. Danae Perez has been providing language services and communication consultancy for corporate clients for nearly two decades and has worked in a myriad of countries, cultures, and industries. She has the rare gift of quickly grasping the essence of a message and putting it into the right words to facilitate communication between people, cultures, and disciplines.