The Smaller Version of Yourself
What leading in a second language quietly takes from you, and why almost nobody notices.
You know that moment. Someone says something in a meeting, and the perfect comeback arrives in your head, fully formed. In your first language, you'd have had the whole room laughing.
In English, by the time you've worked out how to say it, whether the joke translates and whether your delivery will land, the conversation has moved on. So you smile, and let it go.
Nobody notices, and that's exactly the problem.
A while ago, I started working with a CTO who was convinced his English was holding him back. He was leading town halls for hundreds of employees, his updates weren't landing the way he wanted, and English seemed like the obvious culprit.
As we worked together, I noticed something else. He came from a culture where you establish context before you get to the point. You build the background, walk people through it, and eventually arrive at your conclusion. His company wanted the conclusion first. What he needed was a different strategy: sharper storytelling and a clearer sense of what his audience needed from him. His English had been fine the whole time.
Then, in one of our conversations, he said something I've never forgotten, "I want people to experience the leader I know I am."
Oof.
I've spent more than a decade coaching executives, founders and senior leaders from over 30 countries. These are people who make multimillion-dollar decisions and lead global organizations, and I hear some version of that sentence all the time. Incredibly capable people who sometimes feel the world is getting a watered-down version of who they are.
And here's what fascinates me. The real strain comes from everything they're doing while they speak English.
Everything at Once
Picture a high-stakes meeting. You know the business and the numbers. You have a recommendation, maybe a genuinely brilliant idea. Now you have to make the case in English.
So you're choosing words, and you're also deciding how direct you can be without sounding aggressive. You're wondering whether your pronunciation is clear, whether that expression means what you think it means, whether your disagreement sounds too strong, whether you're taking too long. You're searching for a word while reading the room. And you're supposed to sound confident, strategic and completely present.
Oh, and concise. Because apparently we all have less than thirty seconds to be brilliant now.
It's a LOT. If you've ever finished a day of back-to-back meetings in English more wiped out than the work itself explains, you know exactly what I mean.
But there's another cost I find much more interesting. You start editing yourself, usually without deciding to, and almost always to manage risk.
The joke goes first, because it might not be worth it. The disagreement gets softened. The story that would have made your point unforgettable starts to feel too complicated for right now. Little by little, you become a more cautious version of yourself.
Here's why that matters so much. Humor is how people connect with you. Disagreement is how they see your conviction. Stories are how they understand what you believe and why they should care. These are the very things we read as personality, judgment and leadership, and they're often the first to go when speaking another language feels demanding.
You're not missing your language skills. You're missing access to your full range.
The Other Side of the Table
Now for the people listening, because, oh boy, we have some work to do here too.
In a 2010 study, psychologists Shiri Lev-Ari and Boaz Keysar had listeners hear identical trivia statements read by native and non-native English speakers. Listeners rated the accented versions as less likely to be true, even though they'd been told every speaker was simply reading lines someone else had written. The researchers' explanation: when something takes more effort to process, we can mistake that effort for a reason to doubt it.
I want to be cautious and transparent here. Later studies have been mixed, with some finding the same effect and others not. And it doesn't mean every listener is consciously judging someone by their accent. What it does show is how easily the experience of listening can shape what we believe about the person speaking.
And I see versions of it all the time. I've sat through presentations from native speakers that were confusing, needlessly complicated and, frankly, boring. I've also watched leaders speaking English as an additional language communicate with extraordinary clarity, warmth and conviction. So why are we so quick to equate familiarity with competence?
Put the two sides together. The leader edits out parts of themselves. The audience listens through its own expectations of how authority is supposed to sound. The leader shares less, the audience sees less, and over time that smaller version can harden into a professional reputation.
That's what bothers me. It shapes whose ideas get heard, who gets recognized as leadership material, who gets invited into the important conversations and who gets promoted. And it makes me wonder how much extraordinary talent organizations are overlooking simply because it doesn't sound the way they're used to hearing it.
If you lead a multilingual team, sit with that for a moment. Are you evaluating the quality of someone's thinking, or how familiar their communication feels?
The Trouble with Perfect
Communication standards matter, of course. If you're leading a global team or presenting to investors, people need to understand you, and clarity and delivery matter enormously. There's still a big difference between communicating more effectively and erasing everything that makes you unique. And waiting for perfect English before you let yourself fully participate is its own trap.
I once worked with an executive who was so focused on flawless English that she had practically memorized every word of her presentations. Technically, she was doing a lot right. But something was missing, and it was her: the spontaneity, the warmth, the energy that made her so engaging in conversation. She was so busy not making mistakes that she wasn't giving herself room to connect.
So we changed the approach. Less memorization, more fluidity, more intentional delivery, more room for her actual personality. Little by little, it showed up, she started showing up.
Perfection is a particularly sneaky goal, because the finish line keeps moving. Nobody is going to show up one day with a certificate that says, "Congratulations! Your English is officially perfect. You may now proceed with your career." Can you imagine? I've been speaking English my entire life, and I'm still working on my communication. That's true in your first language and in your fifth.
So here's a small challenge for this week. Pay attention to the moments when you edit yourself in English. I don't mean the times you need a better word or a clearer explanation. I mean the moments when you have something to contribute and hold back because it feels a little too risky: the funny observation, the disagreement, the story that would make your point stick.
Then, just once, don't. Instead, tell the story. Make the joke. Share the opinion.
If you're nervous, pick a lunch with your colleagues or a meeting where you already feel comfortable and decide ahead of time what you'll try. Afterward, compare what you thought would happen with what actually did. And if it doesn't come out perfectly, that's ok too. You're practicing.
Back to the executive who kept disappearing when she presented. One day, in the middle of a speech, she made her audience laugh. It wasn't a joke we'd rehearsed. She was simply comfortable enough to be herself.
She texted me afterward, in disbelief, and I was so happy for her. For a moment, everyone in that room got to experience the woman I'd been getting to know in our sessions. Not just her brilliance, but also her humor, and her warmth.
Because the world doesn't need a smaller version of you.
And frankly, neither do you.
Listen to our full episode here.
And if you're done playing small in high-stakes moments, join the Leadership English Insiders. It's where I share the frameworks I build for moments like these, insights I don't share anywhere else, and a community of global leaders who know exactly what it's like to lead in another language.
