307. Accent-uate, Don't Compensate: Why Clarity Matters More Than Perfection

"It's not an accent, it's an identity." The way we speak shapes more than how we're understood—it shapes how we're perceived. Peter Novak https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/peter-novak/believes the goal of communication isn't to eliminate an accent, but to communicate with greater clarity, confidence, and authenticity. As a linguist, communication coach, and expert in accent bias, Novak helps multilingual professionals communicate more effectively while embracing the identity their voice represents. In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart https://www.fastersmarter.io/, he joins Matt Abrahams to explore how accent bias influences the workplace, why clarity matters more than sounding "native," and the practical techniques anyone can use to communicate with greater confidence and impact. Key Takeaways: Clarity matters more than sounding native. Effective communication comes from making your message easy to understand, not eliminating your accent. Your accent is part of your identity. Multilingual communicators bring unique perspectives and strengths that should be embraced, not hidden. Activity: Focus on clarity. Record yourself explaining a familiar topic for one minute. Listen back and identify three words or phrases to emphasize and two places to pause. Record it again, focusing on clarity rather than sounding perfect, and compare the difference. Printable Expanded Takeaways & Activities https://ae82bqismksvlodf.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/TFTS%20307-K2dtk8QTNfA4J8hjwDkzc4BsXjPj0W.pdf Episode Reference Links: Peter Novak https://www.fastersmarter.io/guests/peter-novak/82. It’s Not About You: Why Effective Communicators Put Others F… https://www.fastersmarter.io/82-its-not-about-you-why-effective-communicators-put-others-first/ Connect: Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart Premium https://www.fastersmarter.io/premium/Email Questions & Feedback >>> [email protected] Transcripts >>>Think Fast Talk Smart Website https://www.fastersmarter.io/307-accent-uate-dont-compensate-why-clarity-matters-more-than-perfection/Newsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>>FasterSmarter.io http://fastersmarter.io/Think Fast Talk Smart >>>LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/think-fast-talk-smart/,Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thinkfasttalksmart/, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6caGRBUYZCmgDGM2RK6mxKB9jG_ccmm3Matt Abrahams >>>LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/maabrahams/ Chapters: (00:00) - Introduction (00:52) - Accent Bias (03:55) - Accent and Identity (05:55) - Processing Fluency (08:25) - Clarity Over Perfection (10:26) - The Power of Prosody (15:33) - Speaking with Confidence (17:56) - The Final Three Questions (22:13) - Conclusion ******** Thank you to our sponsors. These partnerships support the ongoing production of the podcast, allowing us to bring it to you at no cost. Learn more about how Notion https://www.notion.com/?utm_source=podcasts&utm_medium=thinkfast can support your business at notion.com/thinkfast. https://www.notion.com/?utm_source=podcasts&utm_medium=thinkfast Join our Think Fast Talk Smart Learning Community and become the communicator you want to be. https://learning.fastersmarter.io/?redirect_from=podpage

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Matt Abrahams?

  In the moment, conflict is difficult for everyone. In our October newsletter, out now, you will learn ways to help yourself handle these challenges better. Not only do you get specific advice, we're also providing an infographic to help you remember. Find our newsletter on the Think Fast, Talk Smart LinkedIn page or at fastersmarter.io under Resources. When we communicate, we not only communicate our ideas, we communicate our identity. My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today, I look forward to speaking with Peter Novak. Peter is a former vice provost at the University of San Francisco and former dean at Yale

• 0:45Matt Abrahams?

  University. He is the founder of the Strictly Speaking Group. Peter leverages his doctorate and background in linguistics and acting to help non-native speakers master clear communication. He has an award-winning LinkedIn learning course on public speaking for non-native English speakers. Welcome, Peter. I am really excited to bring you to the show and to share what you've shared with my students here with everybody. Thanks for joining.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Thanks so much. I've been so looking forward to this conversation.

• 1:13Matt Abrahams?

  Shall we get started?

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:15Matt Abrahams?

  Great. On the show, we've often spoken about how word choice affects the strength of our messages and the impressions people form of us. Your work highlights the impact accents can have on people's perceptions. Can you share a bit about this? And please make sure you define what you mean by accent bias, because I think this is really important for what we'll talk about today.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Let me start with the definition of accent bias. So accent bias is essentially that reflex that we have to trust people who sound like us. And this happens a lot with people who are the in-group and people who are part of the out-group. And the idea of accent bias, of who's in and who's out, and what that means, it really affects the workplace. It can affect hiring decisions. It can affect promotion decisions. It often affects how people feel about leadership qualities. And so all of these aspects of accent bias creep into our workplace without us really understanding or knowing the full impact of it.

• 2:15Matt Abrahams?

  And we could have our career and our trajectories be affected by something we don't even know. Have you found that there are advantages to having an accent or that non-native speakers bring to their communication, maybe through the focus of the specific words or the way they speak, versus those who don't have an accent in a given environment?

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Or who don't have the accent of the majority in the specific group? Absolutely. And I love the framing of this question around the advantages that non-native speakers have, because so often, they come to the table thinking it's a disadvantage to have an accent when they're speaking. And so I think what's fun about that is that when you think about multilingual speakers, 75% of people in the US and Canada and Australia and Great Britain don't speak another language. And so when you've got multilingual speakers, their skills in being able to code-switch between language and cultures, in being able to be more intentional, which is part of your question, I think, about that focus that they have about the language choice that they're having, is really profound.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  And I think it's up to native speakers to recognize that non-native speakers are doing a hell of a lot more work in the workplace than native speakers are. We tend to take our proficiency in English for granted. We don't think about how we use it. We don't think about ways to use it more clearly for non-native speakers. And I like to say, remember Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, the dancers from the 1940s and 50s? Everyone said that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels. And in many ways, that's what non-native speakers are doing, too. They are, in the moment, involved sometimes in translating what was said into their first language, oftentimes, translating what they want to say from their first language or

• 4:00Speaker 01

  another language, thinking about tone, thinking about word choice, thinking about all these other things that native speakers don't have to. And I think we need to give them credit for that and then create the structures around that that enable a greater linguistic flexibility in the workplace.

• 4:17Matt Abrahams?

  And just recognizing that the difference even exists and that you should take the time to reflect and accommodate, I have found that the folks I know who speak multiple languages, some of whom who have accents and some who don't, their ability to listen and discern subtlety is far superior to mine. Really interesting. I have heard you say in my class and in things you've written, "It's not an accent, it's an identity." What do you mean by this? And how can it help someone who is concerned about their accent to reframe it in this way?

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Sure, you know, language carries with it culture. It carries identity. It carries individual stories. And so, why would we want to try and fix that? There's no reason to really fix that. The goal actually is clarity. And I think sometimes there was a great episode of Modern Family with Eva Longoria, was that? Who said, "Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?" And this is what happens. If you ask a multilingual speaker, "Do they feel like different personality traits emerge with the different languages that they speak?" They will say, "Absolutely. I am so much funnier in my first language and I don't have access to the same type of comedy in English or in a second language that I do in my first."

• 5:33Speaker 01

  And so, really, there's this interesting part of identity that shifts because of the different languages that we speak. And I think that needs to be celebrated. It needs to be brought into the workspace a lot more than it normally is.

• 5:47Matt Abrahams?

  You just reminded me. I was coaching a very senior leader who was a native French speaker. In English, he was a little more stilted, a little more buttoned up. But when I actually had him say the same thing in French, he became much more lively, much more connected. And we were able to use that as a tool, as a guide, to allow him to feel more free speaking in English. It really is interesting how we have these different compartmentalizations based on language. Before I ask you to share some specific techniques that those with accents can take to feel more confident in their communication, I'd love to ask you to define some foundational principles that I know you refer back to. And in fact, these principles apply not just to people who are speaking

• 6:31Matt Abrahams?

  in a language other than their native language. They apply to all of us. So can you help us understand what you mean by processing fluency, intelligibility, and comprehensibility?

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So, in a nutshell, processing fluency is the ease with which we understand something. And I think the goal of every speaker is to try and make what they say as easy as possible to understand for the listener, for your audience, whoever that audience is. And it really means getting to know your audience as well as possible. And processing fluency is essentially that. Processing disfluency is anything that gets in the way of that message being understood. That could be content, right? You ramble, or you don't have a good structure. Or it could be delivery, right? Things that make it difficult for people to hear and understand. And that brings us to the linguistic ideas around intelligibility and comprehensibility.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Intelligibility is how much I understand of what you say. Comprehensibility is how hard I have to work to understand you. It's the effort that I put into understanding you. Let me put this into an example. Let's say you're on a Zoom call and it's a little glitchy on the other end. But maybe you understand what the person said, but still, there was, I'm losing you a little bit, and so you have to work harder to do it. That's the difference between intelligibility and comprehensibility. And the best part about this is that there were major studies done 20 years ago and more that say that people who speak English as a second, third, or fourth language can improve both their intelligibility and their comprehensibility with no noticeable shift in accent.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  And so there are some really interesting things to focus on to help you do that without worrying about what your accent really is.

• 8:18Matt Abrahams?

  So processing fluency is the ease with which we take in the information. And there's a whole bunch of things we can do, making sure we know our audience, so it's easier for them. We're using relevant concepts and ideas that they can connect to, structuring the information, making it more concise. And then intelligibility is the understanding, and the comprehensibility is how hard we work to understand. And anything we can do to reduce comprehensibility, I would assume, helps with processing fluency. Excellent. So let's get very tactical and practical. What are some techniques and approaches you recommend to help people who want to work on their accents or increase their intelligibility while not increasing the comprehensibility of what they're saying?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Well, they want to do both. They want to have both high intelligibility and high comprehensibility. And so what I would say is that the goal is clarity. That's number one. First and foremost, the goal is clarity.

• 9:10Matt Abrahams?

  So clarity of meaning.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Clarity of meaning, right? And then clarity also of delivery.

• 9:15Matt Abrahams?

  Got it. So I clearly understood you, but I also clearly heard you.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 9:20Matt Abrahams?

  Okay, very good.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  And so there was an interesting study from McGill University in Canada. And basically, it said this, your car breaks down in a city that you don't know very well. And your phone is out of juice. And so you're trying to find a garage that you can go to. And so you ask the first person, they tell you go one direction. You ask a second person, the first person is a native speaker, sounds like you. You ask a second person, they tell you go in the opposite direction. And they have an out-group speech or accent, that's right, foreign or something you don't recognize. Who are you going to trust more? And in essence, the study found that you trust people who sound like you more. That's what accent bias is. However, if the person who speaks with a different accent than your own speaks with confidence, then it reduces that gap.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  And so the question becomes, what does speaking in English with confidence actually mean? What are people who speak English as their first language listening for that tells us that person is confident? And so we know this, we know what some of those elements are. And some of them are all related to prosody. So prosody is an element of speech that thinks about the musicality of the language, which thinks about volume and pacing and the power that you lend to certain words and inflection. It's all of the things outside of the words and the sentences that carry meaning that we often don't think about.

• 10:48Matt Abrahams?

  When we had Laron Martin on, talking about Martin Luther King Jr., we talked a lot about prosody and how he was able to leverage that as part of the, one of the many things that made his orations really powerful and meaningful.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  And every language has its own musicality. The biggest return on investment is understanding and really working on prosody of the language, not individual words, not individual phrases. And if you've got the pronunciation just right, you don't need to worry about any of that. It's really more about the paralinguistic features outside the language itself that carry more meaning, that make us relate better when we're communicating.

• 11:25Matt Abrahams?

  Can you give me an example or two of maybe an activity or a thing you would coach people to do to really touch on that?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Sure. And I'm going to give some advice that is often the opposite of what a lot of speech coaches give. And that is, if you're giving a presentation, or if you're talking over Zoom even, to prepare by recording yourself into a speech to text app. And that speech to text app will give you a transcript of what you're saying. So you just have to rehearse it once, and then all of a sudden, you've got a script of what you're doing. You can then put it through AI if you want. You can put it through AI and say, I need this to sound like me still. So keep my syntax, keep the way that it so that it sounds authentic to you. And once you have a script, you score it. And one of the best techniques that I can think of is to underline what are called content or focus words in a sentence.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  If I have the sentence for you, I never said you should have hired him. If I stress a different word, it means something different. I never said you should hire him. I never said you should hire him. I never said you should hire him. I never said you should hire him. Every time you say the sentence and you put a stress on a different word, it changes the context. And if you look at your words and your sentences in your prepared speech, and you start to underline or bold just those three or four content words per second, and focus on those words, the meaning of what you're going to say will come across regardless of anything else. And so if you're stressing just those words, all of a sudden, you get a really clear picture of what's being said.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  So that's one thing that you can do to score your script for what are called operative or focus words or content words. The second thing is to put in slash marks for small pauses. Because people forget to pause when they're speaking. And oftentimes, non-native speakers get told to slow down. When that's not always the best advice, what's more helpful is to take a sentence and divide it into thought clusters, groups of speech that have complete meanings on their own, but don't often have the punctuation to make you pause. And these are simple phrases in a sentence, like even when I was just saying, a thought group is a group of words that has a complete set meaning on its own that we don't give meaning to.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  And so, when you break up a sentence into those thought groups, it becomes easier to understand and follow. And so, putting those slash marks into a script can help do that. And then, the third way that you can really help is to provide intonation assistance in a script, in scoring a script, using downward inflections, which words to focus on in different ways, how to use inflections. And we have three basic inflections in English. The upward, where I'm asking a question. The downward, where I'm making a statement, and we do that in two different ways. And then, the sustained inflection, which I really like, which is so, it's all on one note, and you're waiting for me to either go up or down.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  When you learn to incorporate some of those inflections, you're really tapping into, I think, the power of the language in ways that native speakers are listening to.

• 14:35Matt Abrahams?

  Paralanguage, the things that happen around the words are so powerful in so many ways. And I love these activities. Using a script as a tool to help you plan and prepare your paralanguage, I think, is beautiful. I love this idea of getting a transcript of what you're saying. Not to say that you're going to say it exactly that way, but to begin to look at what are those words of inflection, of focus, of that vocal highlighting that need to stand out. And this is a tool that I think will help everybody, not just non-native speakers. Thinking about clustering of the key concepts and how to punctuate them in terms of pace and rate, really important. In fact, I believe they found some versions of the Declaration of Independence that

• 15:20Matt Abrahams?

  Had weird marks on them that they finally concluded were actually marks for oration. That when people would read it, because so much of the population at the time was not able to read. So giving yourself these little cues and clues of what to do. And then finally, thinking about how you end phrases and words. Many of us will swallow what we say and get quiet. Some people have uptalk where everything sounds like a question. And just being able to strategically think about it as a question, although I believe I know the answer. The more you do this, the more it becomes a habit where you don't need to do it.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 15:55Matt Abrahams?

  You have extensive training in phonetics. For our listeners who feel their voice doesn't always carry authority, whether native speaker or not, what are some vocal adjustments that we can make to come across with the gravitas and clarity that we look for?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  There are so many different things that we can do. First and foremost, one of the things that I recommend is to really understand, that I talked about earlier, intonation, how we end sentences. In English, we do that in two ways. One is we either step down, like on the words, "I'm a professor." We notice we go up on the penultimate sound and then come down. "I'm a professor. I teach math." And so we either step down or we glide down at the ends of sentences. And oftentimes, people will swallow their last few words. They don't end with strength and let me talk about what that means. And so if you combine the strong downward inflection in speaking

• 16:52Speaker 01

  with slowing down your last few words when you're done speaking, it signals that you've completed your thought. It signals a strength in the end of your communication. And you can use it almost anytime you're finished speaking to make sure that people know you've finished speaking. And it works really, really well. And you can either score that on a script that you've got for text or you can think about ending just by slowing down and using that downward inflection.

• 17:22Matt Abrahams?

  I love that technique and I loved how you role modeled it. Thank you. And we can all record ourselves on audio, voice memo, and listen to hear how we're doing it and to become more sensitive to what others are doing. We can work on these skills through reading out loud. I often encourage people, reading out loud allows you to focus on how you're saying something because the words are right in front of you. So I'm not saying reading your script to give a presentation. I'm saying just read your emails out loud, read anything, and notice how you can do that to train your brain to be more comfortable doing it. Behind all of it, I believe, is also this notion of breath and breath control. You know, when we get nervous, we breathe shallow and up. So we have to remind ourselves that your voice is a wind instrument and that you have to have the breath behind it.

• 18:06Matt Abrahams?

  So I often tell people we need to build vocal stamina through breath work as well, which could be reading out loud, just becoming aware of where it is. You have provided so much rich information. Thank you. We'll be right back to finish our conversation. But first, we're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. Their support covers the cost of production, so we can bring you this show for free. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. The best communicators don't just get their message across, they make it easy for people to know what to do next. Your website can do the same thing. With Squarespace, you can build a polished online presence that clearly shows people who you are, what you offer, and how they can work with you. If you offer coaching, consulting, classes, or other services,

• 18:51Matt Abrahams?

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• 19:25Matt Abrahams?

  Teams don't usually struggle because people aren't working hard. They struggle because everyone is working from a slightly different understanding. One person has the latest version, someone else remembers a decision differently. Before long, you're spending more time getting aligned than actually moving the work forward. That's why I find Notion's approach so interesting. Notion is the AI workspace where your team's knowledge, projects, and AI all come together in one place. When everyone is working from the same shared context, teams move faster, stay aligned, and spend less time searching for information. What I like most is the philosophy behind it. It feels less like AI replacing people and more like AI helping people communicate, collaborate, and make better decisions together.

• 20:10Matt Abrahams?

  Learn more about how Notion can support your business at notion.com/thinkfast. That's all lowercase letters, notion.com/thinkfast, to try Notion today. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show. Before we end, I'd like to ask you three questions. One I make up just for you and two I've been asking everybody for a long time. Are you up for that? You bet. Excellent. You created a national curriculum regarding alcohol abuse and sexual violence prevention that reached over a million students. When you're communicating about such sensitive, high stakes, and emotionally charged topics, how do you balance clarity with the necessity of being empathetic and concerned?

• 20:52Matt Abrahams?

  A lot of us are in situations where we have to talk about emotionally charged issues. What advice do you have that came from that experience? And by the way, thank you for creating a curriculum like that.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  It's my pleasure. I was-- the Stanford graduate students actually took our program, which is great. And it was throughout, I think, over now 2,000 universities have used it. And it was deeply important work for me, but you're right, it is very emotionally charged. And so what you have to create first and foremost is a psychologically safe space for people to be able to speak. And that requires a great empathy and understanding what happens with trauma. Once you've created a psychologically safe space, the goal is to not re-traumatize with your language or to re-traumatize by asking people to contribute their Story when they don't feel psychologically safe to do so. And to build in a system of the way that you communicate that has its foundation in trauma-informed ways of communicating.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  And I think that's an incredibly helpful tool that has empathy at its core. And that really helps us understand communicating on a very human to human level.

• 21:55Matt Abrahams?

  So it starts with empathy, which builds to psychological safety. That then requires some intentional thought about how to allow for the kind of dialogue that needs to happen in these emotionally charged situations without re-triggering or causing people to become defensive. Tricky, but possible.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Tricky, but possible. And you also have to build the structure of all of that into your policies, into your procedures. So it's not just the one-on-one communication. It's also the larger support structure also needs to be framed that way.

• 22:24Matt Abrahams?

  I like to talk a lot about people, process and infrastructure. And you need all three of those to come together when you have emotionally charged issues. Question number two, who's a communicator that you admire and why?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  I love Trevor Noah. I think his cultural discussions, his ability to see different cultural dynamics and how they manifest, not only from his native country and the way he speaks, but to the US and to Europe and to every place that he tours and he brings different stories. And he does it in a way that is enlightening, that is approachable, that is funny. And he has a lot of humility, believe it or not, in the way that he communicates too. And so he's one of my favorite people to listen to. He's got some great stories around accents. He does take on some accents sometimes and talks about them. But he's got some really profound things to say around language and accent and accessibility

• 23:18Speaker 01

  and what is considered a standard sound and what isn't. There is no standard for English. There are world Englishes. And I think Trevor Noah gets to that really clearly.

• 23:28Matt Abrahams?

  He is a very engaging speaker, a great storyteller. And he does a really nice job with some of these paralanguage clues and cues that you're talking about. Final question, what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

• 23:43Speaker 01

  The first is comfort, feeling comfortable in being able to, and that's where the psychological safety, I think, comes in as well. The second would be conversational, and this is all delivery, by the way. This isn't content, this is delivery, I would say. So the second part is really making it sound conversational, like you're actually talking to someone, not talking at someone. And the third, I would say, is conviction, or people will say confidence, but having the passion behind what it is that you're saying, so that you're making a connection that is important to you.

• 24:15Matt Abrahams?

  I love things that are easy to remember. The three Cs, comfort, conversational, conviction. And those are all helped by the techniques that you have taught us and that you teach on a regular basis. Peter, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you highlighting the value that people who speak another language bring, and the tools that can help all of us feel more comfortable in our communication. Thank you.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Matt. It was great being here.

• 24:43Matt Abrahams?

  Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about communication best practices, please listen to episode 82 with Nancy Duarte. This episode was produced by Catherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to the Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram. And check out fastersmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider our premium offering for extended Deep Thinks episodes, AMAs, and much more at fastersmarter.io/premium.

• 25:24Matt Abrahams?

  You'll also find value by joining our Think Fast, Talk Smart learning community at fastersmarter.io/learning. You'll find video lessons, Learning Quest discussion boards, My AI Coach, and book club opportunities. Again, that's fastersmarter.io/learning to become part of our Think Fast, Talk Smart learning community. Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for listening. It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are using these ideas in their own lives. It inspires me and the whole team that brings you this show. If you want more episodes and resources, feel free to follow, subscribe, and explore past conversations. We're grateful for your support of Think Fast, Talk Smart.