In the July 6, 2026 episode of the WRKdefined podcast You Should Know, communications coach Peter Novak challenged the notion that flawless English is key to workplace success. Novak, founder of Strictly Speaking Group and a former professor at the University of San Francisco, argued that clarity, confidence, and trust are far more critical, especially as global teams become more distributed.
Novak, who holds an MFA in acting and a doctorate in dramaturgy, drew on his coaching experience with executives at major corporations to outline a playbook for leading multilingual teams. He highlighted how unconscious bias, particularly the like-me bias, influences who gets promoted and believed. He also pointed to phrasal verbs (e.g., take off, take up, take over) as a hidden barrier for non-native English speakers, suggesting AI prompts can replace them with clearer verbs.
Referencing a McGill University study on foreign accents, Novak emphasized that confident delivery builds trust and credibility. He noted that investor relations teams now use AI to score CEO language choice and tone of voice during earnings calls, underscoring the business impact of communication.
Novak reframed inclusive communication as a bottom-line issue. "The best way to position it is that this is a business issue, that you need your communication to be as clear as possible to everyone, not just to a select few," he told host William. He pushed back on the notion that non-native speakers must adapt, invoking a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers analogy: "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels." Non-native colleagues, he argued, translate, interpret, and vocabulary-hunt in real time while native speakers barrel ahead.
The conversation moved into concrete tactics. Novak described building executive voiceprints by feeding hundreds of hours of transcripts into AI so leaders deliver scripts that sound like them. He shared a 20-question intake to help executives communicate their preferences to teams, from pre-reads to agenda formats. He referenced Yakov Smirnoff on the absurdity of English, contrasted Ernest Hemingway's accessibility with Oscar Wilde writing "for about 6 people," and noted that Latin American teams often operate trilingually in Spanish, Portuguese, and English until a monolingual American enters and collapses the exchange back to English. He also flagged cultural intelligence lessons from his preparation for business in Tokyo and Dubai.
The episode is available now wherever podcasts are heard.
