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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ibnanv" data-source="post: 19213082" data-attributes="member: 218596">Gauging Fluency   Progressing from beginner level to advanced—which  greatly improves  an employee’s ability to communicate—involves  mastering around 3,500  words. That’s a far less daunting task than  adding the 10,000 words  necessary to move from advanced to native  speaker, for which the payoff  may be lower.     <a href="https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/hbr/1205/R1205H_B_LG.gif" target="_blank"><img src="https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/hbr/1205/R1205H_B.gif" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>   Job security falters. Even though achieving sufficient fluency is possible for  most, the  reality is that with adoption of an English-only policy,  employees’ job  requirements change—sometimes overnight. That can be a  bitter pill to  swallow, especially among top performers. Rakuten’s  Mikitani didn’t  mince words with his employees: He was clear that he  would demote people  who didn’t develop their English proficiency.Employees resist. It’s not unusual to hear nonnative speakers revert to  their own  language at the expense of their English-speaking colleagues,  often  because it’s faster and easier to conduct meetings in their  mother  tongue. Others may take more aggressive measures to avoid  speaking  English, such as holding meetings at inopportune times.  Employees in  Asia might schedule a global meeting that falls during the  middle of the  night in England, for instance. In doing so, nonnative  speakers shift  their anxiety and loss of power to native speakers.Many FrenchCo employees said that when they felt that  their  relatively poor language skills could become conspicuous and have   career-related consequences, they simply stopped contributing to  common  discourse. “They’re afraid to make mistakes,” an HR manager at  the firm  explains, “so they will just not speak at all.”In other cases, documents that are supposed to be  composed in English  may be written in the mother tongue—as experienced  by Hans at  GlobalTech—or not written at all. “It’s too hard to write in  English, so  I don’t do it!” one GlobalTech employee notes. “And then  there’s no  documentation at all.”Performance suffers. The bottom line takes a hit when employees stop  participating in  group settings. Once participation ebbs, processes  fall apart. Companies  miss out on new ideas that might have been  generated in meetings.  People don’t report costly errors or offer  observations about mistakes  or questionable decisions. One of the  engineers at GlobalTech’s Indian  office explained that when meetings  reverted into German his ability to  contribute was cut off. He lost  important information—particularly in  side exchanges—despite receiving  meeting notes afterward. Often those  quick asides contained important  contextual information, background  analyses, or hypotheses about the  root cause of a particular problem. He  neither participated in the  meetings nor learned from the  problem-solving discussions.   An Adoption FrameworkConverting the primary language of a business is no small  task. In my  work I’ve developed a framework for assessing readiness  and guidelines  for adopting the shift. Adoption depends on two key  factors: employee  buy-in and belief in capacity. Buy-in is the degree  to which employees  believe that a single language will produce benefits  for them or the  organization. Belief in their own capacity is the  extent to which they  are confident that they can gain enough fluency to  pass muster. Implementation Tips   Even when language mandates are implemented with care  and  forethought, negative emotional and organizational dynamics can  still  arise. But their power to derail careers and company work can be   significantly mitigated by adequately preparing people and systems for   the change. Here are steps that companies can take to manage   English-only policies.    Involve all employees.    Before a company introduces a global English policy,  leaders should  make a persuasive case for why it matters to employees  and the  organization. Employees must be assured that they will be  supported in  building their language skills. Companywide  cultural-awareness training  will help nonnative speakers feel heard and  valued. Leaders should rally  workers behind using English to  accomplish goals, rather than learn it  to meet proficiency standards.    Managers are referees and enforcers.    Managers must take responsibility for ensuring  compliance, and  they’ll need training in how to productively address  sensitive issues  arising from the radical change. Groups should set  norms prescribing how  members will interact, and managers should  monitor behavior  accordingly. For instance, managers should correct  employees who switch  into their mother tongue.    Native speakers must level the playing field.    Native speakers can learn to speak more slowly and  simplify their  vocabularies. They should refrain from dominating  conversations and  encourage nonnative speakers to contribute. Native  speakers may need  coaching on how to bring along less proficient  colleagues who are  working at a disadvantage.    Nonnative speakers must comply.    Nonnative speakers have a responsibility to comply  with the global  English policy and to refrain from reverting to their  mother tongue,  even in informal meetings or communications.  More-aggressive actions  that exclude or ostracize native speakers, such  as scheduling meetings  at inopportune times, should be strongly  discouraged.    The two dimensions combine to produce four categories of  response to  the change, as shown in the matrix “Four Types of Employee  Response.”  Ideally, employees would fall in what I call the “inspired”   category—those who are excited about the move and confident that they   can make the shift. They’re optimistic and likely to embrace the   challenge. But undoubtedly, some employees will feel “oppressed.” Those   people don’t think the change is a good idea, and they don’t think   they’ll cut it.<img src="https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/hbr/1205/R1205H_A.gif" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />The reality is that without buy-in, employees won’t  bother to brush  up their language; without belief, they’ll lose hope.  I’ve identified  some guidelines managers can follow to help people  along. Rakuten’s  Mikitani has successfully implemented a version of  this framework.Leaders and managers can help employees move from one box  to another  more easily than you might expect. There are fairly simple  strategies  that aid the shift, typically involving some combination of a  strong  psychological boost and practical training. To shift employees  from  “frustrated” to “inspired,” for instance, managers must offer  constant  encouragement and an array of language-development  opportunities. To  shift employees from “indifferent” to “inspired,”  managers must work on  improving buy-in—once these employees feel  invested in the change, their  skills will follow.Improving belief in capacity. Managers can use four strategies to help people boost their belief in their ability to develop language proficiency.Offer opportunities to gain experience with language. Whether through education, employment, or living abroad,  experience  tends to give people the confidence they need to succeed in  this task.  You can’t change past experience, but you can provide  opportunities,  such as overseas language training and job rotations,  that open new  doors and allow employees to stretch their skills.  Rakuten has sent  senior executives to English-speaking countries like  the UK and the U.S.  for full language immersion training. Employees  have also been offered  weeks-long language-training programs in the  Philippines. Although not  easily scalable to 7,100 Japanese employees,  the programs successfully  produced individuals with functional English  skills. Rakuten also plans  to send more than 1,000 engineers to  technology conferences outside  Japan.Foster positive attitudes. Attitudes are contagious: People’s faith in their own  capabilities  grows when they see others around them—peers, managers,  friends—having  positive experiences with the radical change. The  reverse is also true,  unfortunately. Managers can model good  risk-taking behaviors by showing  that they too are trying new things,  making mistakes, and learning from  those mistakes. Mikitani focused his personal attention on middle  managers because he  knew that collectively they could influence  thousands of employees. He  encouraged them to constantly improve their  own language skills and even  offered to teach them English himself if  need be. (Nobody took him up  on the offer.) He also encouraged managers  to support their subordinates  in their efforts to develop their  language proficiency.    Use verbal persuasion. Encouragement and positive reinforcement from managers  and  executives—simple statements like “You can do it” or “I believe in   you”—make all the difference. To mitigate turnover threats at Rakuten,   managers identified talent that the company wanted to retain and   tailored special programs for them, all the while cheering them on.   Also, Mikitani repeatedly assured his entire workforce that he would do   everything in his power to help every employee meet his or her   English-proficiency goals. He made it clear that he believes that with   effort everyone can adequately learn the language of business and that   he did not want to see anyone leave the company because of the   English-only policy.Encourage good study habits. Companies need to contract with language vendors who  specialize in  helping employees at various levels of proficiency. The  vendors need to  be intimately familiar with the company context so that  they can guide  employees’ learning, from how best to allocate their  time in improving  skills to strategies for composing e-mails in  English. Rakuten considers  language development to be part of every job  and grants people time  during the workday to devote to it. Every  morning, employees can be seen  flipping through their study books in  the company’s cafeteria or  navigating their e-learning portals. Improving employee buy-in. Shifts in buy-in call for different measures. But they  don’t operate  in isolation: Buy-in and belief go together. Strategies  that can help  people feel more confident include:Messaging, messaging, and more messaging. Continual communication from the CEO, executives, and  managers is  critical. Leaders should stress the importance of  globalization in  achieving the company’s mission and strategy and  demonstrate how  language supports that. At Rakuten, Mikitani signaled  the importance of  the English-language policy to his entire  organization relentlessly. For  instance, each week some 120 managers  would submit their business  reports, and he would reply to each of them  pushing them to develop  their language skills. I surveyed employees  before and after Rakuten  implemented the adoption framework. Results  indicated a dramatic  increase in buy-in after Mikitani showed his  employees that he was  “obsessed and committed to Englishnization,” as  he put it. The vast  majority of the employees surveyed said that the  policy was a  “necessary” move.      Encouragement from managers and executives—simple statements like “You can do it” or “I believe in you”—make all the difference.    Internal marketing. Because a language transformation is a multiyear process  whose  complexity far exceeds most other change efforts, it is crucial  to  maintain employee buy-in over time. At Rakuten, the now-English  intranet  regularly features employee success stories with emphasis on  best  practices for increasing language competence. Companywide meetings  are  also held monthly to discuss the English-language policy.Branding. Managers should encourage people to self-identify as  global rather  than local employees. It’s difficult to develop a global  identity with  limited exposure to an international environment, of  course. Rakuten  tackled this challenge by instituting an enterprisewide  social network  to promote cross-national interactions. Employees now  interact and  engage with colleagues worldwide through the company’s  social networking  site.Adopting a universal  English policy is  not the end of leadership challenges posed by global  communication.  Using English as a business language can damage employee  morale, create  unhealthy divides between native and nonnative speakers,  and decrease  the overall productivity of team members. Leaders must  avoid and soften  these potential pitfalls by building an environment in  which employees  can embrace a global English policy with relative ease.  In this way,  companies can improve communication and collaboration.When I asked Mikitani what advice he’d give other CEOs  when it comes  to enforcing a one-language mandate, he was emphatic  about discipline.  CEOs need to be role models: If they don’t stick to  the program, nobody  else will. Mikitani even holds one-on-one  performance reviews with his  top Japanese executives in English. “If  you forgive a little,” he says,  “you’ll give up everything.” What About Cultural Identity?   Many global employees fear that an English-only policy  will strip  them of their cultural heritage. I propose an alternative  point of view.  The more people you can communicate with, the better  positioned you are  to spread your culture and your message. If people  can’t understand  what you’re saying, they can’t engage with your  company or your brand.   Mikitani doesn’t fear resistance. He believes, as I do,  that you can  counteract it—and ultimately bring about significant  transformation in  employees’ beliefs and buy-in. A global language  change takes  perseverance and time, but if you want to surpass your  rivals, it’s no  longer a matter of choice.Video is in this link<a href="https://hbr.org/2012/05/global-business-speaks-english" target="_blank">https://hbr.org/2012/05/global-business-speaks-english</a></blockquote>

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