Local to global: How English skills unlock a career in leadership

Samantha Ball
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Of the 1.5 billion English speakers in the world, over half learned it as a second or additional language.

The “language of business”, English has become a foundational skill for anyone looking to work in an international business or at a leadership level, and many English as a Second Language (ESL) speakers find themselves working in English on a daily basis.

But working in your second or third language comes with a unique set of challenges and opportunities.

We spoke to five global leaders about the role English has played in their careers, the challenges of being an ESL speaker, and how businesses can create a culture where everyone has a voice.

How English skills unlock a career in leadership
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A passport to leadership

Strong English skills open doors. More than three-quarters of people with advanced English skills are in senior or leadership roles, compared to just 32% of those with limited English proficiency.

app Languages CTO, , describes English as a “passport for this new world of opportunities, opening many, many doors I wouldn’t have had access to.”

There’s a cumulative effect, with one door opening and leading to the next.

Brushing up on his English skills was the spark that won Perrucci a scholarship to Denmark. That semester blossomed into a six-year stay, multiple degrees, his first international job opportunity, and a career with well-known global brands.

Whether it was getting onto a top MBA program or that first role at a big international company, for all the leaders we spoke to, English has proved to be a career catalyst.

More diversity, more innovation, more revenue

For companies looking to innovate and stand out in a competitive global market, an international team is essential.

“We’re aiming to build models of childcare that don’t exist at the moment”, explains Founder and CEO, .

“To do that, we need diversity of thought. With an international team, it’s more likely that someone will say “hey, I was living in Cape Verde for a while, and I saw this interesting thing”.

It’s an approach that pays off. found that businesses with more diverse management teams are more innovative, leading to 19% higher revenues.

Global customers, global team

A more diverse team can also help businesses stay close to their customers.

As technology has made it easier to operate across multiple countries, businesses quickly find themselves responding to the different needs, preferences, and expectations of customers all over the world.

“Reflecting the global nature of our business in our workforce means we can build a better, more effective service and a more successful business as a result”, explains , CEO of .

To help them stay close to their 5.2 million members across 420 cities, Zeeck’s team at InterNations is made up of more than 50 different nationalities.

English is the main language both for the InterNations team and platform, helping them create “a sense of oneness and community by using a shared language”.

The ultimate brain training

The leaders we interviewed spoke, on average, four languages, with many working across multiple languages on a day-to-day basis.

That experience of jumping between different languages also develops important leadership skills.

“When you speak multiple languages,” explains Perrucci, “different parts of the brain have to work together and make connections… It teaches your brain to be flexible about what you see and the way you interpret it”.

Zeeck likened it to working out: “Just as going to the gym improves your physical wellbeing, the mental challenge of learning a new language is good exercise for the brain”. It’s one of the reasons he provides all of his team language training.

The mental load of language

But hopping between languages and navigating different cultural nuances can take its toll.

“People whose first language is English often overlook the computing power it takes to work in your second or third language,” explains, Managing Director of International Wellbeing,, who only spends around a third of his time speaking his mother tongue.

“Even when colleagues are fluent in the language you're communicating in, it might still take them a bit more energy than you expect”, he continues. “By Friday afternoon, for example, I’m struggling to think fluently in whichever language!”.

The challenge of speaking up

For those who are less confident in their English skills, it can significantly impact the way they contribute at work.

Less than half (48%)of ESL speakers feel comfortable speaking up at work, andonly 10%of employees with limited English proficiency felt they could express themselves fully at work.

The dynamic can change depending on who’s in the room. “I see the difference when ESL speakers are on calls with confident, fluent English speakers”, adds, CEO and Founder of.

“They speak less”, she continues, “they caveat their contributions with “I might be wrong”, and you can see their English actually worsens because they feel more stressed”.

Without the right culture and support, businesses miss out on the benefits of an international team they’ve recruited.

Conscious leadership

The task of building a team and helping overcome the challenges of global working falls to business leaders.

The five leaders we spoke to shared practical tips for supporting global teams, including acknowledging and proactively addressing differences, avoiding interrupting ESL speakers, and using voice notes for sensitive communication to allow tone and emotion to come through.

More fundamentally, ESL speakers need business leaders to build a culture where it’s ok to make mistakes.

Leaders with first-hand experience of being an ESL speaker are uniquely placed to understand their increasingly global teams, pre-empt their challenges, and nurture a culture that allows difference to shine.

The journey from local roles to global leadership positions hinges on strong communication skills. The stories shared by our leaders demonstrate how English proficiency not only unlocks individual career potential but also drives organizational success through innovation and diverse perspectives. By fostering a culture that values and supports language learning, businesses can harness these benefits, ensuring their teams are prepared to excel on the global stage.

Find out how app Language Solutions for Work can support your workforce here

This article is part of app Languages’ series,Global Voices: Leaders on Language and Business, an exclusive exploration into the pivotal role of language in achieving international business excellence. For more in this series, check out the leaders’ full interviews, coming soon to

Read the blog post 'Language proficiency and succession planning: Developing future leaders'.

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  • A young child sat at a desk in a classroom writing

    Grammar: how to tame the unruly beast

    By Simon Buckland

    “Grammar, which knows how to control even kings”- ѴDZè

    When you think of grammar, “rule” is probably the first word that pops into your mind. Certainly the traditional view of grammar is that it’s about the “rules of language”. Indeed, not so long ago, teaching a language meant just teaching grammatical rules, plus perhaps a few vocabulary lists. However, I’m going to suggest that there’s actually no such thing as a grammatical rule.

    To show you what I mean, let’s take the comparative of adjectives: “bigger”, “smaller”, “more useful”, “more interesting”, etc. We might start with a simple rule: for adjectives with one syllable, add -er, and for adjectives with two or more syllables, use more + adjective.

    But this doesn’t quite work: yes, we say “more useful”, but we also say “cleverer”, and “prettier”. OK then, suppose we modify the rule. Let’s also say that for two-syllable adjectives ending in -y or -er you add -er.

    Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite work either: we do say “cleverer”, but we also say “more sober” and “more proper”. And there are problems with some of the one-syllable adjectives too: we say “more real” and “more whole” rather than “realer” or “wholer”. If we modify the rule to fit these exceptions, it will be half a page long, and anyway, if we keep looking we’ll find yet more exceptions. This happens repeatedly in English grammar. Very often, rules seem so full of exceptions that they’re just not all that helpful.

    And there’s another big problem with the “rule approach”: it doesn’t tell you what the structure is actually used for, even with something as obvious as the comparative of adjectives. You might assume that it’s used for comparing things: “My house is smaller than Mary’s”; “John is more attractive than Stephen”. But look at this: “The harder you work, the more money you make.” Or this: “London is getting more and more crowded.” Both sentences use comparative adjectives, but they’re not directly comparing two things.

    What we’re actually looking at here is not a rule but several overlapping patterns, or paradigms to use the correct technical term:

    1. adjective + -er + than
    2. more + adjective + than
    3. parallel comparative adjectives: the + comparative adjective 1 … the + comparative adjective 2
    4. repeated comparative adjective: adjective + -er + and + adjective + -er/more and more + adjective

    This picture is more accurate, but it looks abstract and technical. It’s a long way from what we actually teach these days and the way we teach it, which tends to be organized around learning objectives and measurable outcomes, such as: “By the end of this lesson (or module) my students should be able to compare their own possessions with someone else’s possessions”. So we’re not teaching our students to memorize a rule or even to manipulate a pattern; we’re teaching them to actually do something in the real world. And, of course, we’re teaching it at a level appropriate for the student’s level.

    So, to come back to grammar, once we’ve established our overall lesson or module objective, here are some of the things we’re going to need to know.

    • What grammatical forms (patterns) can be used to express this objective?
    • Which ones are appropriate for the level of my students? Are there some that they should already know, or should I teach them in this lesson?
    • What do the forms look like in practice? What would be some good examples?

    Existing grammar textbooks generally don’t provide all this information; in particular, they’re very vague about level. Often they don’t even put grammar structures into specific CEFR levels but into a range, e.g. A1/A2 or A2/B1, and none fully integrates grammar with overall learning objectives.

    At app, we’ve set ourselves the goal of addressing these issues by developing a new type of grammar resource for English teachers and learners that:

    • Is based on the Global Scale of English with its precise gradation of developing learner proficiency
    • Is built on the Council of Europe language syllabuses, linking grammar to CEFR level and to language functions
    • Uses international teams of language experts to review the structures and assess their levels

    We include grammar in the GSE Teacher Toolkit, and you can use it to:

    • Search for grammar structures either by GSE or CEFR level
    • Search for grammar structures by keyword or grammatical category/part of speech
    • Find out at which level a given grammar structure should be taught
    • Find out which grammar structures support a given learning objective
    • Find out which learning objectives are related to a given grammar structure
    • Get examples for any given grammar structure
    • Get free teaching materials for many of the grammar structures

    Think of it as an open-access resource for anyone teaching English and designing a curriculum.