Thanks to my colleague Lynda Katz Wilner of Successfully Speaking in Maryland, for including this Wharton School of Business K@W article link to The Glass Ceiling Facing Nonnative English Speakers in her recent newsletter. Please read this before proceeding because we will be writing about strategies to "mitigate" (make milder, less intense or less severe) yet another prejudice against professionals seeking advancement to a managerial position OR venture funding for their own business enterprises.  

 

  Laura Huang, a professor of management at the Wharton School of Business defines "political skill" as "not only effective and competent communication" but "also the ability to be perceptive and to influence others." She and her co-authors ran two experiments which were reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology in November 2013. In the first, when managers were given  a middle-management job description, a resume, a photo,  and audio clips of interview excerpts, their responses (questionnaire and hiring decision) for equally matched candidates showed that accented speakers were 16% less likely to be offered executive positions.

   In the second study, participants who approve venture capital funding listened to 90 entrepreneurial pitches given over a three year period at three U.S. top technology pitch competitions. Entrepreneurs with nonnative accents were 23% less likely  to receive venture funding.