In a recent episode of the WRKdefined podcast You Should Know, communications coach Peter Novak challenged the notion that workplace communication requires perfect grammar or big words. Instead, he emphasized clarity, confidence, and trust, especially as global teams become more distributed. Novak, founder of Strictly Speaking Group and a former professor at the University of San Francisco, provided a practical playbook for leading multilingual teams.
Novak highlighted how unconscious bias, particularly like-me bias, influences who gets promoted and believed. He noted that phrasal verbs—such as 'take off,' 'take up,' 'take over,' and 'take down'—often derail non-native English speakers. Novak suggested using AI prompts to replace them with stronger, clearer verbs. He also cited a McGill University study on foreign accents, which revealed how delivery affects trust and credibility.
Novak reframed inclusive communication as a business issue, not a political one. 'The best way to position it is that this is a business issue, that you need your communication to be as clear as possible to everyone, not just to a select few,' he said. He pushed back on the idea that non-native speakers must adapt, using a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers analogy: 'Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels.' Non-native colleagues are translating and vocabulary-hunting in real time, while native speakers barrel ahead.
The conversation moved to concrete tactics. Novak described building executive voiceprints by feeding hundreds of hours of transcripts into AI, enabling leaders to deliver scripts that sound like them. He shared a 20-question intake he uses to help executives tell their teams how they want to be communicated with, from pre-reads to agenda formats. Novak referenced Yakov Smirnoff on the absurdity of English, contrasted Ernest Hemingway's accessibility with Oscar Wilde writing 'for about 6 people,' and noted that Latin American teams often operate trilingually until a monolingual American enters the room. He also flagged cultural intelligence lessons from his own business preparation in Tokyo and Dubai.
Novak's insights underscore that global business success hinges on communication that is clear and confident, not necessarily perfect. As investor relations teams now use AI to score CEO earnings calls for language and tone, the stakes for effective cross-border communication have never been higher.
