3 Steps to Grow Your Career as an International Professional

As an international professional, you might feel that you spend way too much time trying to improve your English, only to continue to have trouble communicating clearly with your colleagues and clients.

You’ve spent hours watching YouTube videos and TED talks. You’ve attempted memorizing English grammar lessons and even spent your hard-earned money on courses and books promising better English in a short amount of time. 

However, you're still not at the level you want to be at in your career.

Why's that?

The Real Issue 

The truth is that if you keep doing what you’re doing now, you're going to burn out before you ever reach the level of English proficiency you wanted.

Instead of continuing to learn everything, you need to focus on what you need to advance your proficiency and speaking confidence in English that is specifically designed for international professionals like yourself. 

Going for Gold 

Let me use an analogy from competitive swimming to help you understand. 

Imagine that you are a casual swimmer.

You decide that by 2024 you want to compete in the Olympic Games, in the swimming event.

Wow—way to aim high!

To prepare for the games, you decide to swim every day... and just wish upon a star that your efforts will get you that shiny gold medal in 2024.

Sounds like a sensible plan, right?

Nope, of course not.

The truth is that doing what you usually do as a casual swimmer won’t help you become a professional athlete or win the race.

To become a serious Olympian, you need to do swimming-specific exercises. You have to train specific muscles in your arms, your back, your legs, and so on. Ask yourself, "What do I know about proper nutrition for swimmers? Their gym routines? Their mindset?"

These are the real issues you should be focusing on if you ever hope to bring home some gold for your country, like Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky did.

Get Smart! Set Your Priorities

"David," you ask, "what’s the point behind all this swimming talk?"

While this analogy seems straightforward enough, this is exactly what has happened in your English learning journey. 

You have been trying to learn everything about English—but really, you need to focus on learning the English skills that you need to be an influential and confident professional, ready to excel in your new international role.

In order to improve your English so you can improve your job performance and secure future career opportunities, you need to follow these 3 simple steps:

1. Establish your communication foundation
2. Build your speaking confidence.
3. Improve your professional communication skills

1, 2, 3... Boom.

Let's take a look ⬇️

Step 1: Establish your communication foundation

"Practice makes perfect." You've probably heard that 100 times, or more.

But this is a common misconception.

Practice makes permanent.

If you repeat your mistakes again and again without correction, you will actually damage your learning and confidence in the long run.

However... perfect practice makes perfect!

So in Step 1, make sure you are practicing the right things in the right way for your role as an international professional.

In short, to perfect your communication foundation, you need to understand two things:

• the business culture of the English-speaking business world,
• how to use business-related words and phrases.

These two competencies form the base on which you stand as a communicator.

Taking Step 1 means you won’t have to rely on dictionaries and iPhone apps mid-meeting, or mid-sentence—all your job-related words and phrases are ready to go in your brain.

To make progress in Step 1, find industry-related texts and audio and identify the terms and phrases you need for communicating effectively and accurately in your job.

Even LinkedIn pulse articles (like this one you are reading) area good starting point—especially ones written by native English-speaking experts in your field.

You could also join an English-language conversation about your professional interests on Clubhouse, paying attention to how industry words and phrases are used by your industry peers.

Step 2: Build your speaking confidence.

In our brave new post-COVID-19 world, there will tonnes of new challenges that most companies have not yet encountered. 

So, how are you preparing?

A simple list of vocab cannot prepare you, as a leader and team player, to react in the way your team needs.

You need the fluency and confidence to respond to completely new information and changing circumstances.

How can you take action for Step 2?

You need to develop the skills that lead to fluency and confidence.

A prime example is how to conduct yourself in meetings.

This includes group meetings, 1-on-1s, project briefs, online via Zoom, and so on. You can also learn how to speak clearly and use the correct intonation and prosody. Get feedback from native speakers, like friends or your communication coach.

Step 3: Improve your professional communication skills

Your professional communication skills include email writing, drafting presentations, and other types of communication that your role as an international profession calls for.

These are the channels of expressing yourself with your team, your customers, and your clients.

How to improve in Step 3?

First, learn the proper structure and etiquette for business emails in English.

You should also learn how to create interesting presentations that leave your audience wanting to work with you, and clamoring to know more about your products.

Also, you can inject emotion into your message by always telling a story rather than reciting a list of dry facts from 20 over-crowded PowerPoint slides.

(Zzzzzz.)

And in all your communications, keep it simple and avoid overly complicated or formal expressions. No one likes a show-off, including your colleagues and customers.

Take these steps in this order

From all my years as a communication coach and teacher, it has been my clients who have successfully implemented these steps—and in this order—who have most successfully advanced in their careers, landed their dreams job, and made the right industry connections.

Start Aiming for Gold Today

Send me a message on LinkedIn today if you would like to know how you can improve your job performance through advanced English communication skills in the shortest amount of time.

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Photos by Andrea Piacquadio, ICSA, 祝鹤槐, Victor Freitas, and Fauxels (Pexels).