But today I will share a new experience where I was a coachee and my coach skillfully prepared me for an international event.
Recently ended the international motor show IAA 2022 in Hannover. The last time I visited such a car showroom was more than 20 years ago, and it was in Frankfurt. I went there as a German translator, and my German was enough for LogoVAZ to find new partnerships and conclude interesting contracts.
Now everything was different! Most of the companies represented at the IAA are not from Europe at all, and therefore their representatives hardly speak German.
My fear was great – I know that my level of English is far from German, so I am embarrassed even to open my mouth.
But I went to the exhibition in Germany in the role of the head of the company, whose task is to make new connections and pave the way to new partnerships, be it automakers from Brazil, China or Turkey. It means that I will have to not only keep up small talk, but also talk about my product and my company.
In mid-August, I remembered my language coach, who prepared me for some kind of speech many years ago. There was a month left before the exhibition ...
As a result, in 10 sessions, I not only managed to gain courage to speak, but also corrected my pronunciation, clearly formulated my offer, contacted all the interesting companies, and as a result, I had about a dozen interesting meetings.
Working from a coaching position, my teacher did not think for me, and did not teach me grammatical constructions, but helped me to understand things and act.
A side effect of this coaching work was the creation of a new bilingual website www.logicstars.ru. And also, thanks to the coaching approach without fight and pain, part of the top team, who had never used English at work before, began to correspond in the working chat exclusively in English!
By the way, if colleagues read me, then I invite you to join – it helps a lot in troubled times to create new neural connections!