You’ve made the decision: your team needs language skills. Good. Most corporate language programmes then fail at the very next step, because the goal gets written as “improve English” or “reach fluency by Q3”. Nobody can reach that. Nobody can measure it. Six months later the goal quietly disappears from the plan, and everyone agrees language training “didn’t really work”.
A realistic goal names a situation, a language and a date. Not “better German”, but “our three account managers can run the January supplier call in German without an interpreter”. Not “improve writing”, but “the monthly client report needs one proofread, not three”. Specific feels less ambitious than a grand promise. It is roughly ten times more achievable.
Then be honest about time. “B2 in a year” is a wish; an hour of focused practice a week, attached to real work with real feedback, is a plan. Language grows at human speed: slower than a software rollout, and considerably faster than most people expect once practice has a purpose. Pick a milestone for month three, month six and month twelve, and review them like any other business target.
Finally, write down what counts as done. A passed role-play. A client call handled unassisted. A document approved by a native speaker. If “done” is a feeling, the programme will drift. If “done” is a deliverable, it will ship.
That is the whole trick: specific, realistic, dated. We start every bespoke programme with a placement test and exactly this conversation — then we teach to the goal, not around it.
– fin. Questions? Just ask.
We teach this stuff for a living.
Our training sessions turn posts like this into practical skills, clearer emails, smoother meetings, fewer cultural awkward moments.