When teams have a dominant language that isn’t native or near-native to all of its members, we need deliberate structures to embrace that language diversity.

Being passive about it leads to silos, information asymmetry and exclusion based on language ability. Actively pursuing language inclusivity as a team-level topic leads to more powerful individual contributions and a heightened sense of team.

These are three structures that are the most straight-forward of those I’ve had success with in my twelve years at a English-Japanese bilingual workplace and facilitating countless cross-cultural workshops:

Take live notes to supplement oral delivery with text

Many people find it easier to read than listen to spoken discourse. Having someone take live notes in a shared document allows for people to read along to presentations and discussions, or discretely double-check their understanding. Bonus: the team will have great notes.

Legitimize the “minority” language spaces

These spaces will crop up anyway. By legitimizing them, we have a better chance of turning them into safe spaces for healthy discussion instead of a potentially problematic silo. A simple place to start is to add a line about the selected language in a meeting invite.

Prompt for (Slack) reactions

People may miss important information because it was announced orally (and they didn’t fully catch it) or it got lost in the sea of e-mails or Slack chatter. This can happen to anyone but it’s more likely when that information is shared in a language that requires an effort.

The announcer can close this gap by prompting everyone to signal back if they’ve received the message or not. Ping anyone who doesn’t react as a gentle nudge for action.

Healthier communication habits is just one of the benefits for a team that works on language inclusivity.

What’s a small change you can make tomorrow?