Heather Hansen: Bad English is actually good for business

Transcript

Stuart Crainer:

Hello, I’m Stuart Crainer, co-founder of Thinkers50. Welcome to our weekly LinkedIn Live session, celebrating some of the brightest new stars in the world of management thinking. In January, we announced the Thinkers50 Radar Community for 2024. These are the upcoming management thinkers we believe individuals and organizations should be Listening to. The 2024 list was our most eclectic and challenging yet.

This year’s Radar is brought to you in partnership with Deloitte and features business thinkers from the worlds of fashion, retail, branding, and communications, as well as statisticians, neuroscientists, and platform practitioners from the Nordics to New Zealand and Asia to America.

Among the highlights for me are Ludmila Praslova, author of The Canary Code: Teaching How to Design Healthier Inclusive Organizations. You might’ve heard our conversation with Ludmila last week. It’s now available on YouTube. We also feature Jenny Fernandez, author of Zig-Zag to the Top, great book title, and Martin Gonzalez, Principal of AI Talent Development of Google and co-author of The Bonfire Moment, another great title.

Closer to home for us, we include the excellent Neri Karra Sillaman, who is a sustainable fashion consultant, an entrepreneur expert at Saïd Business School, Oxford University. She’ll be joining us next week, so look out for that. Over the few weeks, we’ll be meeting some more of these fantastic thinkers in our weekly sessions, so we hope you can join us for some great conversations. As always, please let us know where you’re joining us from and send in any comments, questions, or observations at any time during the 45-minute session.

Our guest today is Heather Hansen. Heather is based in Singapore. She’s the author of Powerful People Skills and, most recently, Unmuted: How to Show Up, Speak Up, and Inspire Action, which came out in 2022 from Bloomsbury. She’s a global communications consultant, founder of the Global Speech Academy, a TEDx speaker. Her TEDx Talk, ‘2 Billion Voices: How to Speak Bad English Perfectly,’ has had hundreds of thousands of views. Irresistible with that title, I think. At the heart of Heather’s work is something which is truly central to business and leadership, communication. Heather, welcome.

Heather Hansen:

Thank you so much.

Stuart Crainer:

You work at the intersection of language, culture, and identity, which is a really interesting place to be. How did you find your way to this intersection?

Heather Hansen:

Well, I think my life sort of led me there. I was born and raised in California. And the minute I finished my undergrad degree, I left and I moved to Denmark. I remember the day I left my mom saying, “Do you think you’ll ever come back?” I said, “No, I don’t think I’ll ever come back.” And here we are 22 years later, still abroad. Split my time between Denmark and now Singapore. I’ve been here about 14 years. So, I’ve really lived these issues of language, culture, identity. Even seeing my bio on the Thinkers50 website and seeing nationality American, it’s so strange for me because I don’t know if I identify as American anymore. I feel like a foreigner when I go back home.

The way that culture has played a role in my life, the way that living in different places and learning about different people, learning different languages, speaking foreign languages, and the challenges that come with that has really shaped my career, my life, my identity, and has really led me to this crossroads.

Stuart Crainer:

Already got people joining us from throughout the world. Thanks, everyone. Somebody from Japan. I see America, India, Austria, Italy, the UK, Denmark. Really nice to see you all. Please send in your questions for Heather.

You talk about good and bad English. You think I would have an advantage here, seeing I am actually English, but I suspect I don’t. Can you tell me about how you differentiate good and bad English? What does that mean?

Heather Hansen:

Well, there’s really no such thing as good or bad English, yet we all seem to carry this idea along with us that there’s one proper way to speak, one correct way to speak, and it probably sounds a little bit more like you than me. But globally, we have this ideal of the king’s English, or the Hollywood star, or the newscaster voice, and people like to believe that’s good English.

Then we have the majority of English speakers in the world, the great majority, who are learning English in a classroom and going into the workplace with this complex thinking that their English is bad, that they can never reach that ideal, that they’ll never sound like you, Stuart, and that is holding them back.

Then, this conversation that we have where we’re supporting this concept of the good English from this native speaker perspective, the Western ideal, we also go into the conversation thinking, “Well, I’m the good English speaker, and you need to communicate in a way that I can understand. I shouldn’t have to take any responsibility in this.” These concepts of good and bad cause a lot of issues in global business as well.

And that’s what I was trying to get across with my TEDx, was really this concept that bad English is actually good for business. That when we all come together and we all accommodate and adjust the way we speak for a global setting… Because it is a different variety of English that we’re speaking in global business. I can’t walk in and talk like I do over coffee with my best friend in California. I have to change the way I speak. But a lot of us going into global environments don’t realize that, and therefore people are not being recognized, they aren’t getting talk time, they aren’t being respected at the same level, they’re fighting to have their voice be heard. And this all comes back to language. And yet, we forget to talk about this in the diversity and inclusion conversations, and it’s foundational to so much of the diversity discussion.

Stuart Crainer:

You talk about linguistic inclusion, and presumably that’s what you mean, that people… Well, there’s a degree of intolerance surrounding language.

Heather Hansen:

Yeah. And not just intolerance, but just in little awareness around it. We walk into conversations and just start talking. We like to say that it’s these people who learn English in a classroom that have the bad English, but really it’s us who have the bad English in the global conversations. We walk in the room, we use a lot of idioms, cultural expressions, we speak really fast, and we just expect people to keep up.

And much of what we do is very cultural. I mean, if you were to say some of the idioms and phrases that you use in the UK, there are many that I probably wouldn’t even understand and vice versa. And we’re two native speakers coming together having this conversation. So if we aren’t aware of how to communicate and accommodate to different varieties of English globally, we are not helping to create understanding and collaboration in our global teams.

Stuart Crainer:

Rashmi Pant from India points out that in India, English is a status symbol. Speaking English is a status symbol.

Heather Hansen:

Yes.

Stuart Crainer:

And points out that in India they have at least 27 regional dialect languages and many more dialects. It’s really interesting, the evolution. I mean, I think the figures are that… I think it’s 1.5 billion people in the world speak English, which is ahead of Mandarin, amazingly, which is 1.1 billion people speak Mandarin, and then Hindi, and then Spanish. It’s a very strange thing, really, isn’t it, that English has become the default language for so much of the world.

Heather Hansen:

Yes. That goes all the way back to colonization, missionaries, the way we took English into the world. In some cases, English is used as a weapon when we’re nation building. English is often now chosen in former colonies as a neutral language. Well, there’s nothing neutral about it, especially on the world stage.

It is seen as a status symbol. It is prestigious to be able to speak English, and you have even more prestige if you speak the right variety of English. That’s why an American accent, something similar to how I speak, or the received pronunciation in the UK, are typically the gold standard. That has brought me a lot of privilege living in Singapore, a former colony that uses English as an official language.

A lot of people don’t realize Singaporeans are basically native speakers. They’re educated in English. They work in English. The government’s in English. Everything is in English here. And yet, Singapore English is very different. The Singaporeans themselves, when there have been accent and attitude studies, they will say they prefer the American accent over the Singaporean one. We’re even starting to see some vowel shifts occur that are moving toward American varieties of English. It’s definitely a status marker, prestige marker. That, again, creates different hierarchies when you walk into a boardroom.

Stuart Crainer:

Yes, because there’s Singlish, isn’t there, in Singapore.

Heather Hansen:

There’s Singlish, which is very colloquial, and that’s very informal. A Singaporean would probably never speak Singlish to me because they would assume I wouldn’t understand. But, Singapore English is their standard variety, which is based on the British English that was brought during colonization. They do have a standard English, but it has a very different sound, a different accent, but it really follows British English.

Stuart Crainer:

Somebody from Madrid says, “I’m one of those who thinks my English is not good enough.” Your work suggests, I mean, that’s a fairly universal for-

Heather Hansen:

It is.

Stuart Crainer:

… millions of people throughout the world who speak English and actually fluent… I suppose, to become fluent in a language, truly fluent, is not actually the aspiration for most people, is it? Heather Hansen:

Yeah. And how do we define that? How do we define fluency? We have all our exams and advanced level, intermediate, advanced. And then, what is fluency? I had a lot of Danes telling me I was fluent in Danish before I ever felt like I was fluent myself. A lot of people think fluency is simply do you speak it in a fluid manner, then that is considered fluent. Whereas other people might think, “Well, I don’t really have the business vocabulary that I need, but I’m pretty fluent in a social situation, so I won’t give myself that fluent marker.”

But, fluency isn’t necessarily needed, necessary. In a global context, if you’re at an intermediate, upper intermediate level, that’s typically a high enough level to be intelligible. What we need to focus on is intelligibility. Do people understand what you are saying? If they do, then communication is successful. I don’t care if there was a grammar error or you left the S, the third person, singular. It doesn’t matter. That is an entirely different mindset shift.

I started way back in the day with English teaching, with translation, and the idea of purity of language. To make that shift, I met with a client. This was way back in 2010, I think. He wanted me to help him with presentation skills. I asked… Because I noticed there were some grammar issues happening. I said, “What about your grammar?” He was president of all of Asia for an American multinational. He said, “My grammar? No one cares about my grammar. As long as they can understand me, that’s good enough.” That was like shoving a knife in an English teacher’s heart. I remember, “What do you mean? You can’t believe that truly?”

But, that completely changed my mindset around what I was doing, what I was teaching. I thought, “He’s absolutely right.” Who am I to say what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s perfect and what isn’t, what’s good and what’s bad with my little red pen? I understand everything he’s saying. I know exactly the message he’s trying to bring across. Why isn’t that considered good enough?” I’m trying to bring that form of awareness to the table to say, “We’ve got to stop knocking people down.

I have HR call me saying, “We have the perfect person to move into the C-suite, but he doesn’t sound global enough.” It’s normally a he, unfortunately. “He doesn’t sound global enough.” I’ll say, “What does that mean?” I’ll keep pressing, pressing until they finally say, “He just sounds too Singaporean.” “Well, he is Singaporean. You’re a Singapore company and your whole board of directors is Singaporean. What exactly is the problem here?” But they know that due to the biases we have, if you put him on a stage at an international conference, he may not be taken as seriously as someone who sounds like you or me. That’s the real challenge that global professionals are faced with.

Stuart Crainer:

It’s a really interesting area. It’s amazing how many very personal comments are coming through about people… Because it’s a really personal thing being-

Heather Hansen:

It is.

Stuart Crainer:

… excluded or being treated differently. Frank Calberg says, “Being born and having grown up in Denmark, I’m curious to know how you perceive the Danish language in comparison with English.” Your husband’s Danish, you’ve lived in Denmark, so you really kind of experienced it from the other side.

Heather Hansen:

Yes. I lived in Denmark a combined eight years. We speak a big mix of Danish, English at the dinner table. In our home, we all speak Danish and English. Danish was easier for me to learn than the typical English speaker because I already had a bachelor’s degree in the German language, and I was pretty fluent in German when I moved to Denmark. With German and English, I was able to get Danish, but the pronunciation is so difficult.

So every time I open my mouth, of course there’s a comment about my accent or, “Where are you from?” or, “Oh, are you British? Are you English?” It’s like, “No, I’m American.” “Oh, I thought I could hear some English accent. Oh, it’s so charming.” Always these comments and pointing out that I’m different, that I don’t belong, that I could live there 40 years and I will never be accepted as being part of the community. I’ll always be different.

I know that people say, “But, Heather, we’re supporting you. We’re so impressed that you speak so well. It’s not often we see an American speaking fluent Danish,” and they’re excited about it. But this is where the conversation around microaggressions comes in. Because when you hear it every single day and you’re constantly othered, it makes it difficult.

Now, what was also interesting in Denmark is that I look Danish. I’m a lot shorter than the average Dane. I’m super short. I’m 5’1″. My husband’s 6’4″. He’s the Viking, not me. But, I look Danish. So, I go into a shop and someone greets me, and I speak back to them, and they get really confused because I don’t meet the expectation of what they thought I should sound like. They’re trying to put together, “Wait, what language is she speaking? They hear something that sounds foreign, so they switch to English.” I’m like, “No, no, no. We can speak Danish.” I keep speaking Danish. It takes 30 to 45 seconds before they give up and they realize, “Okay, your Danish is better than my English. Let’s go.” But, it takes that time.

This is what people run into all over the world on a daily basis. I mean, we have to remember the great majority of the world is multilingual. They’re out and about speaking foreign languages. In our cultures, monolingual is much more the norm. This is happening all around us all the time. In Denmark, if I was tired of being othered, I could switch back to English and immediately regain my power. Then I had the power in that conversation, and I got my respect back.

But I thought one day, “Wow. What about all the people out there who can’t do that? What about Mandarin speakers, Thai speakers, Indonesian, all the European, Eastern European languages? I mean, what do they do?” That was when I really had that epiphany of this is what I want to dedicate my life to doing. I want to help global speakers to be recognized, respected, and have their ideas acknowledged in the world because we have a very western dominant view of reality, and we need those global voices at the table. It’s only going to be beneficial for innovation, collaboration, efficiency, to bring those voices in.

Stuart Crainer:

It’s ironic that Britain might be the last monolingual country standing. Because America’s got a huge Spanish-speaking community as well. Britain doesn’t have that.

Heather Hansen:

Yes.

Stuart Crainer:

Let’s go to some comments. Somebody on LinkedIn says, “Growing up with my immigrant father in the States, it was a form of disrespect to speak fast and use big words in English to my father’s immigrant friends and elders. Clarity of communication is and always will be a priority.” I think another thing there in that comment is respect. Having respect in your communication for people.

Aleksandra from Poland says, “How does someone overcome anxiety that comes from speaking another language? Knowing the words and grammar seems much easier.” I know you know Morra Aarons-Mele who’s written about The Anxious Achiever and her brilliant work.

Heather Hansen:

Yes.

Stuart Crainer:

Because it’s kind of growing tide of anxiety, and the use of language is one element of it.

Heather Hansen:

Absolutely. And I’ve lived that. I’m a completely different person in Danish than I am in English. I can speak in front of thousands of people. I raise my hand first in every meeting. I volunteer to speak at every opportunity. I don’t do that in Danish. In Danish, I don’t raise my hand. I’m sitting there thinking, “What am I going to say? What are the right words? Did I get that right? What if I didn’t understand? Am I going to say it correctly? Are they going to judge me?” I have all that anxiety bubbling up to the surface every single time I open my mouth. Definitely more in business settings. I’m much more confident in social settings. But in a business setting or if I need to talk about my work, it’s a different level of anxiety.

To answer the question about what can you do, one thing that I do is I speak up fast and early. I make sure that if I enter a room… And one great thing about Danish culture is typically when you enter a room or you enter a party, you go around and shake hands with every single guest that’s there. I try to be the last one, so I’m forced to go around and meet everyone and speak to them, even if it’s just introducing myself, saying my name.

If it’s a business setting, I do the same. I make sure to shake everyone’s hand. I say hello. I let them hear that I’m different. Then, when the meeting begins, I make sure that I’m the first one to speak up and ask a question. Because once I’ve done it once and I realize, “Ooh, nothing happened. I’m still alive. I’m okay,” then that anxiety drops again. That’s probably the biggest best tip I can give for people who are having that same issue in English or any language. Just speak up fast and early.

And recognize that it may take those 30 to 45 seconds for people to start tuning their ear to you, that they’re figuring you out. Just keep talking. Maybe start with small talk before you dive into the real meat of the discussion because they need a little bit of time to adjust to you and how you sound and realize and answer all the questions of, “Oh, where’s she from, and why does she sound like that? I wonder if she’s American. I wonder if she’s British. Ooh, it sounds…” They’re going through a lot in their minds in those first 30 seconds. Let them do that. That’s going to happen. Then, get into your business.

Stuart Crainer:

Well, that advice actually applies if you’re a native English speaker as well.

Heather Hansen:

Yes.

Stuart Crainer:

It’s a good idea. My dad always encouraged me to ask… Every time he went to a meeting, a public meeting, he always made sure he asked a question. He made himself-

Heather Hansen:

Yes.

Stuart Crainer:

… ask a question, and I try and make myself ask questions. Better to go first, I always think.

Heather Hansen:

I try to do that, too. In fact, I did that at the gala in November. I stood up and asked a question. I was shaking holding the microphone. I was so nervous to be in that room of people I admire so much to ask a question and think, “Is this a dumb question?”

But yeah, ask the question. Let your voice be heard. Once you hear yourself speak, suddenly all that anxiety just goes away. We just have to keep talking. And that’s the big problem. Because you go into a situation where you’re maybe speaking a foreign language or you have an accent that’s very different. It could just be a regional accent. It could be one that has some kind of stigma attached to it, and you know it’s going to be an issue when you speak up. What do you do? You avoid speaking up. Instead of speaking up more, you speak up less. That helps no one.

And from the listener side, it’s, “Ooh, there’s that person that I have trouble understanding. I don’t want to have a conversation with them because what if I… So embarrassing. What if I can’t understand them?” So, you avoid the person. And that avoidance is the opposite of what we need because the only way to understand each other better is to hear each other more, to have more experience with the accent, to tune your ear to it, to crack that accent code and get to know how that individual speaks, which is unique and different from everyone else. You actually need to create opportunities to speak more, not less. Don’t quiet down and press mute. You have to speak up,

Stuart Crainer:

Which brings us to your book, Unmuted: How to Show Up, Speak Up, and Inspire Action. You talk about you’ve got an unmuted framework in the book, Heather.

Heather Hansen:

Yes.

Stuart Crainer:

Can you tell everyone about that? How does that work?

Heather Hansen:

Everyone loves a Venn diagram. Imagine a three-part Venn diagram where we have conscious, confident, and connected communication. It’s only when we have all of those three in equal measure that we can be truly unmuted.

Now, what is interesting is probably more of those overlapping sections. If you are connected, you feel like you have a sense of belonging in the workplace, you feel included, there’s psychological safety, all that good stuff, and you’re also very confident as an individual, you will have a tendency to be too loud if you are not a conscious communicator, if you forget to listen, if you don’t have cross-cultural skills, if you are not very self-aware. Then, you end up being the too-loud voice. And we all know that person. I always joke that if someone doesn’t immediately come to mind, it might be you, so be careful, the too-loud voice.

Then, if you are connected and conscious, but you’re missing the confidence, the self-confidence or the skills confidence, then your voice is too soft. You’re actually turning down your volume.

Then, for those who are conscious and confident, but do not feel connected, are missing that psychological safety, are not feeling as though they belong, they’re the ones that press mute. Maybe they’ve been trying to speak a million times and no one listens to them, or maybe they’re rejected for who they are and they feel like they don’t belong there. They aren’t going to talk, and they’re the ones that are on mute. And they’re the ones we’re most at risk of losing in the organization. And when they leave, they’re going to take all their friends with them. That’s a really important area to be focused on.

Of course, we all know Amy Edmondson, number one on Thinkers50. Her work in psychological safety’s really important because that’s what allows us then to feel confident and secure enough to speak up and share our voices.

Stuart Crainer:

In the chat, we’re recommending the book The Year of Living Danishly, which is Helen Russell.

Heather Hansen:

Yes. Helen Russell.

Stuart Crainer:

There’s lots of comments coming through. Connie Hadley, who’s also on the Radar from the Questrom School in Boston says, “Thanks for shedding light on these issues, Heather. How do you think about asynchronous forms of communication? On a global team, for example, would you recommend people sending thoughts on a Slack channel before a sync meeting?

Heather Hansen:

Yeah. I mean, I’m a big proponent of sending out the agenda in advance, giving people warning for what you want them to talk about in a meeting, especially across cultures and languages. If I was in Denmark, if someone told me exactly what they expected me to talk about, I could prepare that ahead of time. I could feel more confident to share my views. Especially from an Asian perspective, that’s going to be even more important that there’s some heads-up as to what the expectations are.

We also know that we have this bias that once the first person says something, we all want to sort of agree. We’ll just say, “Yeah, what they said. What they said. What they said.” I also suggest writing down those ideas, not necessarily in a Slack channel, but… Because we can end up having that same kind of agreement again. But to have your own personal notes and come to the meeting prepared with your own personal notes about the different topics of discussion, and then share them. It could also be around the room posted and then round-robin and read each other’s thoughts, but a way in which people’s voices are heard no matter what, that everyone has a voice at the table.

Because it is way, way, way too easy to press mute and hide in the corner. And especially in our virtual world and remote work, it’s very easy to show up even on the video calls and just hide in the background. That’s usually what I’m suggesting to do to make sure that the especially language issues are overcome.

Stuart Crainer:

It is amazing the people commenting how global… They prove how global the working world is. Say, Rebecca, founder of Vox Lab, comments that she’s from Denmark, has also lived in Spain and the USA. Actually, we’ve discussed this, Heather. Actually, your nationality saying you’re American is something, actually, is quite strange, isn’t it? Because you’ve got an American passport.

Heather Hansen:

It’s very strange for me.

Stuart Crainer:

You’re married to a Dane and live in Singapore. Lucia says, “I’m Romanian, but lived in Austria for 30-plus years.” She’s experienced some of the same issues. “But being Romanian does not impress people,” which it should because Romania is a wonderful place. But, people are impressed when she speaks six languages. It’s amazing the number of people who are experiencing all these, the lack of inclusion throughout the world in a variety of situations.

Heather Hansen:

I think people don’t recognize just how global the world is. We really are a world of hybrids now, hybrid cultures, mixed languages, mixed families. We’re migrating much more. There’s more movement. Global business is a true mix and melting pot. I often say as well you could be sitting in my hometown in the middle of California and think that, no, everything’s fully American, but the world is coming to you. I think it’s very difficult to be in any kind of job at this state in the world and not have some element of international influence. It just isn’t as simple as it used to be. And there’s so much crossover everywhere that we need to be much more aware. We need to start looking at the world as a whole instead of our individual nations and the stereotypes that come along with those individual nations.

That’s part of my problem with a lot of cross-cultural work as well, is this stereotyping. I mean, if you treat me the way you expect an American to be treated, it’s probably going to backfire because I don’t really identify that way anymore, and I’m very, very different.

But even that, people will say to me all the time, “You’re the most un-American American I’ve ever met, or non-American.” It says a lot more about them than me. I have no idea what that means. I don’t know what their expectation of an American is, and I don’t know how I’m different or the same. I mean, it’s all about perception. But, we are all hybrids, and we need to respect and understand when we meet people that cross-cultural communication is really interpersonal communication. We’re all very unique, and we have our own mix of the influences and experiences in our lives.

You actually spoke with Marcus Collins, what, last month? I loved that interview with him because he talks a lot about that, about all the different groups that you can be a part of and how they shape your identity. What stood out to me was that he always was sure to include language every time he mentioned culture. He said, “We have these different cultures and languages.” That may not have been obvious to others, but it stood out to me because language is often forgotten in the conversation, and I really think of it as the foundation to overcoming a lot of these differences is focusing on the language and how we are interacting.

Stuart Crainer:

Now, Marcus Collins’s book is called For the Culture. You can see our session with Marcus on YouTube as well.

Rik Spann from Amsterdam, nice to hear from you. Rik says, “In jazz, which is a form of universal communication, a key skill next to learning how to step up to the mic is about the art of shutting up.”

Heather Hansen:

Yes.

Stuart Crainer:

I think a number of other people have pointed out that listening, having respect is the fundamental starting point for all communication.

Heather Hansen:

It’s the listening skills. It’s knowing when to press mute. It’s not always being unmuted. If you think that you’re going to go to the extreme, then what you’re actually doing is being too loud. You’ve lost the conscious communication element. You still have to be conscious. It doesn’t mean you can just show up, say whatever you want, however you want, whenever you want, and bulldoze over everybody. That’s not what unmuted is. It’s about having the respect for the culture, the situation, the context, and the people in the room, and knowing when to press mute as well to hear every single voice there. That’s truly the heart of it. So, I absolutely agree with the comments about listening. A hundred percent.

Stuart Crainer:

Frank Calberg’s got a couple of points which I think are interesting. What’s your view on mixing languages as you speak a bit of Danish, a bit of English? I quite like that when that happens. I always feel a bit jealous at the time. But, it just seems a bit more vibrant and spontaneous when that happens to me.

Heather Hansen:

It’s interesting because a lot of people, non-linguists, believe that mixing languages is a bad thing, that it’s a sign of not being fluent or of speaking bad English because you’re mixing it with another language. As long as the people in the room share those languages, there’s no problem with that.

I’ve even done some interviews in studies with the expat community here in Singapore about how they’re exposing their children to English, and they all had a very negative view toward code switching. I mean code switching from the linguistic terminology, meaning we’re switching the languages. We’re changing terms maybe mid-sentence, maybe sentence by sentence. But, that’s like my dinner conversation every single night, is a big mix of Danish, English. And often we don’t even realize we’ve switched. Sometimes a Danish word pops in my head, I use it.

But the rule here is, does everyone at the table understand those languages that you’re switching between? That colloquial Singlish that you mentioned, it is a mix of all the languages that are spoken here. There will be some words from Hokkien, and there’ll be some from Tamil, there’ll be some from Malay. There’ll be mixes of all these little words and phrases from different Chinese dialects, and it’s all mixed together. Road jack style, which is all mixed up like a mixed salad, and that’s what makes it really interesting and unique.

For people who believe that it’s a bad thing to mix, I don’t think so at all. I think it brings extra flavor to the conversation if the people around the table understand. That’s really the rule of communication. You choose the language based on who’s sitting at the table and make sure that everybody can understand the languages being spoken.

And if you do slip or mix, then just remember to translate. I’m doing my PhD now here in Singapore, and very often we’re talking about multilingual issues where there are certain Mandarin phrases used. Everyone is very nice to make sure to then translate it to English because they know I’m the only one in the room that doesn’t know what they’re talking about. That’s just an important part of doing that.

Stuart Crainer:

Francisco Vasquez says his wife and him often have conversations in four languages at once, mainly English, but also a few words and expressions in Spanish, Thai, and German. Quite a rich mix there, Francisco.

Heather Hansen:

I love it.

Stuart Crainer:

Ole Bach Andersen from Denmark says that, “What about speed of speaking?” He was asked to speak  at an event in English. He spoke slowly, but the feedback said he still spoke too fast. How do you communicate with a global audience? What are the basics?

Heather Hansen:

“Messages across for an international audience?” I’m just finishing reading that. Often, if the response is you talk too fast, either you really did talk too fast, but you felt like you were already slowing it down for people, hen, the question would be, what was the kind of vocabulary you were using? Because people will come and say, “It’s too fast. It’s too fast,” when they just aren’t keeping up mentally. If they are translating into another language, it’s taking a little extra time. If there are big words that they get stuck on, then they might miss the next two or three words and they’re like, “Ah, slow down. Slow down. You’re going too fast. I need a breath.” That could be the issue as well.

Just generally speaking, when we’re communicating with international audiences, yes, we want to reduce the speed. We typically say between 140 and 160. That would be just for normal native communication, fluent speaker communication. You will probably want to go towards the 140 side.

In addition, the larger the group, the slower the pace. If you’re on a microphone, even slower. There’s a lot of those kinds of little rules and suggestions. But more than that, it’s around keeping the vocabulary simple, not using overly technical terms or academic terms, really simplifying the language. That doesn’t mean dumbing it down. It means that you can express yourself in clear, simple words. Because what’s the point of using the big ones if no one understands them? You’re not impressing anybody. You’re just losing your audience.

It could be that the vocabulary maybe was pitched at too high of a level for that audience. And that’s really difficult to know going into a talk, is what is the level of English of that audience. I mean, that’s one of the basic questions I ask every time I’m hired for any event is, “Who’s our audience here? Where are they from? What’s their language level?” Then, due to having a teaching background, I generally know how to accommodate to that level. But it’s a very tricky, difficult situation, actually. And it’s something that we don’t learn to do. Unless you have learned multiple languages or been a teacher or something, you don’t really learn what’s an intermediate level word, what’s an advanced level word. These are new skills that I think we need to start learning. It’s a whole new world of learning.

Stuart Crainer:

Helen makes actually quite a good technique. She says, “I often start my workshops with a guess-where-I’m-from question. It’s rare that someone guesses, because the answer’s New Zealand. I put that up front so they focus on listening to me, not figuring out what my unusual accent is.” I think that’s actually quite a good tactic.

Heather Hansen:

Just call out the elephant in the room right from the start so that they don’t spend that minute going, “Where is she from? What is that? Why do I hear that?” Sometimes it’s easier to just be like, “Listen, I know I sound different. This is my story.” Then, everyone’s like, “Oh, wow. Okay.” Then you can move on. It would be nice if we didn’t have to do that. But I think we’re in that in-between phase here where we’re just beginning to raise our awareness about these issues.

Because if I’m the only woman in a boardroom, do I have to walk in and be like, “Yes, hello, everyone. Let me just point out and make sure you all realize, yes, I am the only woman in the room. All right.” We don’t have to do that. Or what about the ethnic minority? They don’t have to declare their race and recognize that they’re different. Yet for some reason, we still have this feeling that with language we should do that. There are so many ways that we are… I wouldn’t go as far as saying discriminating, but we’re showing that bias with language in ways that are totally unacceptable with other areas of diversity and inclusion that we would never say about an ethnic minority or gender or sexuality we can easily say about language. I think that’s where we need to make some changes. But, I love that. I think it is a very useful way to get started, for sure.

Stuart Crainer:

Helen makes another point that pace of speaking for her is three things, the words, phrases we use, the amount and length of pauses at the end of sentences, and slowing down the actual pace, elongating the vowels.

Heather Hansen:

Slowing down the words themselves, having more pauses, and especially between sentences. I think that would probably be the most important.

Stuart Crainer:

That makes sense. Frank makes another point about humor. Do we lose a lot of humor along the way, or, actually, is this an area where we should really be more relaxed and find the humor in it?

Heather Hansen:

I struggle with this question. It’s a really, really good question, Frank. Because accents are funny. They’re really funny. People who are good at imitating accents and can switch between accents… I do not have the ear for that. I cannot do that.

But there are times when I’ll see a comedian maybe do a sketch with accents, and I find it just a bit over the line. Yes, inside we might still be laughing and like, “Oh, that’s so right on.” But then you realize that that’s really kind of over the line. So, what are the rules about humor when we talk about language and accent, and I haven’t quite figured it out.

I was listening to one comedian in Hong Kong speaking at a DEI conference just a couple weeks ago, and he referred to it as punching up versus punching down. He felt that if he was punching down, making fun of an accent that is lower on the language hierarchy, so being a native speaker making fun of someone who was speaking in a different way, that’s punching down. But if he’s in a situation where he’s punching up, that’s a little bit different. So is it okay to make fun of the RP speakers and the people who sound like me because we’re in the prestige position? I can get that argument, but I think this is a really gray area right now.

At the same time, the other side of me says, “Yeah, but we don’t joke about race. We don’t joke about gender. We don’t joke…” Those things aren’t funny anymore. They used to be. They used to be, but they aren’t anymore because we’ve evolved. We’ve grown up. Our comedy, our humor has evolved. I think we’re in the start phase of that with language-style jokes. That’s part of this awareness raising, is identifying our own biases and why is it we think that’s funny. “Oh, because I’ve kind of learned that my whole life through every Disney movie I ever watched, or through every Simpsons or whatever shows I grew up with that taught me that that’s actually a funny accent or that’s comic relief.”

I think this is very, very fluid right now. It’s really changing. And we have a lot of work to do to figure out where we stand with humor. But, it’s a really excellent question.

Stuart Crainer:

I think language is fluid.

Heather Hansen:

It is. It’s always changing.

Stuart Crainer:

The English I speak is very different from the English spoken in England 50 years ago, or the parents-

Heather Hansen:

Exactly.

Stuart Crainer:

…how my grandparents spoke is very different. 

Where does your work go now? Unmuted, which we thoroughly recommend as a book, published by Bloomsbury, came out in 2022. Is there another book?

Heather Hansen:

I actually think on the Bloomsbury website… I think it might be 30% off right now. Try the Bloomsbury website before you go other places. Only until the weekend, I think. That’s just lucky timing.

What’s next? I’m working on the next book that will be out in October of next year, which is all on accent bias and how to overcome it in the workplace. That’s going to be… I’m very, very excited about this book because it’s one I’ve wanted to write for over a decade. I pitched it to a publisher about 10 years ago, but I said, “The world isn’t ready. I’ll come back in 10 years,” because I feel like now is the time. Now people understand it. They recognize that we have so much global movement and people who have personal experience with this that I really do think it’s time for us to start talking about it more, including it in diversity and inclusion policy and companies, and really having more respect for every speaker, not just the ones that sound like us.

Stuart Crainer:

Respect. How did you do research in the area of accents? 

Heather Hansen:

Oh, there’s so many cool ways of studying accents. We do matched-guise testing where you have a speaker who can do the general American and then also do a Singapore accent, and then you have them record the same information, and then you have people listen to those and then do a scale on did they feel that the accent was harder or easier to understand, how intelligible was it.

We can do a dictation. There’s been studies done where you listen to a recording and you have to write down every single word. That’s how we measure intelligibility. You got 80 out of a hundred words correct. That’s 80% intelligibility for that listener for that speaker. Accentedness. We look at do they feel that it’s very different from their own accent or very similar. And comprehensibility. Was it hard for them to understand or easy for them to understand?

Those three areas are really key in studying accents and our attitudes towards them. It’s intelligibility, accentedness, and comprehensibility. Those things don’t always line up. Someone might say, “Oh, they were so hard to understand. I didn’t understand a word,” but they got a 96 on the intelligibility test. They wrote down every single word correctly. So you are understanding, but you’re so focused on the understanding that you didn’t digest it, if that makes sense. That’s where we stand now.

We have so much work to do in this field, so much work to do. Most of it has been done with monolinguals listening to a Chinese accent or a French accent or whatever. But the world is multilingual. We need to be looking at how are multilingual speakers understanding each other and how are their attitudes towards the different accents, how is that affecting hiring decisions in a multinational company. That’s what I’m spending the next four and a half years researching for my PhD. We have that research and the book coming. I run my company and have two teenagers at home and a husband. It’s a full life. It’s a very full life at the moment.

Stuart Crainer:

Heather’s book, Unmuted, there’s a link in the chat to get the 30% discount from Bloomsbury if you-

Heather Hansen:

Oh, great. Thank you.

Stuart Crainer:

… buy the book in the next few days. Heather, that was a really interesting conversation, really interesting seeing all the comments, how personal it is, and how many people have experienced very similar things to what you describe in the book. Thank you very much for joining us today.

If people want to find out more about Heather’s work, they can look at heatherhansen.com. Thank you everyone from around the world who joined us for this live session. We hope you can join us next week. We’ll be joined by Neri Karra Sillaman. It should be a really excellent conversation then. Thank you, Heather, and thank you, everyone.

Heather Hansen:

Thank you so much for having me.