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• We are located at:
LTC-Circuit bvba-sprl
Rue Willemsstraat 14
B-1210 Brussels Belgium
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• We will answer your calls at number +32 475 267 341.
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An Assignment:
Auditing an Audit Department
Our client's environment
In a countrywide Belgian public service company, we were consulted by the Audit department.
This department's main assignment was and is to perform audits of the various local subsidiaries. Teams of two paired auditors (one French-speaking, the other Dutch-speaking) work for a couple of weeks at subsidiaries in either the Dutch- or French-speaking part of the country, and then write their reports.
Mastery of the two national languages is not only essential to the smooth collaboration within the two-person team, but obviously also to the auditing process itself which involves extensive interviews.
The purpose of the exercise was:
* to define the mastery needs for all members of the team,
* to assess the levels of the team members with respect to the other national language,
* to design development tracks for all team members to increase their language mastery up to the goal levels set, and
* to implement them.
The needs analysis yielded a requirement of a 7000 / C1 level of “Operational Proficiency” (to quote the Common European Framework of reference for Language, see Analysing you needs) – not only with respect to the Oral/Aural level of Speaking skills, but also on the Knowledge level scale.
This was fully justified, as all team members were expected to write their audit reports in both national languages. When ultimate goals set for a development track mainly concern the coachee's speaking ability, his knowledge objective may be slightly less ambitious – but in a case where writing skills are involved, the knowledge objective should for sure be equal to the oral/aural skills targeted. That is why the 7000 / C1 “Operational Proficiency” level was the aim defined for both speaking practice and knowledge supporting it.
During the preparation we rightfully assumed that individual team members might still be far removed from the 7000 goals set. So the team manager decided that for those team members' development a two-step approach would be designed, with 6000 / B2+ “Strong Vantage” as “entry level” to target first – allowing for a later further improvement up to the 7000 level.
The auditors' team consisting of equal numbers of Dutch- and French-speakers always working in two-auditor teams, it was also assumed that the average mastery would have the same level in either language group, and this assumption was fully borne out by the level tests.
A Dutch-speaking team's mastery of French
For the sake of simplicity, we will further concentrate on the sub-group of 12 Dutch-language team members, whose target was to increase their mastery of French.
The following graph displays the results of their testing.
It is interesting to see that while the Knowledge variance of these university-degree level managers ranks between slightly more than a 3000 / “Waystage” level and a 6000 / “Strong Vantage” level, the Oral/Aural skills levels vary a lot more. Spanning a 7500 (!) gap they reach from a mere 2000 / “Breakthrough” level (incipient speaking ability, though quite slow and seriously hampered by inadequacies, only acceptable to a highly sympathetic audience) to a 9500 / “Native” level (those Dutch-speakers being virtually indistinguishable from native French-speakers).
The “highly sympathetic audience” being, as always in business contexts, not to be taken for granted, it was to be expected that the less fluent team members needed a substantial language development track.
After all, that was why we had been consulted in the first place. The team-leader's ultimate goal was to align all team members with the 7000 goal set, both for conversational skill and knowledge levels.
The graph below shows how we tackled this task.
Well-aimed knowledge strengthening for the most advanced
A first main division was immediately obvious.
In the upper part of the graph two sub-groups of 3 team members each ("A" and "B") can be identified, whose common feature is that their Oral/Aural or Speaking ability level already meets requirements: all six are above the 7000 threshold.
In the lower part of the graph however there are 6 other team members whose levels are all below the target levels set, for both Speaking ability and Knowledge.
As for the team members of "A" and "B", it is quite obvious why we separated them in two 3-person groups: sub-group "A" is at a very high proficiency level, with a Conversational ability practically indistinguishable from a native French speaker's, making them fully bilingual. It was only with respect to knowledge, and hence to correctness in writing, that additional efforts were needed.
The necessity of a concentration on knowledge and writing skills was also predominant for sub-group "B", but their Speaking skills levels were, though very good, not at "A"'s level.
It was therefore decided that the six team-members would participate in medium-term French knowledge increase and writing skills development tracks, relying substantially on serious study of grammar, nuance in vocabulary and style. No effort whatsoever would be spent on their speaking skills, being, for "A" and "B", respectively excellent and very good. It was indeed rightfully assumed that the improvement of their knowledge levels would further profit their speaking abilities.
Why weren't the 6 people put together in one “class”?
This would have been justified if the “class” had been designed for instruction only, in a “knowledge transfer” setting typical of classical technical training sessions organised by Corporate Learning centres.
However, the pivoting point in a language (or culture) development track is not the moment when participants have taken stock of or become aware of knowledge – but the moment when these learning points have released significant changes in performance. That means that even a “classical language teaching class” should always target the improved performance as such.
Moreover, budget scarcity being what it is, it is just logical to require all participants to “do their homework”, i.e. to take full, "empowered", responsibility for the “knowledge transfer”, carefully studying textbook material provided and autonomously testing their progress.
When that is done, the “language teaching class” can focus on fine-tuning knowledge on one hand, braiding the various levels of understanding of team members together to achieve a higher-level common insight – and on the other hand, on combining various learning points in actual speaking and/or writing practice. Practice is indeed never confined to just one grammar or vocabulary feature at a time but always “multi-tasks” linguistically as a matter of course.
Now in order to do that, interaction among the team members is essential, and therefore group composition needs to be restricted to a wieldy number – and “centuries of combined practice” have shown us that such a number is 3 at the utmost.
Obviously, however the training/consulting rate may be fixed, having two Groups is more expensive that having just one – at first sight.
In this case we have chosen and recommended to the team leader to separate the “upper” population of 6 team members into two groups of three for reasons of both difference in initial levels and pedagogical/didactical efficiency.
Extensive coaching for the moderately to fairly advanced
When we cast a glance on the 6 team members who have not reached a sufficient “entry” level of 6000 / “Strong Vantage”, we can immediately see that two team members stick out: the ones we have called "C" and "F".
The team member whom we called "C" is at a short distance of the “entry” level 6000, and that only with respect to his or her Knowledge level.
The team member called "F" on the contrary is at quite a distance from the “entry” level, both with respect to Speaking ability and Knowledge.
The two two-person groups "D" and "E" appear to hover around a common average of slightly more than 4000 / “Threshold” (the level at which speaking ability begins to be accepted by a not-necessarily-sympathetic native speaker).
Yet they differ. Sub-group "D" has a commendable Oral/Aural level already, but proves quite below par when writing acceptable reports is required. Conversely, sub-group "E" has already some command of the rules of the language, which is useful for writing electronic mail or smaller standardised reports, yet does not yet communicate orally at a level satisfactory to the native speaker.
That in itself justified a separation, like it did for the "A" and "B" sub-groups. But more important was that all four team members communicated orally in French at insufficient levels, which meant that the development track had to target speaking skills specifically, providing the managers concerned with opportunity to improve, speed up, strengthen, hone their speaking skills both about professional topics (the subject matter of the audits as such) and general topics (essential to smoothen social interaction with the internal clients outside of purely professional contexts).
That is why we, successfully, persuaded the team leader to restrict the number of participants in each group to two.
We can't sufficiently emphasise the following fact: whenever the paramount goal of the development track is to enhance the coachee's speaking skill, the most efficient format is one-on-one coaching.
It is a given that in order to play his double role of stimulator and facilitator of speech on one hand, and of awareness-raiser and corrector on the other hand, the trainer/consultant claims about half of the training session's time. In a one-on-one setting the other half of the time is the coachee's own time for practice, during which the trainer/consultant fully and only focuses on this one coachee.
When the setting is a two-on-one, the trainer/consultant's attention will be necessarily divided, and the coachee will have at the utmost 25 p.c. of the time for his own practice; for the rest of the time he or she will be able to listen to 50 p.c. of the time used for a perfect version of the language (when the coach speaks), and to 25 p.c. of the time for an approximation of the ideal (occupied by his fellow team member's practice). Efficiency is clearly less than in a one-on-one coaching situation – and it obviously falls even lower as the number of students increases.
Yet under special circumstances a 2-person or a 3-person team can be justified, and that is when (1) the language levels are approxiametly the same (which is the case here), and (2) the team members' professional objectives are identical (which is also the case here).
In that specific case only listening to one's colleague practising the language may have a positive influence on one's own learning. Either coachee can easily empathise with:
* the partner's successes and failures (good phrasings and mistakes) as each has the same level, and
* the topics raised and opinions defended by one's partner, as they are related to shared professional objectives.
As both conditions were felt to apply, two 2-person teams were created, with varying emphases in their respective development tracks.
The team leader then decided, upon our recommendation, to start both tracks for the "D" and "E" duos during what amounted to a 6-to-9-month learning adventure. Meanwhile team member “C” would “wait for them”, as it were, to approach the “entry” level 6000, and start a small Knowledge improvement track (somewhat similar to sub-group "A"'s and "B"'s) just by herself to join them once they reached the Entry level.
Finally, a consecutive learning phase was set up in which the 5 team members progressed in two 2-to-3-person groups up to level 7000 – which was basically an extension of the previous track, but now almost exclusively focusing on the topic of auditing itself, including presentations of and reporting on the results. This meant that the nature of current audits often decided about who was to attend a specific group, and how sessions might be usefully spread and scheduled.
Obviously the lower level of team member "F" precluded his joining any existing group. Yet, the team leader could not afford to hold up the development of all other team members of the “lower” group, waiting for this one team member to catch up with them. It was decided that "F" would have a solo track developing both his speaking ability and tutoring his study up to the Entry level (6000 / “Strong Vantage”).
The total programme for all six “groups” took approximately 15 months. All targets were reached to satisfactory levels.
Conclusions
Success depends on careful planning.
This involved, here as always:
* a strong commitment from all parties involved to tackle such a project professionally, with all due attention given to careful assessment of objectives, levels, constraints, learning styles etc.,
* a scientifically, rationally arguable approach to personal development a well as to language didactics and pedagogy,
* a professional assessment of objectives, initial and target levels,
* a self-explanatory model and visualisation of the project and its milestones.
As for the latter point, the graphs displayed above show how the two-dimensional representation of Practice (speaking, Oral/Aural skills etc.) and supportive Knowledge yields a visual model of the learning tracks allowing parties involved to calculate the resources necessary.
In this graph model, the very lengths of the arrows are a workable representation of the investment to be made.
An investment in financial resources, as the development tracks need to be coached by professionals – but also, and even more essentially so, a personal investment of the participants in awareness, commitment, creativity, discipline, empathy, attendance and study.
Obviously the team leader has the double responsibility of efficiently investing his financial resources and seeing to it that this investment is matched by his staff's personal commitment.
It will not escape the Human Resources professionals reading this that our two-dimensional model is not unrelated to the situational management models fashionable since the 60s. And though such models may be subject to criticism, and hence also their above linguistic-didactical parallel above, the truth is that they yield a useful tool which “operationalises” goals set for the management of a language learning project.
Practically, this meant for the Audit team concerned that approximately 25 % of the total expenditure was invested into the development of team member “F”, slightly less than that into the Knowledge improvement of the six team members belonging to sub-groups "A" and "B", and more than half of the total budget into the development of the five team members of sub-groups “C”, "D" and "E".
But, as we said, the financial investment range (equivalent to between ±3.5 % and 25 % of the budget per person) was matched by a similar range of personal investment. For team member “F” the “conquest of French” did constitute his major personal development objective for two consecutive years.
Our method allowed all parties involved to obtain an objective view of all aspects of the team members' development track as well as a state-of-the-art set of operational handles on how to achieve the targeted results by means of a series of well-defined milestones.
During the implementation of the learning and coaching tracks, it provided a kind of road-map to monitor progress by, keeping an eye on the ultimate objective while sensitively and sensibly modulating the process leading to it.
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• The schoolkid kit
• “All this is marketing”: Coaching is co-creation or The proof of the pudding is in the eating
• Assessing the Learner's needs and skills
• How we plot the Learner's Language learning Adventure
• Plan thoroughly and implement flexibly
• Plurilingualism is key but also the key
• Assignment: Auditing an Audit Department
• Assignment: Company-wide progress in Spartan circumstances
• Assignment: Company-wide coaching of High Performers
• Assignment: Customer-oriented writing in an insurance department
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