With the new client came a new challenge. The teams were distributed and had many team members from an Asian country. In my first encounter I had difficulties to understand my conversational partner. I managed to ask for clarification once or twice, but most of the conversation was more like a guessing game to me. What could I do? What was a transparent and polite way to handle this situation? Had my counterpart the same issues with me?
I looked for tips on the internet. I found these …
The 10 Tips
- If you have a question, before speaking up, put it in writing.
- Ask for clarification.
- Speak slowly – use globally understood English, more pictures, less text, no idioms, and be aware of jargon.
- Repeat and summarize – capture summary in the chat.
- Check understanding regularly.
- Make sure everyone contributes – this was a key distinction found in successful groups according to a Google study.
- Praise contribution.
- Encourage meta-communication – talking about mutual feelings, common goals, asking about the team’s why.
- Wait before asking your question: – write it up and ask it in the chat first.
- Use multiple channels for communication such as posting the agenda, summarizing discussion, and email.
Source: „How to Handle Difficult Accents and Overcome Language Barriers in Virtual Teams“,
Still I had to decide how to tackle that issue. I chose for being straight forward with this. I admitted that I had some difficulties and asked for help. In the conversation that followed we discovered that I wasn’t alone in this. We agreed on using the chat, because my counterpart admitted to be more secure in English while writing.
Overall we instated a 30 minutes playful language practice meeting. Everybody could talk with everyone about any topic, as long it was not a serious business talk.
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