Tough love? You decide.

I had a colleague who was smart, had multiple STEM degrees/certifications and was a really nice person. But he failed to get leadership roles.

In our interactions, and especially when I read his written communications and posts on LinkedIn, it occurred to me that there was a material difference in his written and verbal communication skills.

While his written communication skills were top notch, his verbal skills were not. He had an anchor – which was dragging him down and which was contributing to his lack of success.

Now my friend did not mumble, nor spoke out of the side of his mouth (some Aussies are prone to this) and was not a slow or fast talker.

It was his strong accent. Now, each of us has an accent. But some of us have accents that require greater effort to understand/ focus on in conversations.

In the Australian context this unfamiliar accent meant that a greater cognitive load was placed on the listeners. Now outside of Australia, this accent would have been perfectly adequate for workplace communications.

In our context, more time and effort was needed to engage in conversations. Previously, my friend had been given nebulous feedback disguised as comments on “English skills”.

From my friend’s perspective, he could not understand what this meant – because his written skills were the same level as others. His thoughts were of high quality.

But when he spoke, people focused on HOW he was speaking, rather than on WHAT he was saying.

The kind thing to do was to tell him that his accent was impeding his workplace success. Now, he finally had something he could actively work on – softening his accent so that listeners could focus on WHAT he saying, not HOW he was saying it.

Yes – we can all try harder to be inclusive and accept people as they are – thick accents and all. But telling someone their accent is hard to understand is the same as saying that when they mumble they are hard to understand. Accents can be softened for better understanding.

Ps –before I am accused of racism, would it help if I added that my colleague had a thick Scottish brogue – and it’s an accent that not many are familiar with?

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