Working With Teams Who Speak English As a 2nd Language
https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2019/08/06/lessons-from-working-with-teams-who-speak-english-as-a-second-language/
Some tips for making a global team more productive.
- Written comprehension is normally higher than spoken, at the cost of losing the emotional context for a sentence.
- Provide a written version of key remarks and insights as this will boost team members' comprehension and minimize misunderstandings. Prepare and send written material in advance of a meeting, phone call, or online meeting.
- Have someone take notes--rotating the role as appropriate during the meeting--in a shared chat or real-time shared edit document (e.g. EtherPad, GoogleDoc). This just-in-time subtitles approach leverages written comprehension.
- Communication is not what is said or written but what is understood. Ask someone for what actions they will take next or ask them to put a concept into their own words so that you can calibrate their level of comprehension.
I have some other tips at https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2019/08/06/lessons-from-working-with-teams-who-speak-english-as-a-second-language/ but I am also interested in what IndieHackers have done to minimize misunderstandings when working in a global team.
Thanks for sharing!
It's interesting that a lot of these are techniques that improve communication for both native and non-native speakers You're increasing comprehension by varying the communication style and eliminating ambiguity and assumed context. I particularly like the idea of "instant subtitles" in a shared doc during a meeting.
From reading the text here and in the blog, it seems that you could strengthen your written communication by avoiding passive voice and simplifying sentence structure.
For example, this sentence:
The grammar here is very complex and hard to parse. It uses passive voice: "written material prepared in advance." This phrase omits the subject, so the reader is left to assume who wrote and prepared the material. Also, the verb of the sentence is "boost," but it happens so late in the sentence that it's tough for the reader to understand what's going on. The subject to that verb is the entire noun phrase of "written material prepared in advance complemented by chat and voice," which is confusing because it contains four other words that the reader could mistake for the main verb of the sentence ("written," "prepared," "complemented", "chat").
If you've never read it, I highly recommend The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. It's a classic, and a quick read. It has tons of advice for making your writing clear and concise. A higher-investment option is to hire a freelance editor to review your writing. I regularly work with one, and it improved my writing tremendously.
Thanks! Good catch. The sentence you critiqued does not actually appear in the blog post but was the result of a hasty effort at summarizing key points. I have tried to incorporate your feedback into my edits to summary I wrote for Indie Hackers.