The Workshop Book

33	CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Multilingual workshops

Use for: conducting workshops with people who speak different languages

Much of global business is conducted in English, and we assume that workshops will work well if everyone is speaking the same language, because that way we all understand each other in the moment. For a high quality of output, it is far better to allow people to speak in a natural and spontaneous way rather than speaking the same language.

Even in one language, ideas need time and stimulus to emerge. For participants with a language barrier, their contribution is limited and therefore the workshop outputs might be compromised, almost always working negatively against the non-English speakers. This gets in the way of alignment, ...