“embarrassment”, “feeling threatened”, “showing weaknesses” and “having no self-confidence”. In line with Brett, Behfar and Kern (2006) and Neeley (2013) we also found that many non-native speakers of the shared language fear to receive lower performance ratings due to a lack of proficiency:
Many people who are excellent specialists, have extensive knowledge and are very competent just don't come across so well because of language problems. (...) In fact, I noticed that for myself. I didn't get such a good feedback because of this. (AUTO1 member 6, Greek)
Informants who lack fluency in their group's working language furthermore reported their constant fear of missing important information:
Chinese colleagues have problems if emails are just sent to everyone in German. They don't know what it's all about and are very scared of missing something. (AUTO2 member 3, Chinese)
The distress of being unable to express oneself adequately exacerbates this strain:
You feel so STUPID! If you listen to the others and have an idea, you want to express it but don't find the words — then it is too late and they have already passed on to the next topic. You feel so helpless! (AUTO1 member 4, Chinese)
Taken together, these emotions create a pervasive anxiety triggered by language barriers. The quotations reproduced in Table 2 provide further evidence of how salient this anxiety appeared in our interviews.
Overall, our results corroborate Hinds et al.'s (2014), Neeley's (2013) and Neeley et al.'s (2012) recent finding that an MNC's lan- guage mandate can cause heightened anxiety among the non-native speakers of the working language. However, in contrast to these previous studies, which found that low-fluency individuals minimized their use of the working language and thereby deflected language-induced anxiety, this was close to impossible in the highly interdependent teams we investigated. Our data further suggest that an MNT member's anxiety negatively correlates not so much with his or her absolute language proficiency but with his or her rel- ative proficiency level compared to colleagues. More specifically, informants reported feeling more secure in conversations with others who encountered similar or higher linguistic difficulties than they did. In contrast, anxieties appeared much more salient in conversations with more proficient colleagues, be they highly skilled non-native or native speakers of the shared language.
Our investigations also showed that self-directed anxiety was mostly task-related, i.e. team members were afraid to receive neg- ative evaluations for their work, to miss important task-related information or to be unable to contribute to the team task due to lim- ited proficiency in the team's working language. Consequently, they tried to disguise this self-directed emotion in front of colleagues and strove to sustain outward countenance. Such efforts to hide negative feelings imply a high degree of emotional labor, i.e. MNT members manage emotional expression to be consistent with their colleagues' ex- pectations about appropriate emotional expression. Interestingly, our findings apply not only to those MNT mem- bers whose cultures discourage the open display of emotions, but to interviewees from all nationalities and mother tongues. This may be explained by the similarity of anxiety to fear, which causes people to avoid rather than approach the emotion-inducing event. MNT leaders therefore require a high degree of em- pathy to recognize the hidden language-based anxieties among their subordinates. According to Ostell (1996), employees facing ex- treme anxiety may even experience a state of freezing, i.e. they become incapable of taking action. Consequently, it is of utmost importance for MNT leaders to
“embarrassment”, “feeling threatened”, “showing weaknesses” and “having no self-confidence”. In line with Brett, Behfar and Kern (2006) and Neeley (2013) we also found that many non-native speakers of the shared language fear to receive lower performance ratings due to a lack of proficiency: Many people who are excellent specialists, have extensive knowledge and are very competent just don't come across so well because of language problems. (...) In fact, I noticed that for myself. I didn't get such a good feedback because of this. (AUTO1 member 6, Greek) Informants who lack fluency in their group's working language furthermore reported their constant fear of missing important information: Chinese colleagues have problems if emails are just sent to everyone in German. They don't know what it's all about and are very scared of missing something. (AUTO2 member 3, Chinese) The distress of being unable to express oneself adequately exacerbates this strain: You feel so STUPID! If you listen to the others and have an idea, you want to express it but don't find the words — then it is too late and they have already passed on to the next topic. You feel so helpless! (AUTO1 member 4, Chinese) Taken together, these emotions create a pervasive anxiety triggered by language barriers. The quotations reproduced in Table 2 provide further evidence of how salient this anxiety appeared in our interviews. Overall, our results corroborate Hinds et al.'s (2014), Neeley's (2013) and Neeley et al.'s (2012) recent finding that an MNC's lan- guage mandate can cause heightened anxiety among the non-native speakers of the working language. However, in contrast to these previous studies, which found that low-fluency individuals minimized their use of the working language and thereby deflected language-induced anxiety, this was close to impossible in the highly interdependent teams we investigated. Our data further suggest that an MNT member's anxiety negatively correlates not so much with his or her absolute language proficiency but with his or her rel- ative proficiency level compared to colleagues. More specifically, informants reported feeling more secure in conversations with others who encountered similar or higher linguistic difficulties than they did. In contrast, anxieties appeared much more salient in conversations with more proficient colleagues, be they highly skilled non-native or native speakers of the shared language. Our investigations also showed that self-directed anxiety was mostly task-related, i.e. team members were afraid to receive neg- ative evaluations for their work, to miss important task-related information or to be unable to contribute to the team task due to lim- ited proficiency in the team's working language. Consequently, they tried to disguise this self-directed emotion in front of colleagues and strove to sustain outward countenance. Such efforts to hide negative feelings imply a high degree of emotional labor, i.e. MNT members manage emotional expression to be consistent with their colleagues' ex- pectations about appropriate emotional expression. Interestingly, our findings apply not only to those MNT mem- bers whose cultures discourage the open display of emotions, but to interviewees from all nationalities and mother tongues. This may be explained by the similarity of anxiety to fear, which causes people to avoid rather than approach the emotion-inducing event. MNT leaders therefore require a high degree of em- pathy to recognize the hidden language-based anxieties among their subordinates. According to Ostell (1996), employees facing ex- treme anxiety may even experience a state of freezing, i.e. they become incapable of taking action. Consequently, it is of utmost importance for MNT leaders to
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