Teams with many languages and many countries

A team can have people who speak different languages. But the work standard has to mean the same thing to all of them.

For me this subject has a personal side too. I came to Germany in November 2021, from a working environment in Albania, and I worked in operations where German was part of professional communication. I did not only have to learn the language, but also the way people communicate at work. I wrote about that move in From Albania to Germany.

This essay is not about language. It is about the standard, and about how you make a standard clear to people who do not speak the same language at the same level.

What I have and what I do not

In last mile I worked with several DSPs and with a structure that included many drivers, dispatchers and shift leads. In the hotels in Germany, communication involved colleagues from different departments and international guests.

But for the exact, or even approximate, number of languages and nationalities in my teams, I have no data. I will not say “ten” or “twenty” without something to back it up.

Nor do I have a confirmed account of the language most used in day-to-day communication with each DSP's drivers. Nor of exactly how I learned German: whether I took courses, how long it took, what the hardest part was at the start. I do not want to build a story as if I learned everything on the job.

And I do not have a documented case where I can say for certain that an operational mistake happened because of language. I saw and handled operational problems, but I cannot attribute the cause to language without proof.

What I do have are the materials I worked with, and the principles that came out of them.

Language and ability are two different problems

Not yet speaking a language well does not mean you are not good at your job.

A manager has to tell a lack of professional ability apart from a communication barrier. They are two different problems and they need different solutions.

If you treat them as one, you either lose capable people because they do not express themselves well, or you carry an ability problem while believing it is only a matter of language.

That is why a work standard should not depend on someone's ability to follow a long explanation in a language they have not fully mastered.

What worked

From the operational materials I used, I know that in last mile there were instructions and rules written in German and in English. They covered safety, hygiene, loading procedures, scanning and discipline on the dock.

Those rules were short and tied to clear actions: where the driver waits, when to inform the Team Leader, how scanning is done, what is not allowed during loading.

In the hotel I worked with checklists and SOPs in German, and with English materials for communicating with guests and for hotel services. I used checklists, screenshots, videos and demonstrations from colleagues.

When I was learning the Night Audit processes, it helped that I could see a concrete step on the screen and link it to the matching instruction. That also shaped the way I began to organise the SOP materials into a more searchable structure, as I wrote in A good SOP is not a document.

Translation is not enough

It is not enough to translate a document. You have to make sure the meaning and the action stay the same.

A hypothetical example: an instruction says only “check the load”. Two people can read it differently. One checks the number of bags. The other checks the loading order.

The problem in this example is not necessarily language. It may be the standard itself that is unclear. And an unclear standard stays unclear in whatever language you translate it into.

For me, a good instruction has:

• one clear action for each step;
• short sentences and consistent words, so the same thing is always called the same;
• an image or screenshot when the process is visual;
• a way to check the result;
• a clear instruction for what to do when there is a problem.

“Show me how you would do it”

The question “Did you understand?” is not always enough.

Someone may answer “yes” because they think they have understood, because they do not want to look unsure, or simply because they do not know how to explain what is unclear. In a team with many languages, that happens even more easily.

That is why I would rather ask:

“Show me how you would do it.”

Then I would check whether the person does it correctly, whether they know the result they have to reach, and whether they know when to ask for help.

I do not have a confirmed episode where I did exactly this with an employee. But it is the standard I stand for, and it is the same test I described in “Watch how I do it” is not training: do it yourself, tell me why, show me what you do when an exception comes up.

If an employee does not understand an instruction, our responsibility as managers does not end with repeating the same sentence louder. We have to check whether the instruction is clear, whether it has been demonstrated, and whether the person can carry it out.

The clear-instruction card

Take an unclear instruction from your operation, for example “check the load”, and run it through these five lines:

1. The action. What exactly does the person have to do?
2. Place and moment. Where and when does it have to be done?
3. The demonstration. Which photo, screenshot or example explains the step?
4. The check. How does the employee know they did it correctly?
5. The exception. What has to be done when something does not work?

If you can fill in each line with short sentences, you have an instruction that someone who speaks the language less well than you can still carry out. If not, you have found the point where different people will read the standard differently.

A good standard is not measured by how well it is written.

It is measured by how accurately different people can carry it out, even when they do not speak the same language.