Communication et Entreprise, the oldest association of professional communicators in France, has asked me to run a workshop for French communicators who need to present or to pitch in English to international clients.

Core expertise

I’ve run these types of workshops before, for big companies such as Airbus or Sanofi-Aventis, to boutique firms like Infinancials. It is also part of the work I am doing with the PRES Bourgogne Franche-Comté.

So I have a great deal of material to choose from to design the seminar, but need to adapt the pedagogy from a two to three-day format to a one-day session. You’ve got it: that will probably be the biggest challenge.

I’ve been playing with a neat (free) mind-mapping tool to let my creativity distill the main points I wish to convey in a resonating and participative – and quick! – way and make them stick.

Tell me a story

This is where you, dear readers, come in. Storytelling stands out as the best technique I can use to boost these participants’ learning curve in one short day. I have stories, but need more.

You are all communicators and have experience – as clients or service providers – observing how different cultures communicate and are perceived.

What I would love to collect from you are sharp nuggets, vignettes or short stories on presentations you’ve seen delivered by French communicators in English.

• How do they differ from those of a native English speaker or other nationality?
• What did you like? What worked? What did you dislike? What didn’t work?
• What surprised you (the “huh?” factor)?
• How did they build a rapport with you? How did they build trust?
• How do they organize information? Did you follow naturally or were you lost?
• Did they convince you and if not, what could they have done differently to do so?

Feel free to go wide here: successful communications are a complex mix of verbal, vocal and non-verbal and culture-specific attributes. If your stories are funny, all the better – laughter is a terrific pedagogical tool!

If you wish to be cited in the workshop and handouts, I’ll be happy to give you credit if I use your story. And if you’d rather share your stories off-line, shoot me an email here.

Tell me a story!

* Photo credit: www.photo-libre.fr

I knew – unsurprisingly – that France is way behind in the use of social media, but did not realize quite how far behind. Many of my clients are not on Twitter, LinkedIn and Viadeo – the major professional platforms. Many of my freelance colleagues don’t even have a website. And so on.

“What you see depends on where you sit,” one of my professors at university said frequently during his International Negotiation lectures.

What type of translation needs will social media trigger? How will they be fulfilled and delivered? What are some of the key intercultural issues in their wide adoption and use? What core values do they touch on?

What would you, readers, like to discuss?

It would be great if you’d contribute your thoughts, ideas and questions so that we can kick-start a useful dialog on how our roles as language and culture experts may evolve as social media becomes more prevalent in our corporate clients’ marketing and communications strategies.

Over to you!