In teams with members out of different countries one of the questions to answer is in what language do we want to communicate?
Often teams tend to the language that is spoken in the country they are located in. This often makes sense in the way that most of the people in the team live there and are fluent or native speakers. What this means at the same time is that team members from other countries have difficulties in articulating their thoughts, or have difficulties following the conversation. Eventually they stop to participate actively. Switching the language can be challenging for the native speakers as well, because they fear that their skills are maybe not sufficient.
So how to tackle that challenge? A good idea is to prioritise what the meeting is all about: exchange of information. The most important thing is the information. It must flow! It does not matter in what language.
At the same time language exchange tandems can be installed to boost the language knowledge of all team members.
What is your experience?
tomzigan.de 