On 2008-06-27 10:56:53 +0100, magwitch said:

Andy Hall wrote:
On 2008-06-26 23:22:11 +0100, geoff said:

Logically one would think that. I've found it to be rather
different. Certainly in large organisations in other countries it is
typical that the very top management will speak good English if the
company is a multinational as well. Otherwise they can often be of an
age where they didn't learn English earlier in life and haven't needed
to.

People who have or have had a technical role typically do speak or at
least understand English, but those who have had a role mainly
communicating with their peers may well not

It's not uncommon to have a situation where someone at senior level
does speak some English but whose juniors speak it better. He may
then choose not to do so for fear of showing himself up.

These are situations where it is even more important to meet the people
face to face to make sure that misunderstandings don't happen before
they even start. It can otherwise take a lot of time to recover,
reset expectations and continue on track.

My Dad was export sales manager for ICI Caribbean and South America for
20 years, and err... learned to speak Spanish and Portuguese (self
taught).

Purely because, when closing a deal, he could understand what they were
saying privately amongst themselves and they knew he could understand
them so they didn't try it on.

This is a good point and is the ideal. It will work for a few
countries but becomes less practical if one works in a large number of
countries, cultures and languages.