I remember sitting in meetings overseas and realising something slowly, over time.
I didn’t want to speak up anymore.
It wasn’t that anyone was rude. Nobody was openly dismissive. In fact, most people were perfectly polite.
But I still left those rooms with a hollow feeling I couldn’t always describe well.
It felt like I was speaking, but people weren’t hearing me.
I mean, they would nod. They would ask my opinion. But it was rare that I got the body language or face expression that I knew meant that they UNDERSTOOD what I was saying. Even if they didn’t agree with it.
And, so, what happened over time? I shrank. I became smaller in the workplace. I lost my confidence.
Not because I didn’t have ideas. Not because I didn’t understand the work. But because expressing myself never felt like it was worth it.
I have seen this happen before. With other people. People who struggled with the language they needed to use.
Even with all of the great ideas they had, they spoke less.
They waited until they were certain their sentence would come out correctly.
They thought that it was their English that created this situation. It may have been. Or it could have been a values mismatch as well.
But it was a form of workplace rejection.
Workplace rejection is real. And it is incredibly painful.
And the hardest part is that it doesn’t always look like rejection from the outside and so we think that maybe we’re making this all up in our heads.
It doesn’t look like rejection as we know it.
It looks like quietness.
It looks like someone who is “reserved.”
It looks like someone who “doesn’t contribute much.”
But inside, it can feel painfully different.
Being unable to communicate freely doesn’t just affect your work. It affects your sense of belonging, of being part of the team.
There’s a particular loneliness that comes from knowing you have something to say… and not being able to say it in the way you want to.
It’s not always language that causes this. Sometimes this experience is about culture, or values, or simply being new.
But often, language plays a bigger role than many people realise. More than I ever realised until I experienced it myself.
When you’re working in a second language, communication is never just technical. It’s personal.
It’s tied to confidence.
To identity.
To how safe you feel being seen and heard.
Over time, that quiet kind of disconnection can start to feel like rejection — even when nobody intends it that way.
And I think that’s why so many talented international professionals end up holding back.
Not because they lack ability. But because it takes courage to keep showing up as yourself when you’re not always sure you’ll be understood.
In Part 2 next week, I want to talk about something I’ve seen again and again in global workplaces:
How often language difficulty is mistaken for lack of competence. And how much potential gets lost because of that misunderstanding.