If you feel the English you speak at work has to be perfect, this week's blog is for you.

Yesterday I watched a video on the BBC entitled 'the alarming rise of perfectionism with-in young people'. I watched it because my youngest daughter gets very anxious before tests and exams and feels like a failure if she doesn't get a '1' (the top grade you can get in Germany). However, when I listened to the speaker, a professor from the London School of Economics, it made me think of so many of my clients. 
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Here is my favourite section from the interview:

Perfectionism causes us to feel "we are not enough, that other people are judging us, they are watching us, they are waiting for us to make mistakes.
The data are very clear on this. It doesn't help you to acheive, One, perfectionists burn out a lot as they work way too hard. But the other one is that they are the master self-sabotagers. They procrastinate, they are indecisive, they don't get started on things because it is too challenging. The aniticipated shame and guilt of failing is so strong they don't get started.
Perfectionism holds us back and the data are clear on that. You get no benefit from perfectionism. What you do get is more anxiety and less satisfaction."
I often have clients who
-have good English, more than good enough to say what they need to say, but won't speak in meetings in case they make a mistake
​-avoid speaking as much as possible as they have 'the worst English in the room.'
-have sleepless nights before their English meetings worrying about what they will do if someone asks them a question they don't understand or they are speaking and they don't a word they need.

If this sounds like you, remember your English doesn't have to be perfect. And by thinking it does, you are limiting yourself. Your audience isn't sitting there writing down your English mistakes, they are writing down interesting points or next steps. What matters is that you communicate effectively. If you do this, no-one will care about a badly pronounced word, the level of your vocab or a grammar mistake.