Business English Communication in Chicago: A Guide for International Professionals Working in the U.S.

Finding your voice at work also means learning how to use it in conversation with people whose experiences and communication styles may differ from your own.

You can speak excellent English and still find yourself wondering what just happened in a meeting.

Perhaps you made a point that seemed clear, yet the conversation moved on without much response. A colleague said, “That’s interesting,” and you weren’t sure whether they actually agreed. Your manager asked you to be “more visible,” even though you consistently deliver good work. Or you found yourself rehearsing a comment in your head, only to realize that the discussion had already moved to another topic.

For international professionals working in the United States, communication challenges are not always about grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation. Many already have advanced English skills and have built successful careers using the language.

The adjustment often happens at another level: learning how people communicate ideas, disagreement, confidence, hierarchy, urgency, and influence within a particular workplace culture.

That is where business English communication becomes much more interesting.

Business English Goes Beyond Language Proficiency

Traditional English training tends to focus on accuracy: vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, listening comprehension, and fluency. These foundations matter, especially when language gaps interfere with understanding.

Professional communication introduces another layer.

You may know exactly what a sentence means and still wonder what the speaker intended. You may have the vocabulary to explain your recommendation but struggle to enter a fast-moving discussion. You may communicate in a way that was considered appropriately respectful in your home country and discover that colleagues in the U.S. interpret the same behavior differently.

This is where language and culture begin to overlap.

Consider a manager who says:

“It would be great if we could have this by Friday.”

Grammatically, the sentence sounds like a preference. In some workplaces, everyone in the room understands it as a deadline.

Or imagine hearing:

“I’m not sure I follow.”

The person may genuinely need clarification. They may also be signaling disagreement, questioning an assumption, or inviting you to make a stronger case.

Becoming an effective communicator in a U.S. workplace involves learning to notice these layers of meaning while developing the confidence to clarify rather than constantly guess.

Why Can U.S. Workplace Communication Feel So Different?

There is no single “American communication style.” A Chicago law firm, a Silicon Valley technology company, a hospital system, and a manufacturing organization may have very different cultures. Communication also varies across regions, industries, generations, teams, and individual personalities.

Still, international professionals sometimes encounter workplace norms that differ from those they learned elsewhere.

For example, U.S. organizations may encourage employees to voice opinions relatively early in their careers. Managers may expect direct reports to ask questions, challenge ideas respectfully, or communicate their accomplishments. Meetings may move quickly, with people entering the conversation before another speaker has formally invited them to contribute.

For someone accustomed to a stronger emphasis on hierarchy, deference, or waiting for the appropriate moment, these behaviors can initially feel uncomfortable. Speaking up may feel like interrupting. Self-advocacy may feel like bragging. Disagreeing with a senior leader may feel disrespectful.

Meanwhile, an American colleague may interpret restraint differently. They may assume you have nothing to add, agree with the direction, or lack confidence in your recommendation.

Neither interpretation tells the whole story. There is simply a gap between intention and impact.

Speaking Up in Meetings

This is one of the most common concerns I hear from international professionals.

Many know what they want to contribute. The difficulty is finding the opening.

By the time you have formulated the perfect sentence, someone else has already spoken. You wait for a pause, and it never seems to come. When you finally enter the conversation, you may feel rushed and become more conscious of your English.

Trying to construct a flawless response can make participation harder.

In many professional settings, a short entry is enough to establish your place in the conversation:

“I’d like to build on that.”

“Can I offer another perspective?”

“There’s one risk I think we should consider.”

Once you have the floor, you can develop the thought.

The goal is not to imitate the most outspoken person in the room. Effective communication should still sound like you. The work is finding ways to participate that fit both the environment and your own communication style.

Disagreeing Without Losing Your Voice

Disagreement is another area where cultural expectations become visible.

Some professionals have learned to soften disagreement considerably, particularly when speaking with someone senior. Others come from communication cultures where direct disagreement is ordinary and discover that their U.S. colleagues experience the same language as overly forceful.

The answer is rarely to memorize a list of “American phrases.” Context matters too much.

A more useful skill is learning how to signal your intention while making your reasoning clear.

You might say:

“I see the rationale. I have a concern about what happens when we scale this.”

Or:

“Could we look at this from the customer side for a moment?”

You are still disagreeing. You are also helping the other person understand where the disagreement comes from.

Over time, this becomes less about finding the safest phrase and more about developing range—the ability to be direct when the moment requires it, diplomatic when relationships are sensitive, and curious when you do not yet have enough information.

Communicating Your Value

Many international professionals I work with are comfortable discussing the work and far less comfortable discussing their own contribution to it.

This can become important during performance reviews, promotion conversations, interviews, networking, and meetings with senior leadership.

In some cultures, good work is expected to speak for itself. Calling attention to your contribution can feel unnecessary or self-promotional. Yet many U.S. workplaces expect employees to articulate their impact.

There is a difference between boasting and helping people understand the value of your work.

Instead of simply saying, “I led the project,” you might explain what you were responsible for, what problem you addressed, how you worked with others, and what changed as a result. You are giving the listener enough context to understand your contribution.

This becomes increasingly important as you move into leadership. Senior leaders are often expected to communicate impact concisely—to executives, clients, stakeholders, and people who may know very little about the details of their work.

What About Your Accent?

Accent is often one of the first things multilingual professionals worry about, even when it is not the primary barrier to their effectiveness.

An accent is a natural feature of spoken language. Everyone has one.

The more useful question is whether listeners can understand you with reasonable ease. If certain sounds, pacing, stress patterns, or pronunciation habits consistently interfere with comprehension, targeted work can help. That is different from trying to erase every trace of where you come from.

I am particularly careful about this distinction because communication development should not become an exercise in making international professionals sound more American.

Your voice carries your education, geography, relationships, experiences, and identity. The aim is intelligibility and communication effectiveness while preserving a voice that still feels like your own.

Learning to Read the Room

As professionals become more senior, communication becomes increasingly contextual.

What does this audience already know? What matters to them? How much detail do they need? Is this the moment to advocate, ask, challenge, listen, or wait? What is being communicated through tone, timing, body language, or even silence?

These questions are relevant to every leader, regardless of first language. International professionals are often doing additional processing because they are interpreting both the business situation and cultural cues at the same time.

That can be mentally demanding.

With experience, many of these judgments become more intuitive. You begin to recognize patterns. You also become more comfortable asking for clarification when something is ambiguous instead of assuming you have missed a hidden rule.

Business English Communication in Chicago

Chicago is an especially interesting place to develop these skills because its economy brings together professionals across finance, consulting, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, engineering, real estate, education, and many other sectors. Many organizations operate globally, and the people sitting around the same table may have grown up, studied, and worked in very different parts of the world.

For international professionals building careers here, communication can therefore involve several layers at once: English proficiency, U.S. workplace norms, organizational culture, industry expectations, and the individual personalities around you.

There is value in learning the environment. There is equal value in recognizing what you bring to it.

International experience can give professionals a wider frame of reference, greater sensitivity to cultural differences, experience navigating ambiguity, and the ability to see assumptions that others may take for granted. Those qualities can become leadership strengths when you learn how to use and communicate them.

How Can You Improve Your Business English Communication?

Start by becoming specific about the situations that are difficult.

“I need to improve my English” is broad. “I lose my train of thought when an executive interrupts me during presentations” gives you something concrete to work with. So does, “I understand my colleagues individually, but I struggle to enter group conversations,” or, “My manager says I need more executive presence, and I don’t know what she means by that.”

From there, development can become much more practical. You can examine real meetings, presentations, emails, stakeholder conversations, or situations where your intended message did not produce the response you expected.

You can also distinguish between a language issue and a communication issue. Sometimes additional English instruction is exactly what someone needs. At other times, the vocabulary is already there. The work involves confidence, cultural interpretation, message structure, executive presence, or leadership communication.

Knowing the difference saves a great deal of frustration.

Finding Your Voice at Work

Adapting to a new professional culture takes time. There will be moments when you misunderstand someone, choose a phrase that does not land as intended, or leave a meeting wishing you had said something differently. Native English speakers have those moments too.

The goal is not perfect English or perfect cultural adaptation. It is becoming increasingly intentional about how you communicate and increasingly comfortable using your own voice.

You can learn the unwritten rules of a workplace without allowing those rules to erase what makes your perspective valuable.

And over time, something important begins to shift: you spend less energy wondering whether you sound right and more energy thinking about what you actually want to say.

Business English Communication Coaching in Chicago

I’m Joyce Talag, an ICF Master Certified Coach, TESOL-certified communication coach, and founder of The Leadership Voice Studio in downtown Chicago.

I work with international and multilingual professionals who want to communicate with greater confidence and effectiveness in U.S. workplaces. Depending on the client’s goals, our work may include meetings, presentations, executive communication, workplace culture, difficult conversations, professional visibility, and leadership presence.

Business English communication coaching is available in person in Chicago and virtually across the United States.

If you are finding your way through the language and unwritten rules of the U.S. workplace, you do not have to lose your own voice in the process.

Ready to work on your communication?

Leadership Coaching in Chicago: When Is It Time to Work With an Executive Coach?

One of the biggest misconceptions about leadership coaching is that people seek it when something has gone wrong. That has rarely been my experience.

After thousands of coaching conversations with professionals across industries, I’ve found that people often reach out when the context around them has changed. They have been promoted, taken on a larger team, inherited a complex situation, or entered a role where they are expected to influence people they do not directly manage. Some have reached a point where working harder no longer produces the growth they want.

The questions they bring into coaching tend to be less technical and more human: How do I earn trust in this role? How do I communicate a decision that people may not like? Why do I feel less certain now, even though I have more experience? How do I lead without losing the qualities that helped me succeed in the first place?

These questions rarely have simple answers. They need room to be examined.

What Leadership Coaching Offers

As responsibilities grow, opportunities for honest reflection can become harder to find. Your manager may be invested in a particular outcome. Your colleagues may be navigating their own priorities. Friends and family may care deeply but have limited visibility into the situation.

An executive coach offers a confidential and structured space to think. The conversation may help you examine a decision, notice a recurring pattern, test an assumption, or consider how your actions are experienced by others. A coach does not take over your judgment. The work strengthens your ability to use it.

The International Coaching Federation describes coaching as a thought-provoking and creative partnership that inspires clients to maximize their personal and professional potential. In practice, this means the client remains responsible for the choices, while the coach brings careful listening, questions, observations, and appropriate challenge.

When Do Professionals Usually Seek Coaching?

There is no single moment when someone becomes “ready” for coaching. Still, certain transitions and challenges tend to prompt people to look for an executive coach.

• You are stepping into a larger role

A promotion changes more than your title. You may be managing former peers, representing your function in executive meetings, or making decisions with wider consequences. The expertise that established your credibility may remain valuable, but your success now depends more heavily on judgment, influence, communication, and the ability to develop others.

This adjustment can feel disorienting, especially for people who are accustomed to being highly competent. Coaching gives you a place to work through the shift in identity and determine how you want to lead at this new level.

• Your communication carries greater weight

As your responsibilities increase, a single conversation can affect morale, trust, performance, or the direction of a project. You may need to give difficult feedback, address conflict, advocate for resources, present an unpopular recommendation, or communicate through uncertainty.

Many leadership problems reveal themselves through communication. The issue may not be a lack of intelligence or preparation. It may be that your message is not landing as intended, that you are avoiding a necessary conversation, or that different stakeholders need different things from you.

Coaching can help you understand what is happening beneath the words and choose how to approach the conversation with greater clarity.

• You are performing well but feel stuck

Some professionals enter coaching without a crisis or obvious problem. Their career appears successful, yet their growth has begun to feel incremental. They may be busy throughout the day while postponing the work that would create the most value. They may also be questioning whether the path they are on still reflects what they want.

These periods can be difficult to explain because nothing looks particularly wrong from the outside. A coaching engagement creates room to examine what has become routine, what has been neglected, and what the next stage of growth may require.

• You are navigating organizational change

Restructuring, new leadership, mergers, layoffs, rapid growth, and artificial intelligence can alter how work gets done and how decisions are made. Even experienced leaders can find themselves operating without a reliable map.

During these periods, coaching can help you separate what you can influence from what you cannot, identify the relationships that require attention, and make thoughtful decisions without waiting for complete certainty.

• You are adapting to a new workplace culture

Professionals who have relocated, changed industries, or entered a U.S. workplace may also find that familiar approaches no longer produce the same results. Communication styles, expectations of leadership, attitudes toward hierarchy, and informal power dynamics can vary considerably across organizations and cultures.

The challenge is rarely a matter of simply becoming more confident or speaking more often. It may require understanding the environment while deciding which parts of your own leadership identity you want to preserve, adapt, or express more deliberately.

• You want to understand your impact more clearly

Leaders do not always experience themselves in the same way others experience them. You may intend to be decisive and be perceived as dismissive. You may believe you are giving people autonomy while your team experiences a lack of direction. You may think you are being thoughtful while others read your silence as hesitation.

Coaching offers a place to examine these gaps without reducing leadership to performance. Greater self-awareness gives you more choices in how you respond.

• You are preparing for what comes next

You may be pursuing a promotion, considering a career move, building a leadership brand, or deciding whether you want the opportunities available on your current path. Coaching can help you clarify what you are moving toward and what that future will ask of you.

Preparation at this level involves more than polishing a résumé or rehearsing an interview. It includes understanding how you make decisions, how you communicate your value, what environments allow you to thrive, and what kind of leader you want to become.

Leadership Coaching in Chicago

Chicago brings together leaders from finance, healthcare, technology, consulting, real estate, manufacturing, education, and the nonprofit sector. Many work across global teams, multigenerational workforces, and organizations undergoing significant transformation.

The city’s business environment rewards people who can build trust across differences, communicate with a wide range of stakeholders, and remain grounded while navigating complexity. These abilities continue to evolve throughout a career. A leader who was effective in one company, industry, or stage of growth may need to develop a different range of responses in another.

Working with a leadership coach in Chicago may also provide useful local context. While the coaching process remains centered on the client, familiarity with the city’s professional landscape can support conversations about networking, organizational culture, career mobility, and leadership across Chicago’s major industries.

How Do You Know Whether Coaching Is the Right Next Step?

Consider the challenges currently taking up your attention. Are they asking you to become a different kind of leader than you have needed to be before?

You may already know the available strategies. You may have read the books, attended the training, and received advice from people you respect. Yet understanding a concept and applying it within the complexity of your own role are different forms of work.

Coaching becomes especially valuable when you are willing to examine your own part in the situation, consider perspectives that may challenge you, and turn insight into deliberate action. The quality of the engagement also depends on finding a coach whose experience, approach, and presence allow you to think openly.

Choosing an Executive Coach

Credentials provide one useful point of reference. An ICF-credentialed coach has completed formal coach training, documented coaching experience, and an assessment process aligned with professional standards and ethics. Depending on your goals, you may also want someone with experience in leadership communication, organizational change, cross-cultural workplaces, or your particular stage of career.

During an initial conversation, pay attention to how the coach listens and responds. Do you feel able to speak candidly? Do the questions help you think rather than lead you toward predetermined answers? Does the coach understand the difference between coaching, consulting, mentoring, and therapy? Can they explain how the engagement will be structured and how progress will be reviewed?

The relationship should offer both trust and challenge. You need enough safety to explore what is difficult and enough rigor to move beyond familiar explanations.

A Place to Think About the Leader You Are Becoming

People often seek leadership coaching at the threshold between what has worked before and what will be required next. The external signal may be a promotion, a difficult conversation, a transition, or a growing sense that something needs to change. Beneath it is often a deeper question about how they want to use their voice, judgment, and influence.

A good coaching conversation does not remove the complexity of leadership. It helps you meet that complexity with greater awareness and intention.

About The Leadership Voice Studio

I’m Joyce Talag, an ICF Master Certified Coach and founder of The Leadership Voice Studio™ in The Loop, Chicago. I work with professionals who are navigating leadership growth, career transitions, organizational change, and communication challenges.

My clients include leaders across technology, healthcare, consulting, finance, engineering, and other industries. Many lead across cultures, work within global organizations, or are learning to navigate the expectations and dynamics of U.S. workplaces.

Leadership coaching is available in person in Chicago and virtually across the United States.

Book an Exploratory Conversation here.

You Don’t Have an English Problem. You Have a Confidence Gap.

If you’ve ever taken an English course, hired a tutor, or watched YouTube videos to improve your communication at work – and you still feel stuck – I want to tell you something important: your English is not the problem.

Over the course of my over 5,000-hour coaching practice, I’ve come across professionals like senior product designers, staff software engineers, data analysts, product managers, and people managers whose first language isn’t English and would tell me, “Joyce, I need to improve my English.”

However, within the first 20 minutes of our first conversation, something else comes up.

It becomes apparent that they’re not struggling with grammar. They know the rules—and learning it in a formal academic setting means they know the rules often, very well. They’re not struggling with vocabulary either. Because they take more time to read, listen, and watch English media with the intention to learn, their vocabulary is often advanced.

What they’re really struggling with is this: the moment they open their mouth in a meeting, a voice inside them shuts them down. It says, “Wait, is this the right word? Will they understand my accent? Do I sound smart enough?”

So they hold back, filter themselves and let the moment pass.

Sound familiar?

The Myth of the English Problem

Here’s what I’ve learned from working with technical leaders, and people managers across top companies in tech and consulting in Chicago and across the world: the key to executive presence and clear communication isn’t perfect English.

This shifts the problem—and opportunity—from purely a language problem to one that tackles confidence, mindset, and identity.

This is something that no English course will ever teach you.

What Coaching Actually Reveals

A year ago, I had a client from Brazil who was assigned by his employer, a global electronics company, to oversee their U.S. manufacturing plant as a lead engineer.

Back in Brazil, his peers respected his calm authority and technical excellence. Here in the U.S., he found himself going quiet in meetings with American executives. When he mustered the courage to speak, he’d second-guess himself mid-sentence not because he was unsure of his opinion. It was more because he didn’t know how his view would land.

He approached me wanting to work on his English as he aimed for a promotion and help his family assimilate in the U.S. We worked together for three months—hardly tackling grammar. We focused more on learning American workplace jargons and idioms, and adapting his communication style to the culture. Not wanting to change his accent, we practiced vocal drills to improve his leadership presence and verbal clarity. Most of all, we worked on the inner game—reconnecting with his natural leadership strengths and taking on a mindset that renewed his self-confidence.

By the end of our work together, he already felt comfortable communicating with his leaders and peers. He had conveyed his desire to be promoted, which his manager supported.

My client appreciated my openness to customize our sessions until he got to a state where he achieved confidence, clarity, and fluency.

The Real Gap

If you’re reading this and you’re still thinking that you need to fix your English, I want to gently push back on that.

Just like my client, it helps to ask yourself: In your first language, are you articulate? Are you confident? Do you have strong ideas and the words to express them?

If your answer is yes, then the gap may be more than just your English. It goes more than just about translating your thoughts in your native language to English, but also of how you bring yourself into every conversation, meeting, and presentation. This is what I call the confidence gap, which can show up in the following ways:

1. Vocabulary anxiety – you know what you want to say but freeze searching for the “right” English word, losing your train of thought entirely.

2. Accent self-consciousness – you’re so focused on how you sound that you stop focusing on what you’re saying.

3. Cultural blind spots – you don’t always know the unwritten rules of American workplace communication, i.e. when to speak up, when to push back, and how to read the room.

4. Identity filtering – you’ve spent so long translating yourself for other people that you’ve lost touch with how naturally authoritative you actually are.

I invite you to take a pause now: What confidence gap most hinders you?

What Actually Closes the Gap

At The Leadership Voice Studio™ in Chicago, I help my clients convey their knowledge and expertise in English so they can more effectively influence their peers and stakeholders in their American workplace. Learning plans are customized for every client, which can include any combination of the following:

• Vocabulary expansion through familiarization with local idioms, industry jargons, and regional phrases and terms that are not commonly found in text books.

• Pronunciation clarity and accent confidence using vocal drills that addresses to my client’s specific gaps, as well as a coaching approach that gets deeper into the fears and limiting beliefs.

• Cultural intelligence by reflecting on lived experiences, as well as grounding our lessons on real-world scenarios through role plays and simulations that mirror actual meetings, presentations, and difficult conversations you face at work.

• Inner work involving identity that bring deep and lasting transformation not only to how my clients communicate, but also in how they show up, relate with others, and lead.

If you’ve spent years trying to “fix your English,” maybe it’s time to ask a different question: What if your English was never the biggest obstacle?

The real work might be in learning to trust the voice that you already have. This is the work I do every day with some of the brightest and most talented American-born and imigrant professionals across corporate America who want to lear with greater clarity, confidence, and influence.

If that sounds like where you are today, I’d love to have that conversation.

Start With One Conversation

Ready to Close Your Confidence Gap?

If this resonates with you, I’d like to invite you to book a $100 trial session with me – in person at The Loop, Chicago (just across Willis Tower or Sears Tower for the locals) or virtually worldwide.

In 60 minutes, we’ll get specific about what’s really holding back your communication. You’ll leave clear about your improvement areas—and whether working together is the right next step. The $100 is credited toward any coaching program.

The Leadership Readiness Gap: Preparing Chicago’s Future Leaders for the Invisible Workplace™

Chicago is winning the talent war, but the harder challenge – what happens once that talent walks through the door – barely came up.

At the recent Chicago at a Crossroads fireside chat with leaders from CBRE, Google, and JP Morgan Chase, the conversation was energizing and the case was clear: people are Chicago’s greatest asset and competitive advantage. A similar focus shaped the World Business Chicago panel on employer-driven work-based learning this June, where leaders from business, education, and nonprofit sectors explored how organizations can better prepare talent for future opportunities.

Both conversations were necessary. However, they were largely incomplete.

The focus, understandably, was on attraction and workforce readiness, which was to get the talent in the door, technically prepared. What received far less attention was what organizations must do after that: developing the talent to stay, grow, and eventually lead in workplaces that look very different from the ones many current leaders were trained for.

That gap is what this article is about.

Talent is Already Here

The numbers are compelling. Business expansions in 2025 are projected to create nearly 20,000 jobs across Chicagoland, and the region’s labor force has grown to nearly five million workers—a trend strengthened by immigration flows that contrast sharply with population declines in many other U.S. metros.

Chicago’s universities, major employers, vibrant neighborhoods, and relative affordability compared to coastal cities like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco make it a magnet for ambitious talent nationwide. Thousands of Illinois employers also sponsor highly skilled professionals through programs like H-1B visas, bringing global perspectives, multilingual capabilities, and entrepreneurial energy into regional workforce.

Attracting talent, however, is only the beginning. The bigger challenge is preparing that talent to stay, grow, and eventually lead—in workplaces that look very different from the ones many current leaders were trained to navigate.

Beyond Workforce Readiness

Much of the public conversation about Chicago’s workforce focused on readiness: ensuring employees have the technical skills, credentials, and experience to secure meaningful employment. Those investments remain essential, but as AI and emerging technologies continue to reshape industries, jobs, and career pathways, technical capability alone is becoming an insufficient predictor of long-term success. The same expertise that helps an employee secure a role today may not be enough to help them lead tomorrow.

What I increasingly observe across organizations is a growing Leadership Readiness Gap: the distance between technical readiness and leadership readiness.

Many organizations invest heavily in recruiting talent, building technical expertise, and developing workforce pipelines. Leadership capability, by contrast, is often assumed to develop on its own over time.

In my experience, it rarely does.

Organizations are discovering that many of their highest-potential employees are exceptionally prepared for their current responsibilities—yet far less prepared for the leadership challenges ahead.

Across coaching conversations with executives, managers, and technical professionals, the same questions surface repeatedly:

• Can they influence stakeholders without formal authority?

• Can they handle difficult conversations and competing priorities?

• Can they build trust across functions, generations, cultures, and communication styles?

• Can they maintain confidence and effectiveness when conditions are uncertain?

• Can they establish visibility and credibility in increasingly hybrid workplaces?

• Can they communicate effectively in digital and AI-enabled environments?

• Can they leverage AI strategically while strengthening the distinctly human skills that technology cannot replace?

These are not workforce readiness questions. They are leadership readiness questions that may prove to be among the most consequential ones organizations ask as they build Chicago’s future leadership pipeline.

Wondering how your organization scores?
Take the free InvisibleWorkplace™ Assessment – 10 questions, instant insights.

The Rise of the Invisible Workplace™

The workplace many leaders were prepared for no longer exists.

A generation ago, leadership visibility was largely physical—built through proximity, hallway conversations, and in-person observation. Today, much of work happens in what I call the Invisible Workplace™: employees collaborate across time zones and digital platforms, influencing stakeholders they may never meet face-to-face.

But the Invisible Workplace™ isn’t just about technology. It’s the unspoken dynamics that shape careers—often without anyone naming them:

• the first-time manager learning how to lead former peers

• the technical expert struggling to gain influence across a cross-functional initiative

• the relocated employee, expatriate, or H-1B professional learning workplace norms that exist nowhere in the employee handbook

• the emerging leader figuring out how to manage upward and build credibility with more experienced colleagues

For Chicago employers, this matters. Immigrant and international professionals are a meaningful and growing source of labor force growth, Many arrive with exceptional technical expertise and needing to develop leadership behaviors that were never formally taught.

These dynamics do not show up in job descriptions. They are hard to develop through traditional training yet, they increasingly determine who is ready to lead.

The leaders who thrive are not always the ones with the strongest technical skills. They are the ones who can communicate clearly, build trust, and create alignment when the path forward is unclear.

The question is: how ready is your organization?

Take the free Invisible Workplace™ Assessment

Get a research-backed snapshot of your organization’s leadership readiness in under 10 minutes—10 questions, instant insights.

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Prefer to talk it through first?
Schedule a complimentary 20-minute conversation with Joyce.

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Joyce Talag, PCC, is the founder of The Leadership Voice Studio™ and creator of AMPLIFY™, a leadership communication experience that helps organizations accelerate leadership readiness. She has supported more than 1,500 professionals through over 5,000 coaching sessions across technology, healthcare, consulting, financial services, and social impact organizations.

Joyce is a member of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce Workforce and Technology Councils. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Executive Presence for ESL and EAL Professionals in Tech: The Invisible Work Behind Leadership Communication

Many multilingual professionals in tech are told to “improve executive presence.”

But few people talk about the hidden work happening underneath that feedback.

As an executive communication coach for immigrant professionals and multilingual leaders in tech, I’ve observed that executive presence often requires additional mental bandwidth for professionals navigating language, culture, and perception simultaneously.

Especially for:

• ESL/EAL professionals

• non-native English speakers

• immigrant technical experts

• engineers transitioning into leadership

• multicultural people leaders in corporate tech

Executive presence is not only about speaking clearly.

It is also about navigating tone, credibility, perception, cultural expectations, communication norms, and stakeholder dynamics.

The Invisible Cognitive Load of Leadership Communication

Many technical professionals are already operating at high levels cognitively, but when leaders are also translating thoughts into business English, filtering communication styles, worrying about mispronouncing words, adapting accents or tone, or monitoring reactions in meetings, the cognitive load multiplies.

This often creates hesitation in meetings, overexplaining, reduced confidence, communication fatigue, and difficulty projecting executive presence with an accent.

Over time, this affects not only communication performance, but also energy and leadership capacity.

Why Executive Presence Coaching Must Go Beyond Surface-Level Communication Skills

Traditional executive presence training often focuses only on confidence in presentations. However, leadership communication for non-native speakers requires a more integrated approach.

At The Leadership Voice Studio, my work combines leadership development, culturally-responsive executive communication, and business English coaching. This is because communication challenges are not always about fluency. Sometimes they are about invisible adaptation fatigue—which I fully understand as someone with the lived experience and who has coached over 5,000 sessions with people managers and technical experts across U.S. workplaces.

Building Executive Presence Without Losing Yourself

For multilingual leaders, executive presence should not require constant self-erasure. The strongest leadership presence does not come from sounding identical to everyone else in the room. It comes from clarity and groundedness in who you are so that you can communicate with greater alignment, influence, and authority while still sounding like yourself.

Struggling to communicate with confidence in high-stakes U.S. workplace environments?

Many multilingual and immigrant professionals in tech are not lacking expertise.

They are navigating invisible cognitive load, executive presence pressure, and communication expectations that were never explicitly taught.

If you want support navigating:

• executive presence with an accent

• leadership communication in U.S. workplaces

• stakeholder conversations

• visibility and influence

• communication anxiety in meetings

• transitioning from technical expert to recognized leader

Start with an Executive Communication Strategy Session.

Together, we’ll identify:

• where communication friction is happening

• what may actually be driving it

• and what a more aligned leadership communication strategy could look like for you.

BOOK NOW

Executive Communication for Non-Native English Speakers: How to Be Heard in U.S. Workplaces

Being heard in meetings isn’t just about English—it’s about how you structure and share your thinking.

After a few years of working in the U.S., many professionals reach a point where something begins to feel off, though not always in a way that is easy to name.

On paper, things are going well. They are delivering consistently, contributing to their teams, and are often seen as dependable and capable. And yet, there is a quieter realization that begins to surface over time. They are not always being heard in the way they expect. Their ideas do not land as clearly as they intend. They are not leading conversations as often as they could. Opportunities seem to move toward others, sometimes those with less experience but more presence.

In my work as a leadership and communication coach—particularly with immigrant professionals and non-native English speakers in tech—this is one of the most common patterns I see. And it is often misunderstood.

It’s Not Just About English

Many assume the issue is language. They believe they need to improve their English, sound more fluent, or eliminate their accent. But in most cases, that is not the real challenge. These professionals are already capable communicators. What is happening is something deeper, shaped by how communication and visibility are influenced by cultural experience.

In many cultures, professionals are taught to be respectful of hierarchy, to speak when invited, to avoid making mistakes in public, and to let their work speak for itself. These are strong foundations. They cultivate discipline, thoughtfulness, and credibility. They create professionals who are careful, prepared, and grounded.

But in many U.S. workplaces—especially in fast-paced environments like tech—leadership is communicated differently. You are expected to share your thinking early, to speak even when your ideas are still forming, and to lead with your main point rather than build toward it. Your contribution is not only evaluated by its quality, but by its visibility in real time.

Without these behaviors, it is easy to be perceived as less confident or less ready, even when that perception is inaccurate.

Executive Presence with an Accent

For many immigrant professionals, the challenge is not simply knowing what to say. It is feeling comfortable saying it. Increasing visibility can feel like drawing too much attention, speaking out of turn, or being perceived as too direct. This creates a quiet but persistent tension. You know you have something valuable to contribute, yet you hesitate in the moment when it matters most.

The shift, then, is not about changing who you are. It is about evolving how you communicate your thinking so that it can be received in a different context. This often begins with a few simple but meaningful adjustments: learning to lead with your main point rather than building toward it, reducing the tendency to over-explain in favor of clarity, and choosing to contribute intentionally rather than waiting to be invited.

Over time, these shifts change not only how others perceive you, but how you experience yourself in those interactions. Your presence becomes more grounded. Your communication becomes more effective. Your leadership becomes more visible.

And importantly, none of this requires you to sound like someone else.

Executive presence is not about eliminating your accent. It is not about adopting a different personality. It is about clarity, structure, and confidence in your message. When those are in place, your voice carries.

Building Visibility Without Losing Yourself

The most effective professionals I have worked with have not abandoned their cultural grounding. Instead, they have learned how to translate it. They remain thoughtful, but become more direct. They remain respectful, but become more proactive. They remain grounded, but become more visible.

This is the work of moving from being a strong individual contributor to becoming a visible leader.

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If you are a non-native English speaker or an immigrant professional working in a U.S. company and you are ready to strengthen how you communicate and show up, you are not alone—and this is not something you have to navigate on your own.

👉 You can book an Executive Communication Strategy Session here:
https://joyfultransformations.org/executive-session