Speaking and Communicating Podcast

And even for me living in Denmark, you're speaking Danish. Oh, I love your accent. It's so charming. That's so cute. In the middle of a business meeting. I'm not trying to be cute. If I was speaking English right now, you would never say that to me. You wouldn't stop the meeting to tell me how cute I talk. Welcome back to the speaking and communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally.
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this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are crucial in your career growth and leadership development. Whether you're about to speak in public, make presentations at work, pitch to investors, or are an entrepreneur looking to showcase your innovation to a wider audience, we would be glad you joined us. The Speaking and Communicating podcast is part of the Be Podcast Network.
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which is a centralized hub that helps listeners become their best selves at work and in life. To learn more about the Bee Podcast Network, go to beepodcastnetwork.com. Let's get communicating.
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My guest today is a corporate training specialist who mainly focuses on accent buyers. Now, even though she's from the United States, she's currently based in Singapore, has been living globally for over two decades. And the one thing we have in common is that we have both been living culturally in Asian countries. Heather Hansen is also the author of Unmuted, and her TED Talk is How to Speak
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Bad English Perfectly. And there's a reason why she titled it that way. And we're gonna talk a lot about that. And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi Heather. Hello Roberta. So nice to meet you, to see you face to face over video all the way from around the world. Thanks for having me today. Thank you for being here. It's nice to see you too. I wish we could have recorded our free interview because that was so much fun.
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But I hope the stories that we shared, they will be brought onto the recording. Before we get into that, please tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, I was born and raised in California, not far from that gorgeous Golden Gate Bridge in your background. And when I finished university, I moved to Denmark to be with my...
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then boyfriend, now husband. So luckily, you know, 20 something years later, it's all worked out. That could have ended very badly, but it did not. Congratulations. So we lived in Denmark for four years. Then we came out to Singapore for what we thought would be two years. It turned into eight, had our two children here. Then we moved back to Denmark for four more years. And now we're back in Singapore again in the last five years. So it's been a back and forth between Europe and Asia, although I was born and raised in North America. So that has...
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given me really interesting cultural experiences from three different continents. And it really helps me to understand in my own work in communication, how those cultural differences impact our language, our identity, and how we connect with each other. So here in Singapore, back in 2007, I started my company Global Speech Academy, and it's a corporate training firm focused on communication skills and soft skills.
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but I've always been very, very interested in English articulation and how we use English globally to connect cultures and cross-language barriers. And so now my main focus is in the area of accent bias, as you mentioned, because I've been on both ends of the equation, right? Born into a very privileged accent globally, where everyone wants the American accent. I'm easily identified as American and there's a lot wrapped up in that.
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And at the same time, I've been living in Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, speaking and studying and working in German and Danish and having an accent and being treated completely differently than I'm ever treated when I speak English. That was when I realized, you know, what about people who have to operate like this every single day all around the world in a foreign language and are never getting the respect that they deserve because of people's own biases. And that's what's really
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been the foundation of my whole career since and what I'm really passionate about today. There's so much to unpack there, especially as I was saying, the other thing we have in common is that I've also lived in three different countries. So those cultural differences, we're gonna dive deeper into them. But when you talk about accent bias, when I was in South Korea, the ads usually look for the North American teacher, Canada, US, because-
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especially Korean moms, they think if my child has an English teacher who speaks like an American, they are most likely going to go to Harvard and Stanford and have a bright future. Every parent wants a bright future for their children. So you cannot fault them for that. However, like you said, as an American, there's a lot that comes with that accent that the global world has a perception of. And I never could have built the business that I've built here in Singapore.
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if I hadn't been the white Western American English speaker. A local Singaporean could have never had the success of running a communication skills company because this leftover sense of inferiority after colonialism is very, very real, especially in the area of English. Even the government here has a speak good English campaign, which basically insinuates that Singapore English is not good English. Everyone here grows up with this feeling that the way they speak is not good enough on the global stage.
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and that they need to be more global. They need to be more Western in the way that they communicate. And I see huge, huge issues with that. And so I try to use the privilege that I've been given and the privilege voice that I have in the world to help people who are not in that situation, to give them a voice, to try to teach the rest of the world that, hey, we need to get over these biases and start listening to these voices because...
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This can't be the pinnacle of human existence. You know, there's so many problems in the world. There have to be answers out there and we're not listening. We're not listening to them. They're there. And we need to be better about letting them speak and hearing their voices. Speak English better. That saddens me. And it makes me think of, I had an activity, I was teaching middle school in South Korea. I remember the story very well, where BTS, you know, BTS, K-pop. Yes.
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So they were, you remember when they win the Grammy, they were on Ellen, they were all over the US. They were huge at the time. And my middle schoolers, the first question I asked was, why do you think you learn English? Why does your government bring us here to teach you guys English? One of my students, her name is Hyeon-ju, she said, teach up because I want to go to America and marry Justin Bieber. Okay, let's keep this still, but here's the thing. There's a dream. At the time he was still single, kudos to her.
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But here's the thing, I remember specifically explaining to them that for you, Korean is still first. English is not more important than Korean. The reason you are given this opportunity is because English is called the global language of business. In case you think, I want to expand my horizons when I grow up and work in different countries, English is usually the connecting language. And the thing is, speaking of colonialism, being from South Africa,
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Yes, I grew up speaking my native Zulu and English. My country is run in English. Everything is in English. So for instance, when we go to teach English, especially Asian countries, Middle Eastern countries, South American countries, do us who come from English speaking countries have this, would you say arrogance of, I speak English and you must be more like me? Yeah, and I would say it's a lot more in business than in teaching because I think,
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Typically, good English teachers have a very strong understanding of this privilege that we carry. But in the business world, this is definitely the case where the Western native speaker believes, well, this is my language. I own this. I'm the one who speaks this language natively. You're the one who needs to communicate in a way that I can understand. I can't understand your accent. That's just too hard for me. I don't want to make any effort to listen.
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or take on any responsibility in this conversation, and you are the problem. And that is a huge, huge problem in global conversations and business settings where that's where the arrogance comes out. And I don't think they really think of it that way. I don't think they realize that that's what they're doing, but it is this fact that we've all been raised thinking that this is good English, this is bad English, this is perfect English, and a leader should be eloquent.
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have a good command of language and someone who does not is not a good leader. And that is a disconnect. That is not actually true. Your eloquence has nothing to do with your leadership ability. So until we can sort of fix that belief, I think it's very hard to make other changes in the mindset around how we're using English in the world. And because we haven't fixed it, this is why Koreans, Singaporeans,
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people from those countries have this thing of, oh Heather, my English is not very good. I'm not even gonna speak at all. And we used to say, if I'm gonna teach you English, the only way for you to speak is to speak it. You're not gonna learn swimming through a book. You're gonna have to be in the water and learn to swim. So you have to speak. So now they have this fear that we judge them. We judge their accent, we judge their grammar. And so they don't try at all.
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Mm-hmm. It's very true. And that holds a lot of people back. It may not even be that they're being consciously judged. The biases that we have are so ingrained and so deep that most people don't even realize they have them. And people will tell you like, oh, oh, I love accents. I don't, I'm never trying to be offensive. I listen to everyone. I appreciate it. La la la. It's very akin to people saying, oh, but I don't see color. I don't see race.
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And that's just such a sign of privilege that, yeah, because you've never experienced what it's like. And for people who experience accent bias and discrimination based on the way they speak every single day, it is very, very real. And it happens all the time. And yes, sometimes it does look like you're being encouraging and supportive, like, oh my gosh, your English is so good. Where are you from? I mean, if someone says that to you, like,
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Oh my gosh, you're from Africa, but you speak such good English. That's amazing. I do sometimes get that. And I'm sure people say that to you. And it's like, I'm sorry, what? I grew up with this language. I'm a native speaker. Do you know nothing about the world around you? And these are the kinds of comments that people get day in and day out. And even for me, living in Denmark, you're speaking Danish. Oh, I love your accent. It's so charming. That's so cute. In the middle of the day, I'm like, oh, I love you.
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business meeting. I'm not trying to be cute. If I was speaking English right now, you would never say that to me. You wouldn't stop the meeting to tell me how cute I talk. It's not acceptable. And they will tell you, oh, but I really love it. I'm telling you, I love the way you talk, but you're not realizing that you're making me feel like an outsider, like an other, like I will never belong, like I could live here 40 years and you will never accept me as your own, that you will never listen to my ideas, that you will never listen to what is coming out of my mind. You're only listening to how it comes out of my mouth.
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And that can be so incredibly frustrating when it's on a daily basis. So a lot of people have the best intentions in the world. And this is the challenge we're faced with in the entire DEI space, is overcoming these unconscious biases and how they're coming out in the workplace and making people feel like they don't belong. And so we do have to sort of talk about that wide range of everything from the very subtle, oh, I love your accent, it's so cute, to why don't you go back where you're from?
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which is an obvious attack, but there's everything in between, so many nuances. You were focusing on the accent and not the fact that I'm sharing this brilliant innovative idea. Right, but I'm lucky because anytime I'm in these situations I can say, hey, we can switch back to English if my accent is too distracting for you. Distracting. Yeah. And then that's usually when they say, no, no, no, we love it, it's so cute, whatever. But that is also extreme privilege that I have.
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being an English speaking American, that I can go anywhere in the world and I can typically in almost all situations, use English and remain in my powerful prestigious position. That is not true of the Mandarin speaker, the Thai speaker, the Malaysian, Indonesian, you name it, all the Indian languages, African languages, you can't go back to your native language and regain your power and prestige
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and eloquence that we praise so highly because no one can understand those languages. You didn't win the linguistic lottery that I won by being born right into a globally respected variety of English. And this is the problem that's playing out in global business. Right. And so when you talk about perception, you know how we say leaders are perceived perception, not facts.
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are perceived to be better leaders if they communicate better than the ones who don't communicate as well. So you have that perception alone, just in English speaking Western countries, perception of communication skills, leadership, okay. Imagine adding now the element of, I come from an Asian country and my accent is judged and I'm supposed to be the leader and now I have this communication barrier.
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So then, which means the added judgment and bias is, do I even know what I'm doing? Do I even know my job? It leads to a lot of those inferiority complexes where it expands to all elements of their lives where, oh, I don't know if I should speak up. I don't know if they'll understand me. I don't know if they're going to point out my accent. Maybe I don't know this as well as I should. And so it stops people. They start pressing that mute button and disappearing. And that's actually the absolute worst thing that you could do.
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because in order for people to understand accents better, they need more contact with them. I mean, if we look at people in my hometown in California, their contact with foreign accents is very limited. So of course, for me living abroad 20 years, I can easily understand just about any accent I hear also because I'm in this industry and I work with people with accents every day. But people in my family would say, how could you understand that person? I can't understand a word they're saying because they've never heard it.
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And so if you have an accent that's different and you're going into a community and you start being shy and pressing mute and not speaking up, how are they ever going to have the opportunity to better understand you, to learn the way you speak, to tune their ears to how you speak? And the opposite's also true. The people who have difficulty understanding, they say, oh, but it's so embarrassing when I can't understand them. I feel so bad. And so they avoid the person. I mean, this is why we can't integrate properly, why we can't create diverse communities.
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because we're sticking to our groups because that's what's comfortable and I don't wanna be embarrassed. And there's just as much embarrassment on that listener side. So we need to actually encourage people to speak more, not less, and unmute as much as possible to help both sides better understand each other. Speak more, not less, which is why I used to always have this comeback whenever my students would say, Robert, a teacher.
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My English is not good. I said, you just spoke a perfect English sentence. Keep going. Exactly. There's this pressure to speak perfect English. Trust me, I butcher it sometimes myself. And I was raised with British colonial English. Why is it that they have this pressure to speak perfectly? I don't have the pressure to speak it perfectly. That's also very true. As native speakers, we're a lot more forgiving of each other.
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Although, you know, if you look at comment sections online, and the level of English that is being used, I love to say, you know, there is no perfect English, we don't have one global standard, we don't have one set of rules, we don't have an academy that, you know, is dictating how English should be used, we can't even agree across, you know, us, UK, we, we have no agreement. Yeah, we all use the language differently. And there is no
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perfect, which also means there is no bad, there is no good, there's no way to define these subjective varieties of English. The perfect English is English that gets a job done that creates meaning, creates understanding. So every single conversation everywhere in the world is unique due to the unique ways every speaker uses the language. And in those conversations you're creating meaning. If meaning is created, you just spoke perfectly.
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If meaning is not created, then we need to figure out why. Was it due to actually the language, which I think is usually one of the smallest reasons understanding doesn't work. It's usually more due to cultural differences or due to not reading visual body language or getting the cues wrong or, you know, there's so many other things outside of language that impact our communication. And we forget about those. And we like to just zero in on the language. Oh, well you dropped the third person singular S. I mean.
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How dare you? Really? You did it, right? Like he take the bus to work. I mean, any problem with meaning there? No, what is bad about that? I know exactly, I can paint the scenario in my head. And like you said, perfect English is the kind of English that gets the job done. Which is the word we should be spreading, which is the focuses get the job done. And then speaking of cultural differences as well, obviously you haven't been in the US for almost two decades.
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But when you think of the differences in how, especially with Zoom, so the organization is global. If an organization, say for instance, I don't know who you've trained, but if they have mostly Americans and then you'll have the other non-English speakers on the screen, do those cultural differences come into play during Zoom or people just talk about work and it doesn't generally affect?
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Oh, it definitely is coming into play. It's definitely coming into play in the work environment from an accent bias perspective, cross-cultural difference perspective, political perspective. I was just working with a couple of teams last week in the US, 50 people on each call. And there's extreme difference just within the US itself with our regional differences and how that affects accent bias, a Southerner versus a Northern or someone from Minnesota or.
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someone from the South, someone from New Jersey, New York, Boston, they're all really recognizable accents and what characteristics do we attach to those accents? But even worse than all of those are of course, the foreign accents, especially coming from Latin America, you know, Puerto Rico, our own territory, those people from there are extremely discriminated against in the workplace, from Mexico, comments like, why don't you go back home and try to crawl over the wall again? These kinds of comments are actually happening.
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in the workplace. And I'm always saying, you know, whether or not you've had much international experience at all, the world is now coming to you. That is what video calls have done. And they've made all of our teams incredibly global. So even if you work for an American company in America, you've never left your home state, the world is coming.
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and you're suddenly going to have a colleague in India and a colleague in the Philippines and a colleague in South America somewhere and a colleague over in Europe, and you're going to have to start learning how to communicate with them, how to understand the way they speak, how to grade your own language so that you are easier to understand that having the honest revelation that you don't own the language, that you need to learn to speak differently in global settings, there's a long way to go. And I think we're only at the very beginning of
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discussing these topics. And when you authored your book, Unmuted, what was the inspiration behind that? There were a few things. First of all, I was a very frustrated corporate trainer that got tired of HR calling me every October saying, "'Heather, we're planning our calendar for next year, "'and we want to improve communication skills. "'So can you come to a two-day presentation skills course?' And it's like, that's not gonna change your communication, these one-off couple-day training program." Short-term solutions.
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Yeah, you're ticking the boxes. They said they want to learn presentations. It goes, okay, let's tick the box. That's not how it works. Changing communication is a cultural shift in the entire organization. It's about becoming more conscious, confident and connected in our communication. And it's a full cultural change. And that is what spurred the Unmuted framework that I write about in the book. The second one was just general frustration with the world around me, the total lack of confidence and leadership. I was writing this as...
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during the beginning of the pandemic, I was actually had a contract for a different book and I canceled the contract, did not make that publisher very happy. And I started on this one instead, because I felt it was more meaningful at the time when we were all very distrustful of our leaders, especially in the government all over the world. And I thought this just can't be the best we can do. What are we not hearing in the world? So that was the second reason. And then the third was, of course, because we started
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going so deeply into video calls and every single meeting started with, oh, sorry, you're on mute. You're on mute. You're on mute. You're on mute. Didn't we do that when we started? It was like, no one can find the unmute. You know, we couldn't work our microphones. But it made me realize that, you know, so many people were on mute long before the pandemic.
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We were sitting in boardrooms everywhere with people sitting there on mute, never speaking up, never contributing due to whatever fear, whether it was language or accent or just general confidence, whatever it might've been, being more introverted, wanting more time to think about something. And I thought, yeah, we're losing a lot of great ideas. We aren't capturing the talent of our people. And what a waste that is. So how do we...
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find a way to start balancing the equation, turning down the loud voices, turning up the soft ones, helping people to unmute, creating safe environments where everyone can thrive and where we can become more innovative and more connected. And so that was the strongest driving force behind it, was that understanding that, wow, people have been on mute in their families, their communities, their businesses for a really long time. And maybe it's time to change that.
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Please take us through the framework. Okay, so the framework is basically a Venn diagram. So the first circle is conscious communication. This is your conscious listening, cross-cultural understanding, understanding who you are, self-awareness. What are your values? How are you showing up in the world? You have to understand yourself before you can begin to understand others. That's what conscious communication is about.
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The second circle is confident communication, which is dealing with both self-confidence and skills confidence. And you need both. If you really don't know how to give a presentation, you've never given one in your life, then yeah, okay. Now we need some training in that area, but that's a very small piece of the puzzle, that training solution. And we treat it like that should fix everything. And it doesn't, it's one small little piece of the puzzle. And then the third area is connected communication. That's building a psychologically safe environment, focusing on people skills, overcoming fear of failure.
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finding ways to be more supportive in the workplace and really focus on diversity and inclusion. So people feel that they belong and they want to speak up and share. So when you look at those three parts, it's the overlaps that are the most interesting because if you're very confident and very connected, but you're not conscious, that's when the voice is too loud. You dominate conversations, you're always interrupting. And I mean, the minute I say that, everyone's like, oh yeah, I know that person, you know? And if they don't.
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I know. And I always say, and if you don't know that person, look at yourself because it could be you. Right. And, and I know for a fact in English, I definitely have a louder voice. I can easily forget to just shut my mouth and listen to other people at the table. Yet, if I'm speaking Danish, I'm a completely different person. Then my voice is too soft. I'm missing the confidence piece. I can be very conscious of my surroundings, feel very connected and know that people are supportive, but I'm the one turning down my volume, not putting up my hand, not.
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volunteering to speak, even though I can speak in front of thousands in English, but in Danish, I'm a very, very different person. And then we have the people who are on mute and they're the ones who are missing that connected piece. So they're conscious, they're confident. Maybe they've tried to speak up a million times, but they're always hitting a barrier and people are judging them incorrectly. They aren't listening to them. They don't take them seriously for whatever reason. And they don't feel like they belong. And they're the ones who press mute, disengage,
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They're the quiet quitters. They're the ones leaving the organizations. And that's a huge, huge problem and a huge loss of our capabilities and potential. And when you talk about when you're speaking Danish and you're in that position, so think of all the non-English speakers when they're in that position. How do you sort of turn the volume up? Like you said, that's when you soften. So that they can also up.
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apply that and start to actively turn their volumes up and speak up more. That's so hard because I've been in that situation. I've been there. I know how hard it is. And the one thing that really helps me is to speak up fast and early. So the earlier in the conversation, I say something, then I break that anxiety ice that has me so worried about speaking up. If I can break that right away, then I ease in much faster.
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So if you're having meetings going around the room, having everyone say something right away, whether it's a short introduction of who they are or what they're working on or their big win for the week or their big failure for the week and what they learned, something to get everyone involved from the start can be super helpful to help those people who have that anxiety about joining the conversation. And then having rules of engagement. So from a leadership perspective, people who are in that meeting, who are balancing for inclusion, who are looking at who has not contributed yet and actively inviting them into the conversation.
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And the way to do that is by first acknowledging them before inviting them. So saying, oh, David, you've been so deep in these numbers on this project. I know that you know them inside and out. Will you please share the financials with us? Because you're definitely the best person in the room to talk about that. So you're showing and acknowledging their unique abilities and contribution, and then inviting them to share that. And that also changes the confidence level where you think, oh yeah, that's right. I do know the most about this in the room. I am the one who should be sharing this. And...
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And it doesn't matter if I make a mistake or my pronunciation is off or whatever the problem might be. So there are a lot of things that I'm encouraging organizations to start putting into practice in order to help people speak up and also to kind of turn down the voices that might be dominating more than they should. And those people as well usually don't realize they're doing it or they're in a leadership position where they believe that that's a leader's job.
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It's my, I'm the leader, so I have to talk. I have to give the answers. I have to know what I'm talking about. And now we have such a- What a myth that is. Yeah, what a myth. And it's changing so quickly. It's not what we want from leadership anymore. So it's about learning new skills, new ways of communicating that can be more inclusive and encouraging to others. And when a leader calls out the introverted person who will not volunteer to speak up, should they also maybe prepare them upfront and say, I'm gonna call on you?
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Definitely. So sending out agendas prior to meetings is super helpful. And actually reaching out to people beforehand to say, again, acknowledging, listen, I know that you're the best person. Will you please be prepared to say something about XYZ during the meeting? And this could, like you say, you know, talking about the introvert, it can have nothing to do with language. It could be a native speaker sitting there who just tends to be more introverted, wants more time to prepare their thoughts and really think deeply about something.
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So don't overlook those introverts because when they do speak, they have something to say, as opposed to the loud voices who speak to be heard or are thinking out loud. We have very different ways of processing. But when those introverts speak, they really do know what they're talking about. And they're speaking because they have a contribution as opposed to just loud people filling the silence, right? Which we have a real problem with silence, especially in an American context. I never understood that.
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which is funny because I speak about communicating. We talk about having an ally, say for instance there's 10, 20 of you in a project team. If I am from an Asian country and I work for this global organization, can I ask Heather to be my ally if we go into a zoom meeting and say you know when they talk over me you know you're gonna be the one to say hey hey hey Roberta's got something to say. But some people really just cannot take that initiative.
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And we, like you said, sometimes we are not conscious because we are the ones who have a sense of belonging in this environment. So is there a way for someone who feels introverted or left out to say, you know what, Heather, every time there's a meeting, because sometimes some people try to speak and then the loud ones jump in. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, and either steal the idea completely or talk over them like it was their own, or this happens all the time. And yes, absolutely people can ask for allies,
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even better is that those of us who realize we're privileged need to be recognizing this as an issue and reaching out and being allies a lot more often. I don't think it's necessarily, you know, the foreign language speaker or the accented speaker who should have to speak up and come to me, Heather, please, will you help me in the meeting? I should be aware enough and understand the privilege that I hold to watch what's going on, be aware, and help those who do not have the privilege I have.
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to help them to get the attention that they need and deserve. And that's what we should all be doing, anyone with privilege. And this goes across all areas of diversity and inclusion, whether I'm the white woman helping, whether it's the man who's helping me to be heard, this is what allyship is about. How do we lift each other and make sure that there is equity and not that we're taking advantage of the privilege that we have? I have a quick story about diversity and inclusion where it was a C-suite that only had men.
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And so the bathroom on that floor was only a male bathroom. They promoted a woman finally, and she had to put shoes outside of the bathroom stall because she was the only one. The men had to know that, oh, she's in now. So let's, because all along it had only been a male floor. Wow. Isn't that insane? So she had to leave her shoes outside to say, I'm here now, don't come in. This is happening in our lifetime. It just seems so...
31:47
Yeah, that's incredible to me. It's incredible. Luckily, the world is changing. Hope it changes even faster. But but it is changing. With the work that you do, especially like you said, your next book is going to be about X and bias with the work that you do, more of us are becoming conscious. And the way you phrase it the way you say
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A lot of us are not aware that this is a privilege for us when we have English speaking ones and we are in these cultures, more of us because of these conversations will hopefully become more conscious and open our minds to, hey, wait a minute, this isn't about me. Any last words of wisdom? Wow, we've covered a lot of ground actually. We've talked about so many different things. I think it's just about entering all of our conversations with more curiosity.
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making an effort to truly understand. If we could all just do that, focus on creating meaning and understanding and being curious as to how other people think and feel and interact, we could just make this world such a better place. So if nothing else, I hope that people will start becoming a little more aware and enter their conversations from a different perspective as they build these bonds across language and culture all over the world.
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And more than anything, as I said earlier, we're missing out on their brilliance. When people are quiet, there's so much in their brains, but they're not expressing it because we've put them on mute. Exactly. Thank you so much for being here, Heather Hansen. This has been an amazing conversation. It took me back to my life in Korea. Yeah, so much fun. Thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. My pleasure. That was Heather Hansen, the corporate training specialist who focuses on X and bias.
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author of Unmuted and gave a TEDx talk on how to speak bad English perfectly. And before you go, where can we find you on the internet or the socials? Oh, absolutely. I'm very active on LinkedIn. So you can find me there for sure. Or you can go to heatherhanson.com to learn more about my book and speaking and global speech academy.com for our corporate training. Excellent stuff, heatherhanson.com.
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