Language training for the executive level

The importance of specialised language skills for professionals and managers

The trend for a multilingual workplace is clear: HR managers across all sectors expect “excellent”, “very good”, “business fluent” or at least “good” English from those in management positions and consider the command of further languages as advantageous. More and more managers and applicants for jobs with a managerial role are facing distinctly higher expectations despite good language skills. But why is it that existing skills are perceived as insufficient?

For KERN AG Training, the answer is obvious: General language skills are useful in everyday personal life, but are quickly stretched to their limits in a business setting. Even the current trend for “Business English” is not enough to appear secure in speaking at a higher level, because the individual terminology of a specific sector or company can not be taught with general further training.

Today, language training service providers must give the highest priority to the individual needs assessment of participants in order to design custom-made training methods based on this. It is necessary to provide workplace-relevant, company-oriented and industry-specific terminology that fits perfectly in the desired foreign language and to implement the training methods as practically as possible or directly as “training on the job”. Only then will there be sufficient practical relevance to be able to apply the language successfully at the highest executive level. In order to better understand business or conversational partners, it is worthwhile to improve cultural understanding.