Travelling in South America, my way below average Spanish is an interesting source of experience. Usually I am an extravert, liking to rely on conversation and personal contact to gather information or to create. These are important qualities to me, not in the least at work. Now, completely lacking sufficient language skills, I experience how this actually narrows the opportunity to be me. I get hesitative in making first contact and become much more introvert. Plus, I have to rely on others to get things done, without almost no control on my behalf whatsoever. Which, for some people, actually feels less comfortable at times (haha) … Just a few small examples on what lack of language skills can do.
What a valuable experience, as it helps me to feel what cultural or lingual differences can do to someone’s ability to be who he or she is. And again a lesson in the added value of experience, compared to of course already knowing all this in general. The wider the lingual of cultural gap, the bigger the impact on ones behaviour, thoughts and feelings. This is something to really take into account if someone is just working at the firm, or is new to a culture. The same goes for coaching in these processes. If a small lingual problem transforms me from comfortably extravert to almost hesitatively introvert, the impact of other sorts of changes are easily understood.
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