Episode #283: What If I am Not Fluent In English As A Presenter

Kata, the way of doing things and Kanpekishugi or perfectionism are wonderful traits in Japan. Everything works well and as expected. Things have an order here and there are certain ways of doing things which will brook no adventurism. Things must also be done properly, no half measures. As a transplanted wild Aussie, I fought against both for many decades. “Why does it have to done this way?”, I would ask my wife, who would just answer, “because that is how it is done”. “Near enough is good enough” I would assure her, but she wasn’t having any of that either.

This mindset flows into language usage too. If speaking in a foreign language like English then it must be perfect or the speaker feels shame. Sometimes the amount of exposure to the language or the amount of study hasn’t been sufficient to be perfect, but that is never accepted as an excuse. The burning, hot flush of shame exists regardless, if a mistake is made.

The pressure ratchets up when Japanese business people have to give a presentation in English and they embrace all sorts of craziness in that pursuit. A recent case came to my attention regarding a very senior Japanese executive in a global firm, who has to give talks internally as well as externally. His pursuit of perfection drove him to read religiously from the prepared notes, word for word, so that it would be grammatically perfect. He also had the forethought to arrange some Sakura or “plants” in the audience, to ask him predesignated questions for which he had carefully curated answers. Everything was perfect, except it wasn’t.

The senior leaders are grooming him for a huge job and when they see this type of behaviour they worry. This degree of over engineering presentations isn’t authentic from their point of view. They want him to be natural, imperfect, understandable and capable and confident enough to handle questions from an audience, without having to nobble the proceedings. Here is where perspectives diverge. He seeks perfection in a foreign language and his bosses are okay with imperfection in English.

When you think about it, how many people do you know who are perfect speakers of their own language? Not every native speaker is perfect. We make a mess of the tenses sometimes, getting the verb wrong, using “is” instead of “was” for past tense. I have heard very well educated native speakers say “somethink” instead of “something” or “everythink” instead of “everything”.

I have a Ph. D., an MA, and a BA with Honours. Am I 100% confident in my own command of my language of English? Certainly not. I am always paranoid about mispronouncing words I don’t know or hear very infrequently. English grammar has defeated me since Year Three of elementary school. I am certain I make mistakes in these podcasts, I just don’t know where.

If we cannot claim purity in the linguistic applications of our own language, then we certainly know we are not able to operate at perfection levels in a foreign language. Yet this is exactly the type of crazy pressure which Japanese business executives place on themselves. They need to lighten up a bit.

The high powered Japanese Executive in question has not had my coaching at this point, as discussions continue. One of the first things I will be teaching him is to get rid of any perfectionism baggage holding him back. You don’t have to be a perfect speaker of English when giving presentations because nobody cares. If they are fellow Japanese, they cannot say anything, because they are not perfect either, so no casting of the first stones of criticism by them. If they are foreigners, then they have likely grown up listening to non-native speakers mangle the grammar and mash the pronunciation of English. They accept it for what it is and if they cannot understand what is being said, they just ask for it to be repeated.

Studying Japanese here for the first time back in 1979 I made a revolutionary discovery. If you wait to manufacture the perfect sentence to lob into a conversation, you will never get to speak. The conversation will have moved on to another topic before you get a chance to use it. Therefore, perfect or otherwise, SPEAK. Get it out and if they don’t register what you mean then say the same thing in a different way, until they do get it.

If we are doing a presentation, then there can be perfect text on screen as we speak imperfectly to the content, rounding out the information further. We can also take comfort that audiences don’t remember the detail of the talks, but they do remember the speakers. They will overlook imperfections in speech from a dynamic, passionate, energised speaker, because they will remember the speaker as impressive. A perfect rendition in English by a native speaker, delivered with no passion in a monotone, will dispatch that person to oblivion in the memory of the audience. Perfection isn’t needed but passion for the subject and for the audience is. Focus on those two things and the world will be right, non-native speaker or otherwise.