In the July 6, 2026 episode of You Should Know, the WRKdefined podcast on workplace leadership, communications coach Peter Novak makes the case that effective global communication is not about using bigger words or flawless English. Instead, it is about clarity, confidence, and trust across borders — an increasingly urgent skill as teams become more distributed.
Novak, founder of Strictly Speaking Group and a former 25-year professor at the University of San Francisco, draws on his extensive background — training as a Jesuit, an MFA in acting, and a doctorate in dramaturgy — to offer a practical playbook for leaders of multilingual teams. He identifies several key barriers to clear communication, starting with unconscious bias, particularly the well-documented like-me bias, which shapes who gets promoted and believed at work.
A significant portion of the conversation focuses on language itself. Novak highlights how phrasal verbs — such as "take off," "take up," "take over," and "take down" — can quietly derail non-native English speakers. He recommends using AI prompts to swap these for stronger, clearer verbs. He also references a McGill University study on foreign accents, which reveals how accents affect trust, credibility, and perceptions of confident delivery.
Novak repeatedly reframes inclusive communication as a bottom-line issue rather than a political one. "The best way to position it is that this is a business issue, that you need your communication to be as clear as possible to everyone, not just to a select few," he tells host William. He pushes back on the idea that non-native speakers are the ones who must adapt, invoking a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers analogy: "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels." Non-native colleagues, he argues, are translating, interpreting, and vocabulary-hunting in real time while native speakers barrel ahead.
The conversation moves into concrete tactics. Novak describes building executive voiceprints by feeding hundreds of hours of transcripts into AI so leaders can deliver scripts that sound like them. He shares a 20-question intake he uses to help new executives tell their teams exactly how they want to be communicated with, from pre-reads to agenda formats. He also notes that investor relations teams now run CEO earnings calls through AI to score language choice and tone of voice.
Novak contrasts Ernest Hemingway's accessibility with Oscar Wilde writing "for about 6 people" and references Yakov Smirnoff on the absurdity of English. He points out that Latin American teams often operate trilingually in Spanish, Portuguese, and English until a monolingual American enters the room and collapses the exchange back to English. He also flags cultural intelligence lessons from his own preparation for business in Tokyo and Dubai.
The episode is available now wherever podcasts are heard.
