Shame about asking questions

Over the years, many high-level students have told me that there’s a lot of pressure on them at work to speak excellent, if not perfect, English. I know that English is a common language between many different nationalities in Brussels, so I understand why it’s important to speak it well. However, it turns out that some people are under such pressure that they don’t want to ask any questions, they don’t want to admit they don’t know something and they don’t dare to ask for their work to be proofread either. This is because they’re scared that their colleagues or boss will laugh at them or respect them less. This is really not right. What sort of a work environment is it where colleagues can’t support each other and where everyone is pretending to be perfect and worrying that they’re not? Let’s look at what happens when you can’t ask questions:

1. You don’t know if you’ve got something right.
2. You keep making the same mistakes.
3. People copy each other’s mistakes again and again, to the point where a word or phrase may make sense here, but not really anywhere else.
4. Colleagues are less likely to help each other, thus reducing the knowledge (and kindness) that could otherwise be spread around the office.
5. Publications or internet content are not proofread and can contain incorrect grammar, false friends, spelling errors, and sometimes sentences that are too long or very difficult to understand.

I know for sure that even if my French were excellent, I still wouldn’t publish an article anywhere without getting a native French speaker to read through and correct it first. To go a step further, ‘even’ native speakers get their work checked. For example, I never publish a blog without asking my husband or a friend to read through it first. Why? Because when you write something, you often don’t notice your own mistakes. Not only that, sometimes someone else can make suggestions or re-writes that improve your text and…that’s OK! There’s no shame whatsoever in asking for help or getting something double-checked by someone else.

I know there are a million and one blogs about work stress, toxic workplaces and burnout, so I’m not going to get into that topic today. But for the record, I do think that not being able to ask colleagues for advice or help is a symptom of all these issues.