From Opera to English Coach – How Sean Helps Pros Speak Confidently | The Fluent Edge Ep. 2

Sean: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Fluent Edge Podcast, the podcast that helps globally minded professionals speak with clarity, lead with confidence, and thrive across cultures. I'm Sean Watson, your business English coach, and today we're doing something a little different. This is our first ever.

Interview style episode, and I'm stepping into the guest seat. Joining me today is my co-host and good friend Dr. Howie Jacobson, an expert in mindset and leadership coaching, and he's asking the big questions today about how I help professionals not just improve their English, but transform how they speak up at work.

Howie, take it away.

Howie: Awesome. I am very excited to be asking you these questions 'cause I've had them for a long time so the first question is, we've been friends a long time, long before you were doing this. We met as, I think we last episode, when we were both singing in a choir and and you were on your way to becoming a, a professional opera singer.

So what happened? How did you get started teaching business English. And , what drew you to that?

Sean: In parallel, many years ago when I first started out in my singing career a lot of people told me that it's good to have some sort of a backup plan because in the entertainment world, sometimes you you get paid very well and then you've got a dry spell maybe for two months where you're not working.

So some people, did data entry jobs. Some people were actually like full on professionals in other fields lawyers who became singers, et cetera. But for myself, because of my international exposure, because I, I have had to learn other languages to at least communicate in a simple way.

It was sort of of natural based on my opera situation where I had to sing in different languages. It was sort of natural for me to have a backup plan being an English teacher. What happened was I won a voice competition in Canada and that sent me to France in Italy.

ho had lived in Canada in the: 1980

Well-spoken Canadians and Americans and British people to go and work with middle managers. So a lot of the Hungarians who were being trained by multinational companies who needed to learn English, as we say yesterday. I started working at Berlitz Berlitz is one of the oldest. International Language schools. I think it's also a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange, . And that's really where I got my feet wet in teaching. And so I took a course and within a very short time, I was teaching up to 40 or 50 hours per week, mainly business English clients.

So at that point I hadn't really had a lot of business background, but it was really trial by fire. so That's really how I got started . And then a few years ago I realized that I wasn't home very much. I was traveling more than I was home, so I was away from my wife, my friends, my family, and after working professionally in the singing world for many years.

I finally realized that I needed to pivot to something different and something that was closer to home. So my brother who works in high tech, he suggested that I teach English online knowing that I had already had the experience of teaching in the past. so I tried it. I jumped on uh, one of the more well-known language teaching platforms, and for the first three months, I think I had one guy, maybe two.

And the rest was just sort of. crickets. But then it started to snowball and in the beginning I taught people at all levels. I was ready to work with anybody. And I think when you're just starting out, that's a good way to go. But I quickly realized that my clients tended to be professional people who, had to speak at a conference or they had to learn.

how to engage in more small talk with other people in their multinational company and so it, increasingly became that clientele for me. But that said I've also helped people to pass the IELTS test, for example, which is the International English test that many people need to immigrate.

To an English speaking country.

Howie: it sure does. And I'm also listening as a language learner now, to getting your feet wet and to trial by fire. , my sense is that you use those phrases as a teacher of English. I'm wondering, what's your teaching philosophy? Do you have a philosophy when it comes to teaching English?

Because there's so many different ways you can learn a language. I'm wondering what's behind how you teach it?

Sean: Good question. I know the word holistic is a little bit overused these days. But my approach is very holistic. I want to help somebody to become a well-rounded. Global professional. It's not just about correcting their Ls or their Rs.

But it's really about developing cultural intelligence as well as obviously boosting their confidence. So I would say it's a combination of remedial work. So if we need to work on a specific grammar point, I hear the same mistake over and over again.

We will address that because that's the foundation, but it's really also about cultural intelligence, personal development and finding ways for people to find their authentic voice in English, how to sound like themselves.

And that seems to have worked the best for me. I think one big change we've seen in language teaching we used to be kind of the gatekeepers of linguistics or the gatekeepers of the knowledge of learning, whether it was it from a textbook or from our own training.

Sean: But of course now our roles have changed. Because people have never had more access to content and apps and YouTube videos to help you with any language or any topic. So I see my role now as more of a curator. So I do my best to go out and find relevant material for my clients that could help them to improve, that could help to develop their vocabulary.

And also to try and make it easier for them so that when they show up for the coaching session, I've got the material that is already relevant, that already will really help them to shine the best within their field. I. That's basically what I do. So I, I think teaching has become a lot more facilitating and curating and guiding rather than

just simply giving people the answer to this grammar question, if that makes

Howie: Yeah, it does, and it seems like a much better use of your time. Rather than being the lecturer that the world is their oyster and simply helping them consume it, in a way that is not overwhelming and, and it, and facilitates their fastest linguistic acquisition.

Sean: Exactly and often when I'm working with somebody during the day, it's probably similar for you. But often, they're between meetings. so yeah, so I have to put as much as I can of value and useful material into

that one hour session.

It tends to be one hour on average.

Howie: So how do you help students who come to you and, and they may lack confidence. But you sense that they're grammatical English, their spoken English is actually pretty perfect, but they still lack confidence in a business setting.

How do you help those people, and if so, how?

Sean: Yeah. I would say the bulk of people I work with are upper intermediate to advanced, and that's kind of my choice. I have worked with beginners. In the past, but I really feel that my expertise is in the area of upper intermediate to advanced.

And yes most people I work with have a pretty good handle on grammar. Which is great, but what they haven't exercised or what they haven't practiced is learning how to speak confidently .

So what I try to do, I'll use AI or other tools to simulate situations that they would experience every day. So I would say, let's look at 10 typical scenarios that you experience each week. Let's create some dialogues or I'll just give you a sentence and let's jump into a role play.

I think it's really about simulating scenarios where they feel the anxiety and and the pain points are the most pronounced where they're really a problem. And now with ai, of course, we can be as specific as we want.

Sean: About that. And the other thing I do is when we create these simulations or dialogues or role plays, I also throw phrasal verbs, idioms, colocations, other expressions that are also relevant and useful for their particular area of expertise So that's basically how it works.

And often people are very shy about their pronunciation, right? Especially when they have to suddenly speak up in a meeting and if they're in a new position with new people. that's something that we work on, and it's really about building rapport, and making the person feel that a lot more is possible.

Even if you feel like you've reached a plateau. And I was just working with somebody earlier from Southern India, and he was really having difficulty with words like rural in English, right? Where you've got that there's not really a a letter u, it's more like a schwa sound.

Like that unvoiced vowel that, ugh, that ru rural sound. Which is one of the hardest words to pronounce in English next to the word world. Which is also super hard, even if people are advanced because they're treating it as one syllable. But actually for example, world is technically it's two parts, right?

Because it's, were and old. It's not just w world like that, right? So I, I try to go in and and deconstruct words like that, pull them apart and find out exactly where the problem is in the word. And we'll just go over that again and again and often. What I suggest to students is to make a list of words that you're probably already pronouncing perfectly in English that sound kind of similar.

So if I think of world, most people can say we or her, right? So it's finding words that they already feel comfortable with, which is half the battle, because then they think, oh, okay, that's not so bad. I understand that sound. so I think accent clarity is the way that I like to describe it.

People used to call it accent reduction. But I think there's nothing wrong with keeping your cultural identity and, and keeping a bit of an accent. and even if I lived in Beijing, for example, for 25 years and spoke. Fluent Mandarin. Most Chinese would be able to detect my accent.

Of course if they saw me, they would know as well, but even if they heard me on a phone call, they would say, oh yeah he's a foreigner. He's not from China. But there's still a lot we can do to find our, authentic voice in our second language and to articulate.

Howie: Yeah, that's great. I'm reminded of one of my favorite TV shows was 30 Rock, and recurring theme where one of the, um, the actors gets to, to be in a play, and it was called The Rural Juror. And they could never, no one ever could say it, and no. So no one ever knew what the, what the, what they were saying.

The.

Sean: That's great. I'll have to, I'll have to explore that. maybe if I could find the script for that episode, that would be

great to incorporate, into a class

Howie: Hmm.

Howie: So um, there's more I wanna ask you, but I know we weren't trying to keep these to a roughly 15 minutes, so I, I thank you for your comprehensive and really interesting answers, and I'm gonna give it back to you for our outro.

Sean: Yeah, so I'd just like to, again, thank everyone for tuning in, whether you're listening to us and watching us on YouTube, or whether you're on Spotify or I guess all of the major platforms

So if this episode helped you, if you found it useful, if you found it interesting, share it with one smart friend who wants to lead more confidently in

Sean: English.

Howie: Yeah. So we'll uh, we'll return next week and you're ask me about leadership, about mindset. , and so this is our second and third episode, so we felt like it was useful for our audience to get to know us a little bit. And then after that, we're really gonna be diving into topics.

Of interest like your great interest in AI and tools for productivity. I'm gonna be about ways of communicating effectively and growing your executive presence. And the more from you. about what you like about what you find valuable, the more we can produce that, for you.

Sean: Great. With that we wish you all a great day, a great evening, a great morning, whatever time it is for you. And we look forward to seeing you next time on the Fluent Edge Podcast.