Mac's Musings

Business Networking - The Right Language

Business Networking - or netting - is about much more than building the right contacts and knowing how to 'work the room'. In more global terms, a small island nation like ours can only succeed if we sell overseas.

And it's much easier to sell overseas if we have a knowledge of world affairs and the right language skills. So it's a bit worrying to learn that British schoolchildren are bottom of a league table measuring young people's attitudes to foreign affairs and studying foreign languages.

Apparently they are even less likely to go out of their way to understand world affairs than young people in the United States. That really is a matter of concern when we know that even the US president has a notoriously hazy knowledge of geography and global affairs and a huge proportion of Americans don't own a passport. The horizon for many Yanks falls far short of their state boundary. But we Brits are even worse, apparently.

Only 7 out of 10 British schoolchildren felt it was important to speak a foreign language for their working lives. But, sadly, this came as no great surprise. A language teacher at my daughter's school - a good independent - was amazed when I asked why Arabic and Chinese were not being offered as GCSE subjects. I tried to explain but the effort was wasted.

By contrast I was delighted to discover that a nearby comprehensive where I was speaking a few weeks ago had a Mandarin Chinese GCSE course that was bursting at the seams. I predict that these children will never be short of job opportunities because many firms see languages as a key to business development and business networking overseas.

If we want to do more business overseas we must go at least half way to meet potential customers. It really is about time we divested ourselves of this outdated fish and chips mentality and of helping foreigners understand us by shouting more loudly...in English.

For more information about our training courses, go to Business Networking and Business Development Techniques.

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