by Dr. Marie Heath

“I’m going to print this out and tape it to my back so everyone will understand what it is I do!” 

She wasn’t joking.

Everyone in the room laughed, but underneath the laughter was something deeper. She was trying to describe what so many multilingual leaders feel every day. People see how busy multilingual leaders are, but they rarely see the complexity behind the work. They see pieces of the work, but not the whole picture. 

When a participant said that to me after attending a Strategic by Design training, that comment stayed with me long after the training ended. I had to stop and think about why this work feels so difficult to explain.

Her comment helped me realize that the challenge isn’t simply the amount of work multilingual leaders do. It’s that much of their work is invisible to everyone else. The work isn’t difficult because there is too much of it. It’s difficult because it is spread across so many departments that no one person sees the entire system.

Continue reading “Why Multilingual Leadership Is So Hard to Explain” →