I don't know why, people still single out the US as a country of immigrants. Just because before Columbus "found" the "New" World, this land was vastly unpopulated, and after that Europeans started moving in? Well, people, all over the world, migrated from one place to another through the history of humanity. And I can assure you that Americans who can trace their origins to Mayflower and beyond, don't consider themselves immigrants.
Of course, we have an inflow of new immigrants, and we do lead in absolute numbers, but per capita, Australia's and Canada's immigration rates are currently three times higher than America's. Also, there is a question of concentration. What we should be called is a country of uneven immigration.
There are places where people have never seen an immigrant. I have a Turkish friend who once stopped with his half-Swedish-half-French wife in a small Midwestern town for gas and the shop-keeper called a sheriff. 100% true story. Homogeneous regions and countries scare me – they are too easy to manipulate.
I enjoy the blessed places, where you can see different faces and hear different tongues every step you take. And it is with a great reluctance, I have to recognize the fact that the language barrier problem sometimes affects the work environment. Well, it's rather accent barrier.
I myself have no such problem. Over the years I worked with people from more than 20 countries. I pay attention and my ears got accustomed to all sorts of accents and grammatical deviations. Unfortunately, that cannot be said about everybody. Many times I have encountered situations of stark misunderstanding between employees of different origin. It results in frustration, waste of time and even errors.
Few years ago I had two employees in my analytics group – one was a woman from Ukraine and another was a man from China. While I had no problem communicating with them, they could not understand each other. The woman was very cautious about filling the gaps in information with her own assumptions and guesses. Instead, she would drag him into my office, asking me to explain. CFO, the Interpreter!
Something needed to be done. I thought of replacing one of them, but that's not my way of doing things. Instead, I asked them to communicate in writing – every time they needed to say something to each other, they used IM. Some people may think that it took away more time – not true. They spent so much time trying to understand one another and getting me involved, my solution was actually a time-saver. Actually, seeing the words has improved their verbal communication as well.
I think problems like that are rooted in the lack of effort. The two kept asking me why I didn't have problems understanding either of them. I'd said, "Just pay attention to expressions and emotions and it will be easier to understand."
Like in this video. The great comedian speaks a cartoon language he invented himself. Yet, people all over the world understand him.
The Frustrated CFO 