We all speak English, don't we?

Some years ago, a friend was one of a five-strong UK team trying to sell a complex and costly control system to a Belgian company. Two salesmen did a hard sell in English and two of the three engineers provided solid, rational technical knowledge. The third one sat quiet, even when the Belgians started driving down the price. In fact, his sole contribution came via his right foot, kicking his leader hard to tell him to stop making concessions. Why? Because he had just heard someone softly mutter "We could live with that price" - in French. This story illustrates two salient points. First, so low is the European perception of UK linguistic capability that no-one considered a British engineer might be fluent in a foreign language. Secondly, the rare soul with true international competence confers a huge strategic advantage on his company, especially when negotiating. It's simply not enough to cherish the delusion that 'everyone speaks English, don't they?' Actually, 75% of the world's population do not. A British Chamber of Commerce survey found that 80% of export managers cannot competently conduct dealings in even one foreign language. And a Grant Thornton survey revealed that the proportion of UK executives capable of negotiating in a foreign language was half the EU average and well below the global level. Not only does it make us a joke, but it costs us dear. Research by CILT, the National Centre for Languages, shows that UK business is distorted by the need to avoid markets where English speakers are not likely to be found. It means we are more likely to be tapping mature markets than developing markets that have much greater potential for economic growth. Even when English is the common language of a negotiation, it doesn't necessarily give us any advantage. CILT cites Korean Airline's award of a big contract for flight simulators to a French supplier because its negotiators spoke a clearer and more comprehensible English than the English one! Ouch - or should I say "merde"? Of course, learning the language is only one facet of working successfully at international level. As supply chains stretch farther, even small, single-site manufacturers can find themselves searching for the elusive qualities that let them deal with overseas suppliers and sell convincingly to foreign markets. And larger companies are often stretched thin by managing production facilities around the world, while attempting to act as a global entity, rather than a collection of competing national teams. On paper, it stacks up to a need for a new breed of manager: skilled, multilingual and attuned to other cultures. Today, academic institutions offer a huge variety of programmes to help develop these capabilities. Some are tailored specifically to the manufacturing sector; others aim to produce the genuine international all-rounder. In practice, however, before we look at how to develop skilled, internationally minded managers, perhaps we should consider one thing: is UK manufacturing actually capable of appreciating them and using their talents properly once they have got them? Qualified input Look at just one person's experiences. Nigel Egginton's qualifications add up to something once described by EEF as the Holy Grail of manufacturing - proven engineering skills (Chartered Engineer), good managerial qualifications (MBA) and the ability to speak other languages (fluent in French, German and Spanish, and functional in Italian). He has worked in virtually every country in Europe, in both engineering and commercial management roles. Yet, after a redundancy, it took him over a year to get back into manufacturing. He says he met with total incomprehension from manufacturing companies about the value of his linguistic skills or his international experience. "All they were really interested in was someone who came from exactly the same branch of industry that they did. They were positively myopic about anything outside that." Today, Egginton is happily ensconced as export sales and marketing director with Gardner Energy Management (GEM), a small, innovative and award-winning company. He also runs his own company, EBE Consulting, giving planning, linguistic and marketing support to would-be exporters into the EU marketplace. But he is still genuinely puzzled about why the broadstream of UK industry seems content to waste the advantages an international outlook could bring to their operations. In particular, he recalls his return to the UK after 18 months in France with responsibility for sales, product development, finance and marketing. "It was fantastic experience. But when I got home, I was offered the job I'd had two years before, back in the estimating department." Such experiences are not uncommon. According to Dr Hilary Harris from Cranfield School of Management, repatriation is handled pretty badly by the majority of companies. "It has always amazed me - they justify the cost of an overseas posting by saying it increases the internationalisation of the whole organisation. But they rarely take that person's learning and disseminate it across the organisation in any meaningful way. And often there isn't even a job to come back to." She says that companies lose a lot of valuable people by failing to keep in touch with them while they are away but they lose even more when they feel they are not valued on their return. Harris is the co-author (with her Cranfield colleague Dr Michael Dickmann) of the CIPD Guide to International Management Development. They are successive directors of Cranfield's centre for research into the management of expatriation and have used this knowledge in a guide that should be mandatory reading for anyone trying to 'internationalise'. "What we find consistently in research is how astoundingly little pre-departure training organisations give to people - and how little cross-cultural training," she explains. The traditional way of working internationally used to be the three-year expatriot assignment. But now organisations are asking their managers to work internationally in several ways: short-term assignments that are now a major feature since the EU has expanded; commuting - away in the week and home at the weekends; and the big one, particularly for manufacturing companies - the frequent flyer. "We looked at the type of training each of them was getting and, even with the expatriots, it was pretty patchy; with frequent flyers, was negligible," says Harris. "I don't think people even consider they need a bit of help when they are going to work in different cultures. They may be highly international in what they are doing, but possibly not in their outlook." This is borne out by many managers with long experience of overseas working. Take Dave Kelly, for instance, now manufacturing manager for Flowcrete in Malaysia. Seven of his 18 years in manufacturing have been based outside the UK, in India and Indonesia as well as Malaysia. For him, learning the language is important, both operationally and for negotiating: "People must believe you know enough to pick up on any side conversations." But understanding the culture is even more important. "What may be an acceptable level of assertiveness in negotiating to a westerner may be seen as a completely unacceptable level of aggression in other cultures." He also points out that many developing countries have workers' unions. Union negotiation is a skill all but lost to most UK managers, but could be an essential tool for someone working internationally. Profound effect Growing demands for a more international focus have had a profound effect on the academic programmes available. Take Henley Management College, for example. It delivers its MBA in more than 100 countries and, at any one time, 6,500 students will be studying for one, most on a part-time basis. Henley offers a Consortium MBA specifically aimed at multinational organisations such as Ford, Vodafone and Lloyds of London. The programme operates with an international group of about 20, most of whom are on a fast track to promotion. Director of studies Rebecca Chandler-Wilde says they not only learn a lot from the MBA programme itself, but also - by working on joint projects and visiting each other's sites - about each other's cultures, too. Students make presentations about their own company operations. The contrast between a big, established, unionised company like Ford and a young, high-tech company like Vodafone, just moving from high growth to consolidation phases, can be stark. "You could almost see the jaws hitting the floor," recalls Wilde. Companies tend to use this programme as part of a wider development plan and part of her role extends to giving advice on the next stages of the graduates' career development. Cranfield has also made radical changes. A decade ago, its MBA was dominantly British in style; today it is resolutely multicultural. Harris says that it evolved from a realisation that, for many managers, the future didn't involve assignments to specific countries so much as working in international project teams or across many regions. A traditional pre-departure expat course would steep the student in the culture, the language and in-depth briefings. "Today, most managers will find themselves working in groups of, say, 12 different nationalities," she explains. "They can't immerse themselves in everyone's culture, but they can develop the empathetic, interpersonal skills that are effective in most cultural contexts." The first step is a series of exercises designed to make people aware of their own values, where they got them from, and how they impact on their behaviour. Rather than depend upon conventional profiling tools, such as the value survey model devised by Professor Hofstede, Cranfield's Gilles Spony has devised a typology that helps people understand how they are perceived in a cross-cultural context. "The purpose is to have their cultural antennae up when they are working in international groups," says Harris. If this sounds like academic gobbledegook, take a simple concept - being on time. What value do you place on it? It certainly won't be the same for the southern European, east African or even the American. Now we all say we value diversity, but what happens in a stress situation? We all judge quickly. So, if an Italian turns up late, does the US guy assume him to be incompetent? Harris points out that people make strong value judgements about behaviour that is, in some cultures, absolutely appropriate. Equally, she sees real disadvantages in negotiation for task-focused societies like the US that don't really appreciate how a relationship-based society like China works. They leave far too little time; hence the old story about concluding a bad deal because the opponent knows exactly what time their plane flies out. Proof Egginton provides proof of the value of getting out of your own shoes. In his first European posting, he was still a little uncertain of the language, and so spent a lot of time listening and learning. "Language is so interwoven with culture. It stopped me ever imposing my world model on other people!" For example, at one stage he ran a distribution network extending from Scandinavia to Greece. In Norway, he concluded a major piece of business in a day, including the time it took to fly there and back. In Greece, the same project took four days - three of them spent on city tours, hospitality, and a full background to the agent's business and origins. Eventually, the business was concluded on the last day, but Egginton is adamant that he wouldn't have got nearly as good a result by forcing the pace. A long-lasting relationship has come out of it with markedly preferential and loyal treatment. "It's all about relative values - in our culture, we fill every moment. Are we just busy fools?" Interestingly, both Egginton and Kelly took MBA programmes while still grappling with their overseas day jobs. Kelly is convinced of the value. It not only provides the knowledge to deal with international suppliers and strategic partners, but also helps plug the functional gaps for the sole foreign representative or small team that are probably having to contribute on far more fronts than would be the norm back in the UK. Harris openly admits that training alone can't turn someone into a brilliant internationalist: "But you can give them a seriously good start by raising awareness that they have their own cultural background and that their views about how things should be done are not universal. And, if they have a chance to look at other perspectives, they also have a chance of stepping back from their own."