Case
One of our clients is a global player in the Business Intelligence market. Recently I coached one of their BI experts who needed to develop language skills for dealing with customers and project managers in Dublin. Key to his role is engaging confidently with customers to develop a relationship and build an accurate picture of their BI requirements. Key challenges for the second language speaker here are: using natural, friendly language to connect well with the customer; showing competence and flexibility when eliciting key information (we identified several key communication skills to be targeted in training like ‘artful querying’).
During training over 2 weeks, one of the tools I used was to work closely with our expert on specific conversations with customers, developing templates with typical expressions and questioning structures needed. Our expert quickly transferred this language to his real situations, immediately gaining confidence himself and building customer confidence.