When Silence Isn’t Agreement: The Hidden Cost of Language Barriers in Global Teams
In multicultural organisations, silence is often misunderstood. Leaders assume that a quiet meeting is an aligned meeting — that everyone agrees, everyone understands, and execution will naturally follow. But global communication doesn’t work that way. As research from MIT Sloan shows, “using a second language increases cognitive load and reduces processing efficiency” (MIT Sloan, 2024). […]