Communication for International Business

Stanislas Bocearov 14/04/14

Book Review Assignment

BAD 10 Section 4246

Communication for International Business: The secrets of excellent interpersonal skills by Bob Dignen with Ian McMaster (Collins) is the book I have chosen to read. The book gives you the strategies you need to communicate interpersonally with colleagues at home and overseas in the area of international business. The book contains smart and useful advices in the subject of international business and communication, so you can do good in international business later on when you work in this area, as it helps you to communicate well and effective with foreigners. This book appeals to me, because I am French native speaker, so this book will help me in my future to deal with people that are native english speaker. I want to study international business in the future, and this book introduces English speakers to the challenges of international communication and provides sound advice to help them adapt successfully which will help me as I speak english almost fluently. The book also covers the main interpersonal skills that you should have when you are working in a international environment. It include topics such as: the network, and also dealing with people that are not so easy to understand, and finally to be able to managing a conflict.This is why I chose this book and that I think it will help me in my general business knowledge as sometimes I am not able to understand an english speaker and that often they are not able to understand me.

Bob Dignen is specialized in the area of international team and leadership training. And he also provides coaching to international leaders, and facilitates international project team kick-off and review meetings to support high performance. He is also available as a webinar speaker and as a keynote at corporate management events or conferences. He has also wrote many other books, such as “Managing Projects, Communication for International Business, English for International Business Communication,Communicating Across Cultures, Communicating Internationally in English, 50 Ways to improve your international presentation skills and 50 Ways to improve your intercultural skills” which makes him a unique contributor to this business field as he has a lot of experience in the area of international relations and that it is not his first book that has been published. He is also a co-author of Developing People Internationally, a multimedia international team training resource which are his interests. He also writes regularly on international business communication topics for Business Spotlight magazine. Bob Dignen is also an accredited facilitator of Fierce Conversations, a licensed coach for The International Profiler (an intercultural profiling tool), and an advanced practitioner of TMP (Team Management Profile) an international team development tool. Bob was born in Bahrain in 1963 which is a very small country in Asia located next to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. He studied English and Literary Theory at Leicester University, obtaining a BA and MA. After that, in 1990 he spent one year in Germany teaching business English within a government redevelopment programme for this region. In 1994 he began working for York Associates as a freelancer, becoming a director in 2000, whick make his books more valuable. His specialist research is the communication problems between native and non-native speakers, which is why he wrote a book on

that topic.

The first part of this book mainly discuss about what problems can a native english speaker encounter when speaking english with foreigners, and how to solve them which is one of the major themes in this book. The author is giving us advices so we can understand each other better, to make our interpersonal skills stronger. In this part, Bob Dignen is telling the Native Speaker reader to think on how they use english, if they use it well, if their grammar is correct … Which will help the non-native english speaker to understand better in the first place. It’s important to look on how the non-native speaker reaction will be, the face or feedback he is going to do right after talking to see if he understood well. Bob Dignen is also giving some practical tips to keep in mind when you are communicating internationally, at the end of this part he is mainly discussing about it. As an example that the author uses to illustrate the problems between native and non-native english speaker, he says ‘’Native and non-native speakers of English can cause communication problems for each other. The native speaker may find the non-native speaker difficult to understand beacause of his/her accent choice of vocubulary or non-standard grammar. But more importantly the non-native speaker may struggle with what the native speaker is saying because the latter is not adapting his/her speaking style and language level adequately and appropriately to the situation.’’ I definatly agree with what the author is saying here as it applies to my current situation, everytime I speak to someone I just met, they have to be very focused to understand me. I would say it depends the people, some people understands me better than others. People that are used to hang out with me or people that are used to listen to foreigners tend to understand me better than people who just met me or people that are not used to hear foreigners speaking. The main problems that non-native english speaker often meets from the author’s view and that I personally agree with him is that native speaker speaks too fast and sometimes without even articulated. But also by using unknown expressions, talking too much, by not making sentences easy and with sense, and by using difficult words are things non-native english speaker often meets. Bob Dignen gives an example on how to avoid that, “Slow down and stay slowed down. Most native speakers talk too quickly for their non-native colleagues. You need to slow down and concentrate on keeping your speed down. Too often, native speakers slow down for a couple of minutes when asked but then speed up again. Native speakers need to be alert to the value of pausing more.” This also applies to me, as sometime native english speaker speaks too fast and without even speaking clearly enough. And that’s funny because what the author just said is entirely true, I remember when I used to learn english, in an english class. I asked one of my mates to slow down as we were doing a project together, he did it for a couple of minutes, and then he started to talk very fast again.

An other major theme that the author illustrates well is speaking. Bob Dignen explain what makes a good native english speaker by saying “Good international speakers

explicitly negotiate the communication process so that everyone is clear about what is going to happen.” I also agree with the author on that one, as I used to live in Australia for 2 years when I was 14 years old. My teacher in drama was always making sure that I understand everything by doing gesture, movements, by asking me “did you understand everything ? Do you need me to repeat ? Don’t hesitate to ask me if you didn’t get something”, this is what makes a good international speaker in my opinion as he explicity negotiate the communication process. This is a very important stage in my opinion when talking with foreigners, so the foreigners feel comfortable because a foreigner usually find it annoying to ask over and over again “ please could you repeat ?”, “please would you slow down?” but if a native english speaker make things clear that it does not bother him at all, everything should be fine, from Dignen’s and my point of view. An other example that the author gives us is “Be aware that speaking fast presents significant problems for non-native speakers. The average native speaker uses around 250 words per minute in full flow. The average non-native speaker may be comfortable at around 100 words per minute. Slowing down is not patronizing; it is essential if you want people to understand you.”

Finally, I think that the author could not do better in explaining his point of view, and I think one of the main reason is because Bob Dignen is a non-native English speaker as he was born in Bahrein. So with all the experience he got from his job, that made him a fluent English speaker, he is able to help English native speaker and non-native English speaker at the same time. His information persuaded me because this is exactly how I feel when I talk to a native English speaker, which means that they are talking too fast, using difficult words, not making enough articulation … And it also persuaded me in the other way as native English speaker do not understand me clearly enough all the time because of my strong French accent. In my own experience people that have understood my accent the most are English teachers or people where English is not their primary language.

The book I have reviewed is called “Communication for International Business: The secrets of excellent interpersonal skills by Bob Dignen with Ian McMaster (Collins)”. I have also used web based information for preparing the speech “about the author” which is this link: (http://www.york-associates.co.uk/ourcommunity).