For the next two days I have full-day training sessions to attend which is great except, they are all in Finnish and mine is nowhere near up to scratch to be able to listen, let alone interact, at this level. It is pretty embarrassing considering I have been in Finland for over 15 years. I am there to observe the training style more that get much out of it however it is going to make for 2 very, very long days.
I wonder how many various opportunities I have missed out on because I do not have even a medium level of language ability in Finnish here. I know that one of my competitive advantages that I leverage is my ability in English but for many Finns, even though they generally speak English very well, they still prefer to speak in Finnish at the social level. this is important in a country where people tend not to be overly social already.
Not having Finnish means that I am unable to get to know some people at some levels because of their unwillingness to have the same conversations in English. There is advantage speaking in English though as due to the lack of emotive connection to the language, they can be much more open and talk about very personal things. This doesn't translate into the corporate topics as heavily though and they instead reserve their ideas and opinions.
Today, instead of trying to understand everything that is going on I think I am going to take the opportunity to observe my colleagues and our clients and see how they interact and respond to each other. It has been a while since I have had the opportunity to sit back and watch at this level so I am going to take it and see what I can learn, what I can use and what I could potentially help correct, as this is where I am comfortable.
We all have skills and of course, we all have skill gaps and part of the problem is that we tend to rely on our strengths and avoid developing our weakness. While I have avoided learning Finnish for a very long time, I am thinking that at some point when I have a little bit of breathing room and don't need to spend every waking moment doing what I must, I will pick up a class or two and see if I can improve a bit more.
After all, I have a bilingual daughter and she already speaks better Finnish than I do and she is only two years of age. What is going to happen when she is a rebelling teenager? I think I better learn something.
See you in the evening.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]